litchralee

A while ago, I wrote this overview of California's Coast Rail Corridor project, which would run conventional trains between the existing, popular, state-subsidized commuter rail systems in Northern and Southern California. This is nowhere near as sexy as high-speed rail, but imagine a single seat that rolls through the rice paddies outside Sacramento, past the oil refineries of Richmond in the Bay Area, down through Oakland adjacent the Coliseum, bisecting Silicon Valley, then hugging the coast of Central California towards the beaches of Santa Barbara entering Los Angeles County and then further to San Diego.

Then make it affordable and timely, and all of a sudden there's a way to spend time watching the scenery slowly, while also being practical. Trains are much less of a slog than sitting on a bus. High speed rail is important and laudable, but this humble, rather dull project will likely carry passengers between north and south a decade or more before high speed rail does, which is why the state is pursuing it in parallel.

I hope this type of content is an alright fit for this community.

In the thumbnail is my freehub after running a new set of wheels for 1700 km. From how I understand the "anti-bite" feature, it should prevent the cassette from gouging further into the soft metal of the splines, by taking up those forces on the strip of steel on one of the splines. And that seems like a reasonable idea, since further gouging beyond a cosmetic issue would prevent removal of the cassette.

My question is whether the higher torque caused by a mid-drive torque might one day overwhelm the steel strip, resulting in a locked cassette to the freehub. So far, I don't see any evidence of the strip giving way, and I'm normally under the assumption that the allowable torques of standard bicycles -- although tested by ebikes -- should still tolerate this sort of application.

Does anyone know of scenarios where the anti-bite strip fails in-situ? Note that this isn't a particularly pricey freehub, and I mostly built up this wheel as a long-term test to see how long it would last. For when it does fail, I plan to rebuild with a DT Swiss hub, finances allowing.

(Does this community allow posts about product restorations? I didn't forge these skillets, but I did make them usable and appealing again.)

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/30170080

(long time lurker, first time poster)

A few months ago, a friend convinced me on the benefits of cast iron skillets. Having only used Teflon-coated non-stick pans, I figured it would be worth a try, if I could find one at the thrift store. Sure, I could have just bought a new Lodge skillet, but that's too easy lol.

So a few weeks pass and I eventually find these two specimens at my local thrift store, for $5 and $8 respectively. It's not entirely clear to me why the smaller skillet cost more, but it was below $10 so I didn't complain too loudly. My cursory web searches at the store suggested that old Wagner skillets are of reasonable quality, so I took the plunge. My assumption is that the unmarked, smaller skillet is also a Wagner product.

10-inch skillet ($5)	9-inch skillet ($8)

It's very clear that both these skillets are very crusty. Initially, I tried to remove the buildup using a brass wire brush. This was only somewhat successful, so I switched to a stainless steel wire brush. That also didn't do much, except reveal some of the inscription on the bottom.

Some research suggested I could either do an electrolysis tank, a lye bath, or try lye-based oven cleaner. For want of not over-complicating my first restoration attempt, I went with the oven cleaner method, using the instructions from this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Pvf0m9jTeE

For both skillets, I had to apply the oven cleaner six times to finally shift all the crud, each time leaving the skillets in the garbage bag for a full day-and-a-half in the sun. In between applications, I would brush off more buildup, with the handle root and the skillet walls being the most stubborn areas. The whole process smelled terrible and hunching over the garage utility sink to brush pans is not my idea of a pleasant time.

Nevertheless, having stripped both pans, I proceeded with six rounds of seasoning with very old corn oil -- it's what was handy -- at 450 F (~230 C) using my toaster oven. This happened over six days, since I wanted to use my excess daytime solar power for this endeavor. I wiped on the oil using a single blue shop towel, to avoid the issues of lint or fraying with paper towel.

I don't have a post-seasoning photo for the larger skillet, but here's how the 9-inch skillet turned out. I think I did a decent job for a first attempt. And I'm thrilled that these are as non-stick as promised, with only minimal upkeep required after each use.

