Throne MRO

That's Maintenance, Repair, & Operations for those of you who, like me, hadn't come across this TLA before. Well the repair to the Family Seat lasted only for a while, first the fake screw head came away, then the bracket holding the large toilet seat started pivoting and coming off the hinge bar at one end, leading to a seated experience akin to riding on a tea tray. The Codger had a go at it and put in a new screw but, despite his confidence that it would work and my speculation that the stump of the old screw meant it wouldn't, it was in the end a very temporary fix (2 weeks max). So I should be junking it….

But, it hasn't come away completely and is only pivoting on the good screw, so if this could be prevented the whole thing might well last a while yet. Bargain!

The first job was to decontaminate the whole thing (ten minutes of surface cleaner to clean it up and some vinegar to shift the verdigris that had formed on some of the metal parts). The business end of the job was one hole to drill and one screw to fix; forgetting to refit the brackets for attaching the seat to the toilet before capping the hinge bar made that two screws to drive. An M4 12mm zinc-plated self-tapping screw makes a stud to stop the main seat hinge from rotating off the bar. Not a pretty repair by any standards but who takes that much notice of the underside of a toilet seat. All worked as planned but the single screw holding the hinge onto the seat is somewhat shaky.

If it breaks it's the bin, or perhaps a stainless steel bracket could be made that would hold it for a bit longer…

Either way, JOB DONE.

With knobs on!

The machine screws arrived, and little gems they are! All freshly machined edges and bright brass. The screw threads fitted as expected but the heads were too large for the opening in the handles so two of them were filed down with a flat needle file. Everything went together neatly but at 0.5" the screws were a little too long to be fastened tight onto the spindle. They were left flush at either side of the opening as this looks neatest. If they become loose I'll trim them down, which is probably simpler than making a collar to keep them at the preferred height (don't have any brass tube stock to hand).

JOB DONE

Knobs!

I'm having multiple issues with door knobs at the moment. On the back door of the house the screw holding the doorknob to the spindle has vanished leading to it parting company with the door with you stood outside. The knob is antique by the look of its design and construction and searching through the spares box for a replacement only gave only a single metric machine screw with a partial fit. It was OK for a patch to keep the thing from falling off every time it was used but wasn't a neat solution. A quick spot of caliper work suggested that a 4BA screw would probably be close to the correct fit in the absence of a thread gauge. Not letting the opportunity for a small tool purchase pass me by an order for a set of thread gauges for the major thread standards (imperial, UNC, BA, BSW) is waiting to go out.

So as The Major was heading past one of the local hobby stores I explained the requirements of the part to her and pressed the doorknob into her hand with instructions to obtain half a dozen cheese-head brass screws if they had them. She duly returned with half a dozen round-head BZP steel screws which were woefully short, and all for the princely sum of £2 (ie 33p each)!

Now I didn’t expect her to be able to work out what I wanted from my description (the only sure way would have been to go with her) but I assumed that the chap in the shop, when presented with a request for brass screws and the doorknob, would have been able to sort out the right thing if he had them. As it was it appears that he was more interested in making the sale then getting the right part. He's off the Christmas list then. I'll leave aside the outcome of leaving zinc and brass in close proximity outside. While I was after the last link I noted that the Wikipedia section on materials for Screw was a bit confusticated so I updated it putting in jappaning for a larf to see how long before someone tackles a link.

So back to shopping, eBay came up trumps with 10 screws for £2.90 inclusive of delivery and as I don't need 100+ that was the best price going. The company is GWR Fasteners. Just need to wait for them to arrive and tidy away the unwanted BZP screws for future use. More on the other problem when I get a round tuit (not looked on Amazon for one yet).

Noah's Ark: Anchors Aweigh!

OK the tools are in. The plan is to drill two small holes then screw and glue the ramp back together. I made some measurements with the newly acquired caliper which gave the following layout.

