Good Morning!!!! 45F @ 6:15AM. Some clouds this morning will give way to generally sunny skies for the afternoon. High 66F. Winds light and variable.
Most of the big brand battery companies guarantee their products won't leak and damage the device in which they're installed. So they'd replace those Bose headphones, Rick, if you were using a Duracell or the like.:confused3: Now I'd better go check mine, if I can find 'em. Haven't used 'em since I retired because I haven't been on an airliner since I retired. :cloud9:
Nice job on the blade fixture, Ron. I like the way the handles on your clamps face away from the blade. Mine face the other way, and the rubber covers have become hard from the heat. Took me a long time to mill the slot for grinding the blade bevel, and didn't see a need to cut two of them, though.
Not much progress on plumbing the gas line yesterday. Got the first piece of pipe cut and threaded, then installed it and a 10' stick in a 90° elbow just fine. But then I couldn't find the 3/4" cap to block off one end for pressure testing, but did find another gauge and adapter to match the one the propane man left me with. Put 'em both on, ran 100' of hose down the hill from the compressor, pressurized the pipe, and took a break for lunch. Came back to both gauges reading zero. Took both gauges off and reinstalled 'em using both Teflon tape and pipe dope, and this time when I pressurized the pipe I could hear air hissing out of the test gauge I found. Turns out the housing was split where it threaded on to the pipe. Went back to my junk drawers and found another one I hadn't looked in before, and there was a 3/4" pipe cap with a Schrader valve already installed. Using that, the elbow joint passed the pressure check just fine. The next length of pipe extended down past the end of the terrace, so I had to figure out where to cut it and if a 90° or 45° elbow would be best to follow the contour of the trench bottom. Turns out that they were both wrong, and I needed a 22 1/2° elbow. Have any of you ever tried to buy a 22 1/2° 3/4" NPT elbow? Amazon had ONE, for FIFTY-FOUR DOLLARS!:shocked: Google found a couple for ONLY half that. None of the box stores or True Value even carried them. So I did what any red blooded American with a machine shop would do, and cut and beveled a couple short sections of pipe so I could weld 'em together and make my own 22 1/2° elbows. I figure if they survive the torque of installation, they'll hold up just fine under less than 1 PSI of propane. And yeah, I checked the metallurgy of "black iron" pipe, and it's plain old low carbon steel, not iron at all. In fact, most of the pipe is seam welded, but because of the high cooling rates when resistance welding is used, pipe made that way is annealed at 1000F post welding. So as long as I don't quench my GMA welds, they should be just fine.
And then there's the nomenclature by which those elbows are named. A 90° elbow really is a right angle, and should be called a ninety degree elbow. But now look at a 45° elbow. The included angle isn't 45° at all, it's 180° - 45 = 135°. And a 22 1/2° elbow is 180° - 22 1/2° = 157.5°, and the correct angle for each half of a DIY 22 1/2° elbow bevel is half of that, or 78.75°. :confused2:
Before all that, though, I did a little reading about CSST, the new Corrugated Stainless Steel Tubing that is suitable for natural gas and propane. It would have been perfect for my application, except it has to be run inside a non-ferrous conduit if it is buried, and I'd be right back to fooling with rigid pipe again. But at least 22 1/2° elbows are available in PVC, and I've already got some to do the electrical runs.
Now I wonder why I just don't get the pipe bender out and tweak a couple of 22 1/2° bends in a piece of pipe. But then how would I screw it into a coupler when it's down in the trench? I'd have to lift the whole mess up out of the trench, I guess. And then read the building code to see if it allows rigid pipe to be bent...
I'm not even out of bed this morning and my head already hurts. I need a nap...
Hope everyone enjoys the rest of their weekend...
and no more leaks. Came up one stick of pipe and a coupler short, so I'll pick those up in town tomorrow. 