(long time lurker, first time poster)

A few months ago, a friend convinced me on the benefits of cast iron skillets. Having only used Teflon-coated non-stick pans, I figured it would be worth a try, if I could find one at the thrift store. Sure, I could have just bought a new Lodge skillet, but that's too easy lol.

So a few weeks pass and I eventually find these two specimens at my local thrift store, for $5 and $8 respectively. It's not entirely clear to me why the smaller skillet cost more, but it was below $10 so I didn't complain too loudly. My cursory web searches at the store suggested that old Wagner skillets are of reasonable quality, so I took the plunge. My assumption is that the unmarked, smaller skillet is also a Wagner product.

10-inch skillet ($5)	9-inch skillet ($8)

It's very clear that both these skillets are very crusty. Initially, I tried to remove the buildup using a brass wire brush. This was only somewhat successful, so I switched to a stainless steel wire brush. That also didn't do much, except reveal some of the inscription on the bottom.

Some research suggested I could either do an electrolysis tank, a lye bath, or try lye-based oven cleaner. For want of not over-complicating my first restoration attempt, I went with the oven cleaner method, using the instructions from this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Pvf0m9jTeE

For both skillets, I had to apply the oven cleaner six times to finally shift all the crud, each time leaving the skillets in the garbage bag for a full day-and-a-half in the sun. In between applications, I would brush off more buildup, with the handle root and the skillet walls being the most stubborn areas. The whole process smelled terrible and hunching over the garage utility sink to brush pans is not my idea of a pleasant time.

Nevertheless, having stripped both pans, I proceeded with six rounds of seasoning with very old corn oil -- it's what was handy -- at 450 F (~230 C) using my toaster oven. This happened over six days, since I wanted to use my excess daytime solar power for this endeavor. I wiped on the oil using a single blue shop towel, to avoid the issues of lint or fraying with paper towel.

I don't have a post-seasoning photo for the larger skillet, but here's how the 9-inch skillet turned out. I think I did a decent job for a first attempt. And I'm thrilled that these are as non-stick as promised, with only minimal upkeep required after each use.

Notforusein is a perfectly cromulent word. Or a brand name for sale on Amazon.com.

EDIT: this is a take-out bag for sandwiches, where the inside is apparently lined with aluminum to keep the heat in. Accordingly, they do not recommend the bag to be placed in a microwave oven.

We live in a very strange timeline where the Ontario Premier is outdoing American governors on what constitutes "really dumb ideas". If you live in Ontario, I would urge you to watch to the end of the video and file a public comment during Bill 212's consultation period, ending on 20 November 2024.

https://ero.ontario.ca/notice/019-9266

The median age of injured conventional bicycle riders was 30 (IQR, 13-53) years vs 39 (IQR, 25-55) years for e-bicyclists (P < .001). Scooter riders had a median age of 11 (IQR, 7-24) years at the time of injury vs 30 (IQR, 20-45) years for e-scooter riders (P < .001) (Table 1 and Figure 3). As a group, those injured from EV accidents were significantly older than those injured from conventional vehicles (age, 31 vs 27 years; P < .001) (eTable 1 in Supplement 1).

e-Bicycles have lowered barriers to cycling for older adults, a group at risk for physical inactivity.9,10 Biking has clear-cut physical and cognitive health benefits for older adults, so this extension of biking accessibility to older e-bicyclists should be considered a boon of the new technology.22,23 However, as injured e-bicycle riders are older than conventional bicyclists, the unique safety considerations for older cyclists should be a focus of ongoing study.

There is a popular conception that ebikes are ridden recklessly on streets and sidewalks by youths, doing dangerous stunts, riding against traffic, not wearing helmets, and incurring serious injury to themselves and others as a result. This conception is often used to justify legislation to restrict or ban ebike use by minors. However, the data suggests quite the opposite, as it is older riders which are racking up injuries.

The data does not support restrictions on ebikes, but rather their wholesale adoption, especially for audiences which are at risk of inactivity or disadvantaged by a lack of transportation options. Ebikes are not at odds with conventional bicycles.

