lemon juice and fine steel wool works on rust on a stainless steel dishwasher

I had a rust stain on the interior of a stainless steel dishwasher from contact with a rusting pan, and after having no success with CLR and just a paper towel, I applied some lemon juice, let it sit a few minutes, and then gently rubbed with #0000 fine steel wool, and the stain was removed. I suspect the magic was the steel wool. I did test it in an inconspicuous space to make sure I wasn't going to scratch up the surface. I noted that GE approved citric acid for stainless steel dishwashers beforehand.

Why toolboxes and tool handles stink.

For years I've encountered this issue, and it always perplexed me: why do a lot of toolboxes stink? I had always assumed it was related to heavy use with sweat and dirt and zero cleaning, but after I started encountering it on my own, barely used tools, I started looking into it. You can find some posts on DIY forums asking the same question, and how they could never clean the toolbox well enough to get rid of the stink.

Eventually I found someone who pointed out it was coming from the tool handles, and then they pointed out the culprit: tool handles made of Cellulose Acetate Butyrate. A thermoplastic, it offers excellent UV and solvent resistance that cellulose acetate doesn't offer. And it feels in the hand like a natural substance, something that is almost intangible, like a tool that is made by craftsmen, a characteristic that a polyethylene or polypropylene handle does not have. CAB also offers no splinters like the older wood handles. It also can be very clear. And when that plastic begins to degrade, it releases free acetic acid and butyric acid.

The odor of vinegar is a familiar sign to those in the film and photographic business; the cellulose acetate backing of film releases it as it degrades. I once visited a famous photographer's house and his office where he stored his negatives had that acrid odor--while for a photographer it reminds you of the darkroom, the midpoint of the creative process, it also brings to you vividly the end of the process--the decay of the work.

The butyric acid, one of the carboxylic acids, with a formula of CH3CH2CH2COOH, just smells like, in polite company like parmesan cheese, or like rancid butter or vomit. It's not nice above a certain concentration. Once I discovered this I immediately spent a little time sniffing each tool I had, and in short order discovered the ones that are the problem. They immediately got isolated from the rest, because the free butyric acid really does migrate and make everything unpleasant. I thought about giving the tools away, but really, who wants such a tool, even if free? I was going to throw them out, but that made me feel bad. And I think I've found a solution to stinky tools. I carefully fully coated the handles in two coats of shellac, a natural sealer, and now they don't smell to my nose.

CFL lifetime report #2

A third CFL failed in my torchiere conversion I did back in the winter of 2008. I used this light about 7 hours a day consistently until mid 2011, then for about 4 hours daily since then, which gave a lifetime of this compact fluorescent bulb from n:vision of about 11000 hours. I'm starting to evaluate and switch to LED bulbs as circumstances warrant--I went out and bought the Philips L-prize winning 10W EnduraLED bulb as a birthday present for myself. Whether to get more is a good question given its cost of $40 (it currently is cheaper to buy them at a big box store like Home Depot than online). I really do like the 92 CRI; the question is it that sufficient enough reason to buy it versus the previous generation of 80 CRI AmbientLED? The cost of electricity isn't a reason: 10W for the Endura versus 12.5W for the Ambient means a couple of dollars a year if left on 24/7. The lumen ouput might be--only 800 for the AmbientLED versus a bountiful 930 lumens for the EnduraLED. If I went by cost only for 80-ish CRI the CFLs still win for the short-term. But I am tempted by color accuracy, which is somewhat important for me, at least in food prep and photography viewing. None of this moves into the realm of other home lighting, which I'm running into the questions of dimmers, recessed cans, appliance bulbs, and the aesthetics of bathroom fixtures. And not to mention essentially lighting doesn't really cost that much for me annually, compared to other costs.

Improvements on my first cigar box guitar build.

To improve my first cigar box guitar build, I added a piece of 2" x 1/4" mahogany mull casing (ripped to 1.5") to the neck. I sanded it multiple times and applied multiple layers of clear shellac to it. I glued it to the neck with wood glue (while clamping I ran into issues with ink bleed on my clamp softeners). Then I also added fret marks with a silver sharpie (which then smeared while trying to clean things). I also screwed the neck to the cigar box in two places hoping to eliminate some odd buzzing/high harmonics that were occuring. Some of them were coming from the nut and/or bridge because the strings were not fully engaged or trapped by a notch in the nut or bridge.

For the nut and the bridge I used bamboo chopsticks, harder then the native wood used for the cigar box.

