The Glassed Menagerie
May 26th, 2009I’m in the Pink
Insulation WORKS. Somehow, I am surprised. I knew it was supposed to work, but it’s still weird to see it happening.
I stuck an air conditioner in the garage. It worked, but the garage doors are sheet steel, and they do not make for ideal cold retention. So I ordered a couple of kits from Home Depot. You can’t get this stuff down here. I guess no one in Miami uses garage insulation.
I installed the first kit. The second one was missing parts, so I had to send it back. Still, even with one door uninsulated, the temperature down to under 74 degrees in the middle of the garage. It wasn’t cold near the air conditioner and warmer near the doors, as it used to be. I guess things will get even better when the second door is done.
Now that I’ve seen what the kits consist of, I think I could have gotten the same results with a roll of insulation and some duct tape. I don’t know if it would have been cheaper. At over $60 a garage door, the kits seem expensive to me. You can also buy foam and stick it up there, but it isn’t as good.
I hope there isn’t a reason why no one else in Miami does this. I hope the fiberglass won’t trap water or anything. I blocked some vents, but I think I have enough of them already. It would be simple enough to alter the insulation and let the air out.
Sitting next to the insulated door, I feel much more “indoors” than I did before. A sheet of metal isn’t much of a sound barrier. There is something oddly comforting about the fiberglass. Which, aptly enough, resembles a comforter.
My new lathe challenge is parting. The lathe came with a parting tool, but it goes with a rocker post which doesn’t really work. I tried to fake it up using washers to support the tool post, but the work started barking at me, so I quit. I have some cheap parting blades on the way from Enco. That should fix the problem.
I have no idea what I’m trying to do. I stuck aluminum in the chuck and started playing. I don’t have an objective, except to get familiar with the lathe. I want to start by cutting one of these dangerous 8″ aluminum bars down to 4″. So parting is important.
I considered doing it on the dry cut saw, but that’s a good way to ruin the blade, and I think that blade runs about $140. I’ve read that some people part by holding a hacksaw over a piece of work while it turns. I don’t think they do this with 2″ T6. I gave it a shot, and all I managed to do was cut a shallow groove surrounded by random scratches.
I want to do some boring, just to say I did it. This is a can of worms. The manly way to bore is to find a piece of metal, make a boring tool to fit in the end of it, add a set screw, anneal the end of the tool so the screw will bite into it, and get to work. Something like that. I would rather do that than buy a boring bar right off the bat, because it would teach me something (maybe that buying boring bars is smart). But I don’t have any 1/4″ cobalt or HSS to turn into boring tools, nor do I have a way to create a slot for the tool, nor do I have any way to install a set screw. I don’t have a tap and die set. And I can’t part off a suitable piece of the scrap dowel I was hoping to use.
I ordered a few bits of cobalt, just to play with. Plus a cheap protractor, to help me grind tools.
I have learned how to harden tools. I watched W.R. Smith video. He does it with a piece of steel wire, some roach powder, and a torch. But I guess I don’t need to harden anything. Lathe tool blanks are hard to start with, aren’t they? I’ll have to check. I assume hardening is useful if you overheat a tool, isn’t it? Danged if I know.
I now have a workspace that could be considered functional. It’s a big step forward. Toward being a completely eccentric goof with a garage that rivals Bob Vila’s worst drunken fantasies.
I’m pooped. I had to cut and hang all that fiberglass, and I had to take off and reinstall a garage door part to make it work, and I had to clean up and then shower the fiberglass off. I’d say one door is a two-hour job.
Working on the milling issue. This will be the final piece of evidence they use at my competency hearing. I don’t care. I will mill or die trying.
Time for food.
May 26th, 2009 at 6:39 PM
I used to run a cold-saw shop here in Michigan. One winter, the old wooden bay doors gave out, so we put up new modern steel doors.
The heaters we used kicked out a lot of moisture, which when it hit the cold door skins condensed out and formed puddles at the base of the door, which then froze shut. Insulation fixed that. I doubt you’ll have the same problem.
May 26th, 2009 at 7:43 PM
I used the “blue” foam panels and the special glue made just for it. The stuff is about 1.25 in thick and cuts with a box cutter, I only have one 10 foot door so it took three 4×8 sheets. It made a huge difference for me as the setting sun is full on that door. The stuff added enough weight to force me to add tension to the door spring, that was exciting, I could just see me at the dentist getting new teeth.