The California Bicycle Coalition offers this succinct summary:

“We think this backlash against e-bikes is the wrong direction for what we want for safer ways for people biking and sharing the road,” said Jared Sanchez, the policy director for the California Bicycle Coalition. “We don’t believe that adding restrictions for people riding e-bikes is the solution.”

They also have a page on how to fight against "bikelash", aka naysayers of bicycles and bikes: https://www.calbike.org/talking-back-to-bikelash/

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/22165919

This entry of mine will not match the customary craftsmanship found in this community, but seeing as this was formerly a pile of miscellaneous, warped scrap 2x4 segments recovered from old pallets, I think I've made a reasonable show of things.

This bench is for my homegym, designed to be stood upon, which is why there's a rubber mat inlaid on the surface, a leftover of the gym floor. My design criteria called for even the edge of the top surface to support weight, so the main "box" of the bench uses 2x4 segments mitered (badly) together at 45 degrees, held together with wood glue.

I then routed the inner edge to support a 1/2" plywood sheet, which is screwed into the box. And then the rubber mat is glued down to the sheet, so there are no visible screws.

Finally, the legs are also 2x4 segments, cut so the bench sits 43 cm (~17 inch) from the floor; this is only coincidentally similar to the IPF weightlifting bench standards. I used screws instead of glue, just in case the legs needed to be shortened later.

All edges were rounded over with a 1/2" bit, as the bench is expected to be picked up and moved frequently. And everything stained in cherry and clear-coated.

Some of the annoyances from using scrap included:

• Stripping old paint off. Awful chemicals, awful scrubbing, awful disposal.
• Sanding away twists along the 2x4 segments
• Filling nail holes or arranging them so they don't draw attention
• My lack of experience with clamping and gluing wood that's not dimensionally consistent

If I were to do this again, I'd figure out a way to reduce the amount of routing needed for the inner edge, since I essentially removed 0.75 inch by 1.5 inch of material all around the edge. This took forever, and perhaps a CNC machine would have simplified things, in addition to squaring and planing the surfaces before mitering.

This entry of mine will not match the customary craftsmanship found in this community, but seeing as this was formerly a pile of miscellaneous, warped scrap 2x4 segments recovered from old pallets, I think I've made a reasonable show of things.

This bench is for my homegym, designed to be stood upon, which is why there's a rubber mat inlaid on the surface, a leftover of the gym floor. My design criteria called for even the edge of the top surface to support weight, so the main "box" of the bench uses 2x4 segments mitered (badly) together at 45 degrees, held together with wood glue.

I then routed the inner edge to support a 1/2" plywood sheet, which is screwed into the box. And then the rubber mat is glued down to the sheet, so there are no visible screws.

Finally, the legs are also 2x4 segments, cut so the bench sits 43 cm (~17 inch) from the floor; this is only coincidentally similar to the IPF weightlifting bench standards. I used screws instead of glue, just in case the legs needed to be shortened later.

All edges were rounded over with a 1/2" bit, as the bench is expected to be picked up and moved frequently. And everything stained in cherry and clear-coated.

Some of the annoyances from using scrap included:

• Stripping old paint off. Awful chemicals, awful scrubbing, awful disposal.
• Sanding away twists along the 2x4 segments
• Filling nail holes or arranging them so they don't draw attention
• My lack of experience with clamping and gluing wood that's not dimensionally consistent

If I were to do this again, I'd figure out a way to reduce the amount of routing needed for the inner edge, since I essentially removed 0.75 inch by 1.5 inch of material all around the edge. This took forever, and perhaps a CNC machine would have simplified things, in addition to squaring and planing the surfaces before mitering.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/20965205

This is the story of how I turned a 15" Titan adjustable dumbbell to be 80 cm (31.5 inch) long. Why? Because I have a space-constrained home gym but still wanted a leg press, and so I had to remove its original barbell.