Once the required points for drilling had been located on the door and hinge a search of the toolbox returned two screws of about the correct length that wouldn't need to bite into the hinge more than halfway. I would have liked to use countersunk brass screws but they were 'gud enuf' and the tikes' wooden animals would just have to negotiate then as best they could. I used a Dremel with 3mm and 2mm HSS bits to drill through the door and into the hinge respectively. After that it was just a matter of using PVA to form the joint and screwing the pieces back together. Wipe away the excess PVA with a damp cloth and leave to set for 24hrs.

A final file down with a needle file of any edges on the screws sharp enough to catch little fingers and JOB DONE.

The Loft Datacenter: IV

With the prepared extension to hand the final step was to mount it onto the shelf that had been fixed into the loft. In order to leave as much space as possible for the laptop I chose to mount the extension lead on the underside of the shelf. This was accomplished by drilling four 5 mm holes to accommodate a pair of 300mm cable ties that could secure the box to the underside of the shelf.

After about thirty minutes of hefting stuff up into the loft and plugging it in everything was installed. Once switched on it all functioned as per spec. I decided not to test the UPS auto-shutdown of the NAS box as I had confirmed that it would work when the system was set up on the workbench.

Not pretty, but JOB DONE.

The Loft Datacenter: III

The extension lead had been cut previously and was bodged together with a terminal block. Fitting the IEC 60320 was a matter of removing the terminal block and fitting the C14 connector. Then taking it off again once I had measured the distance from the shelf to the rear of the UPS.

So back to the other piece of cable on the other side of the terminal block which was of the right length. Using this cable would mean opening up the extension box to swap the short cable for the longer piece. While doing this I decided to replace the burnt out neon indicator lamp as the light switch under the new shelf is quite shadowed and it might help shed a small amount of light into the area. After a bit of searching I decided to use components from Maplin, which is local, that could be had for the princely sum of £0.93 plus P&P.

The circuit is a simple one (simple enough for me to understand!). By Kirchoff's 2^nd law the high value resistor (ballast resistor) takes most of the voltage. I would have liked to work out all the values but a query to Maplin on the max working current and voltage of the neon lamp fell on deaf ears.

I also looked at fitting an LED instead of the neon lamp as the lifetimes of LEDs are 50,000 hr as opposed to neon at 20,000 hr. Although you would not expect an LED to work with AC, it will light on the positive phase of the cycle and as long as the negative phase isn't greater than its maximum reverse voltage it won't be damaged. But the current draw of the LEDs was too great meaning they would need to be coupled with a large high wattage resistor. There are ways to get round this but I opted for simplicity.

The Maplin site actually specified a ballast resistor to use with the lamp at UK mains voltage. But for my own personal edification I checked it out as well. As usual Wikipedia had the required information and I made a little spreadsheet to help with looking at using LEDs.

The resistor came with more bands than I am used to but I found a neat colour code reader that confirmed that I had the right part.

A small amount of soldering later and all done. The final stage is to put the extension bar and the rest of the IT into place.

The Loft Datacenter: II

OK now for some practicalities.

1. The wireless router sometimes locks out and stops picking up connections from the laptops, so it would be ideal to be able to disconnect and restart it.
2. Access to the NAS box over the wireless network appears not to be reliable so the option to have access to a hard Ethernet connection and power for the laptops is required.
3. The house is divided by a large chimney and the loft hatch is on a wall with access up the side of chimney about 3ft to the loft level.
4. The UPS is heavy and needs to be across a couple of beams to support its weight.

With all this in mind, the IT needs to stay at the level of the loft roof beams but the power and Ethernet needs to be accessible from floor level. I could arrange a neat cable box in one of the upstairs rooms but the work required would be relatively involved and too intrusive on the fabric of the building for a small benefit (a couple of power switches and an Ethernet port).

Instead I've chosen to put in a shelf half-way up that the laptops could be parked on for hard access to the NAS. Also the power can be fed down from the UPS to the 4-gang extension lead, this will give a power point for the laptops and access to the wireless router power for restarts.

Out with the jigsaw and a surplus piece of dismantled cupboard was cut to size. One edge rests on the stepped chimney breast and the opposite edge on two corner blocks screwed to the wall studs. The advantage of this is that the shelf can be lifted out of the way if necessary.

Next the provision of power.