MIMF

Please be very careful with potassium dichromate. It's a hexavalent chromium (think Erin Brockvitch). Use disposable gloves, wear goggles, mix up only the amount needed and don't ever dump it down the drain. Think ahead about how you'll want to rinse off the instrument and deal with that water safel...

I wonder if wiping with a compatible retarder would also work and evaporate more slowly than just plain water.

Meanwhile i keep hoping I'll stumble into a way of applying shellac so that it doesn't pool up around the edges (and dragging any color tint with it.)

Its easier to etch nickel plating and you can do that with ferrous sulfide PCB etchant that you used to be able to buy at Radio Shack. I would dilute it 4:1 with water and apply with a q-tip or disposable brush. At full strength it will strip the nickel in no time. For chrome the traditional strippe...

One thing I'll point out about epoxy filler which hasn't been mentioned in the thread is that it has a propensity to swell up out of pores during final buffing on high speed buffers (600 RPM +) and then shrink back down into the pores and pulling the finish down with it. The effect is identical to t...

See if you can find a used Dylos to track down your sources once and remedy them but better yet spend that money of better filtration for your whole house. Lennox has a pretty impressive unit that's HEPA rated and comes with other bells and whistles including a UVA light that activates some catalyst...

I built mine twenty five years ago using a smallish 1/5hp squirrel cage blower from Granger. It's relatively quiet and moves a LOT of air for the Amps. The problem is that that air is very concentrated and moving at a high velocity at the output and you need the diffuse that and spread it around to ...

Barry, Thanks for chiming in here, so in essence .01 or .03 are what we need to measure? I wonder why PM2.5 became the de facto reference?
I take it that once particles get lodged in the alveoli they won't ever come out and can then cause all kinds of trouble in time.

I just got an inexpensive unit from an outfit called Temtop that measures PM2.5 and PM10 plus humidity and temperature in Centigrade. It was $60 postage paid and came in a couple of days from California. https://temtopus.com/products/temtop-lkc-20t-high-accuracy-air-quality-monitor-pm2-5-pm10-temper...

Andrew, I don't know the answer but it's an interesting question. What I can say is that your values are typical and your charging set up seems to be saturating the alnico mags effectively. Pulling or sliding bar magnets through the charging aperture will tend to slant the field in a chevron pattern...

You might look at wood that's a bit harder and more stable than maple if you can source it. Shagbark hickory, black locust, and iron wood are all pretty common in the Northeast. The Southwest has mesquite and the Northwest has mountain mahogany but that's getting pretty rare now. Midwest is all abou...

That's some finely crafted pieces of ebony there Alan.

My old urethane Sulphur Grove bandsaw tires suddenly started walking out from under the blade and causing a smokey ruckus after 20+ years of service. I was surprised to see that they had become all stretched out and had to be replaced. The only ones available locally were from Jet (PN 100025) and th...

Water glass seems to be a popular ingredient for a ground.

I got the Fein tool back when it was just a detail sander and before anyone had figured out the blade attachments and their utility. It's a TERRIBLE sander and I stuck it back in the box for 20 years until I put it up on CL and started a bidding war. The guy that bought it explained to me that he di...

Barry, There are myriad carbide grades, coatings and geometries for every type of metal and alloy. Inserts like these are highly polished to leave the best possible surface finish and they are very sharp with a fairly steep rake and clearance angles. They do fine with light cuts on mild steel but wo...

Wish we could get some dark sky nights in the city but apparently everyone in charge hates that idea.

I have a 9x20 lathe that's been in the shop for 25 years at least. I use the same Vactra #2 way oil as my mill takes and that's been no problem since it's a very thin layer. Wood dust isn't going to affect the ways other than to wick off all the oil so you'll want to keep the oil can handy. I have v...

Barry, whenever there's a perceived vacuum of information something else will inevitably be drawn in to fill the void. I'm afraid we all do that even when good reliable information is readily available at our fingertips. See every story in the news today for fine examples of this.<g>

I have several hundred bass necks out there laminated with both titebond I and II and never had an issue with any of them. I can't say as much for the few that I used epoxy on. I do like polyurethane glue but it's not as strong as titebond which makes it handy for fingerboards which you might want t...

At David Gage's bass shop in NYC back in the 1980s I noticed that they used a regular sheet of 1/8" glass and broke off little pieces to make scrapers.