First Cigar Box Guitar build

A few photos of my first cigar box guitar. For cigar boxes both Hyde Park Cigars (the place on 53rd and Harper) and Binny's have them, although the latter's supply is variable. The neck is 1x2 poplar from home depot. I bought the tuning pegs for about $10 from C.B Gitty and the strings online. The saddle is a hard drive spindle top as are the coverings on the sound holes. The bridge and neck are just pieces of the cigar box. There is a piezo pickup inside. So, the errors made in this build were: the holes drilled for the tuning pegs need to be aligned better. I drilled 1/4" holes with a forstner bit; these fit the pegs perfectly but not the little bushings-and the next biggest size was too big, leaving the lowest tuner a little bent. The neck doesn't hold the strings--I made a notch for each string but the highest string is too loose in the notch. The cigar box wood is too light for this. I cut out the cigar box to fit the neck but forgot about the box top so the box can interfere with fretting. I think a fret board might help. I wired the piezo backwards but no apparent harm; I'd like to experiment with positioning and how to attach them. I can't play, but it was easy, fun, and now I've got a cigar box guitar! I can't wait to improve upon it with another one.

Audio Acoustic Amplifiers with no electronics

Amplifying audio without the use of any electronics: Audio Acoustic Amplifiers from Experimental Musical Instruments.

"Wrong Emphasis on the Wrong Syllable"

I'm just putting this here because I would doubt Facebook or Twitter would archive very well. Mike Myers, in the movie "View from the Top", has a line "You put the wrong em-PHA-sis on the wrong syl-LA-ble". I was just watching the 1933 movie "Moonlight and Pretzels" at the Northwest Chicago Film Society showing, and a character in that movie does the exact same joke!

Refrigerator payback

My current fridge (a Hotpoint Foodcenter 24) is older than I am. It was originally the avocado color shown in the ad; at some point someone painted it black but only the front and the sides they could reach; the top back and sides were not. The spread control is appreciated but not used. The giant dust bunnies of a never cleaned coil underneath was not. I measured the yearly annual cost of this fridge at $290 a year with a kill-a-watt; at that rate, a really nice replacement will begin paying for itself in six years. The previous owners had this fridge for 15 years and paid over $4000 in electricity for the privilege.

http://books.google.com/books?id=2UwEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA10&ots=b1-UE37tSn&dq=hotpoint%20foodcenter%2024&pg=PA10#v=onepage&q&f=true

7.72 microRads/hr

A 39 day long sampling of every minute leads the geiger counter to a long term average of 7.72 uR/hr. That's 56658 sampling points. That's about what's it's always been.

http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

New Moon of Pluto

http://www.cbat.eps.harvard.edu/cbet/cbet002769.txt

whatever, it doesn't matter, the blog is dead in practice if not in theory. The hits now a days are image searches and the occasional conspiracy web site, plus the audio transformer hits. I can't do my job and life and this.

Great Saturn Cassini video

Go out and see the Astronomy Picture of the Day for June 13th. It's an awesome video of the Saturnian system from Cassini. If all the cosmic ray hits, perspective changes (from Cassini's orbital motion), and dust donut hole moves(due to panning, filter changes, and zooms) are original to the raw images, then I salute Chris Abbas. What a great job.

Now compare that to my crappy gif animation I made of Enceladus and Dione near the rings from 5 years ago. http://dwarmstr.blogspot.com/2006/03/saturn-enceladus-and-dione-animation.html

Natural background radiation in Chicago

A recent inquiry brings up the question of what's the normal natural background radiation rate in Chicago? Using the EPA's online tool, we see the budget for naturally occurring sources listed as
(all numbers per year)
26 mrem for cosmic radiation
2 mrem for elevations up to 1000ft
46 mrem from terrestrial K, U, Th in soil (aka not Colorado Plateau or Gulf and Atlantic Coasts but normal US soil)
0 mrem from radon&daughter products (I'm excluding it here from this calculation but it's a sizeable percentage of your yearly dose)

74 mrem total, which comes out to about 8.4 urem/hr or microrems per hour. The long-term average in my basement office runs at about 7.6uR/hr.

From Duval, J.S., Aerial gamma-ray surveys of the conterminous United States and Alaska, you can see here that the approximate average exposure rate from naturally occurring U, K, and Th in the ground is about 4.5uR/hr at 1m above the ground for Chicago. I say about because the survey didn't look at heavily urbanized ground. But with the high resolution data and a geologic map you should be able to predict what it should be.



The Straight Dope unfortunately printed an error about it in 1980, claiming the rate in Chicago was 2 millirems per hour. That's really off; it's 1/250 of that.

CFL lifetime report

I just noticed that a second CFL failed in my torchiere conversion I did back in the winter of 2008. I use this light about 7 hours a day consistently. That makes it just under 8000 hours. The first CFL failure I seem to have not mentioned; I think it happened about a year ago.

Re: Las Vegas Anomaly

A couple of images from that area.