May 26th, 2009 at 7:48 PM
Steve,
You don’t need to anneal the HSS tool bit so the set screw will “bite in”, it’ll secure the bit just fine. It’s probably a Good Idea to buy several boring bars right off the git-go, 3/8″, 5/8″ and 1″, along with a few HSS blanks of the appropiate sizes. Bars and bits are both cheap from Enco.
A tap&die set is REQUIRED, you’ll use it far more than you can imagine. Don’t get it from Harbor Freight, use Enco.
My Atlas lathes both had rocker-style tool posts and I was almost never successful in parting off anything. With my big lathe and Aloris toolpost, I usually engage the power cross feed and let ‘er rip, and seldom have a problem. Besides having a rigid setup, I learned one other thing: a narrower bit works better with a non-rigid setup. My little Harbor Freight 7X10 Mini-Lathe has a QCTP that you can easily SEE flex when parting off, but the 1/16″ tool doesn’t seem to care. That tool must be sharp, and I’ve begun using a diamond knife-sharpening hone to touch it up.
The thing works really slick for parting off all-thread or too-long screws. Trick is to go part-way through, then use a file on the rotating screw to slightly chamfer the edges of the cut, then finish it off. A nut will almost always start right onto the end of the cut screw.
FWIW: I usually use Tap Magic as my cutting fluid while parting off or Rigid pipe-threading oil.
HSS (High Speed Steel) is not only hard, it really isn’t hurt by overheating while grinding or cutting with an abrasive wheel. Carbon Steel that’s been hardened is ruined by overheating.
May 26th, 2009 at 9:24 PM
Now that I’ve seen what the kits consist of, I think I could have gotten the same results with a roll of insulation and some duct tape. I don’t know if it would have been cheaper. At over $60 a garage door, the kits seem expensive to me. You can also buy foam and stick it up there, but it isn’t as good.
.
I thought about the “foam-only” solution as well, but in the end I like the more finished look of the insulation in the kit. I also filled the middle channels of the door with “expand-a-foam”.
.
Like Ed, I had a condensation problem in the winter (using a procomm gas heater) until I installed the insulation kit. Now, I get no condensation and no puddles. Having cold air on the inside should mean that condensation would form on the outside of the doors when the A/C is running, thus it shouldn’t be a problem for your insulation.
May 26th, 2009 at 9:37 PM
Bob vila couldn’t drive a nail at gunpoint. He may be the most incompetent fool in the world. Compare yourself to Tim Turner if you must, but not that asshole.
Norm, on the other hand, rocked. Rent those videos if you want to see nice work.
May 27th, 2009 at 12:38 AM
I know you’re a Physics guy, but you might not have taken a couple of quarters of Thermodynamics like they made us take at GT to be Mechanical Engineers.
The funny thing about insulation used in Earth’s ambient temperature ranges is you’re basicaly paying for AIR–air captured within the body of the insulation envelope and prevented from moving around (convective heat transfer.)
Air trapped inside open cell or closed cell foam works similar to the air inside your fiberglass batting (glass strands are also a good insulator against Conductive heat transfer.)
If you let fiberglass batting get wet or if you compress the fiberglass–squashing it artificially flat– it loses much of it’s insulating value because the air is pushed out or replaced with water (water conducting heat better than air.)
Those bare steel doors still worked as insulators in a way, but the only value was that they had an “inner film coefficent” and an “outer film coeffiecent” which was basically equal to 0.9 or less i.e.heat allowed in almost equaled heat out because the only thing they really did was prevent convective heat transfer in the form of air coming from outside to the inside of the garage as hot air–forcing the the cold air out.
If your house/doors have a southern exposure you also add the third form of heat transfer…Radiant… to the equation and the only way to reduce that mode of heat transfer is to paint the doors with a silver colored reflective paint (actually white is also quite good and the zoning Nazis won’t object.)
You could also put mirrors on the outside of the doors and buy some spinner rims and a sub-woofer for the T-bird and…
May 27th, 2009 at 7:12 AM
Sure, you’re going to want to harden stuff. You can probably get a decent oven that will reach normalizing temperatures. Consider one that you can carburize in – you can rig the venting pretty simply to get rid of the carbon monoxide. Nitriding can come later.
–
Of course, you’ll want quenching baths as well. Oil quenching is the way to go.
–
Those laser temperature gages have gotten cheap, so they’re worth considering.
–
Although, come to think of it, if you had a forge…
May 27th, 2009 at 10:24 AM
as for boring bars:drill and tap setscrew hole first. then drill cutting tool hole. then square hole with file. thats how its done.