In its place, I built a pair of wood mounts for a normal barbell to rest upon, covered in that earlier post. However, since this machine is wall-adjacent, such a barbell would have to fit inside the width of the leg press, so about 80 cm. But must also be wider than the spacing from outside-edge to outside-edge of the wood mounts, which is 60 cm.

Such a short barbell -- or long dumbbell -- does not readily exist commercially, with the narrowest one I've seen being 48 inch barbells, which are still too wide. So I decided to build my own, using my spare Titan dumbbell as the base.

To start, the Titan dumbbells are excellent in this capacity, as the shaft diameter is 28 mm -- not 32 mm as the website would indicate -- which is a common diameter, if I am to cut short a cheap barbell to replace this dumbbell's shaft.

In keeping with my preexisting frugality, I purchased a cheap 1-inch barbell, hoping that it adopts the Olympic 28 mm shaft diameter, and not the 29 mm deadlift bar shaft diameter, as the Titan collars have small clearances. Matching neither, I find that this bar is closer to 23 mm, which although will fit into the existing collars, poses its own issues.

Nevertheless, this 7 ft barbell can conveniently be cut in half to yield two 42 inch segments. And then the included bar stops can be loped off, and then the length further refined to 77 cm, thus hiding the marks from the bar stop within the Titan collars, and also centering the (meh) knurling from the cheap bar.

But perhaps a picture will be more explanatory. Here, the original collar is dismantled at the top, showing the original shaft with a groove cut into it, about 1/4-inch from the end. Into that groove would fit two half-rings with an inner diameter of 20.4 mm and an outer diameter of 40 mm. In fact, all the parts inside the collar use 40 mm outer diameter, except the spacer cylinder, which is smaller at 37 mm. All of these parts are held captive within the collar using the C-ring and the geometry of the collar itself.

To deal with the difference between the collar expecting 28 mm, and the cheap bar's 23 cm, I designed an ABS 3d printed part in FreeCAD to act as a bushing, upon which the original Titan brass bushing will ride upon. This ABS bushing is held captive by way of its center bulge, which fits within the dead space inside the collar.

As for how I cut the groove into the end of the new shaft, I still don't own a lathe. So the next best is to mount an angle grinder onto a "cross slide vise" taken from a drill press, with the shaft secured in a wooden jig to only allow axial rotation manually. The vise allows precision control for the cutting wheel's depth, with me pausing frequently to measure how close the groove is to the desired 20.4 mm inner diameter. This is.... not a quick nor precise process. But it definitely works.

After reassembling both collars onto the new shaft and lubricating with white lithium, the final result is a long dumbbell (or short barbell) with Titan's 3.5 inch collars on the end, with 63 cm of shaft exposed and 80 cm from end to end. The ABS bushing is remarkably smooth against the brass bushing, after some sanding with 180 grit. The whole dumbbell weights 5.48 kg empty.

Here is the comparison with the stock Titan dumbbell. It's pretty amazing how the knurling conveniently lined up. It fits well onto the wood mounts of the leg press.

But why would I do all this just to add a weirdly long 3.5-inch collar dumbbell to a leg press, when it already can accept weights underneath the carriage? I will answer that in a follow-up post.

This is the story of how I turned a 15" Titan adjustable dumbbell to be 80 cm (31.5 inch) long. Why? Because I have a space-constrained home gym but still wanted a leg press, and so I had to remove its original barbell.

In its place, I built a pair of wood mounts for a normal barbell to rest upon, covered in that earlier post. However, since this machine is wall-adjacent, such a barbell would have to fit inside the width of the leg press, so about 80 cm. But must also be wider than the spacing from outside-edge to outside-edge of the wood mounts, which is 60 cm.

Such a short barbell -- or long dumbbell -- does not readily exist commercially, with the narrowest one I've seen being 48 inch barbells, which are still too wide. So I decided to build my own, using my spare Titan dumbbell as the base.

To start, the Titan dumbbells are excellent in this capacity, as the shaft diameter is 28 mm -- not 32 mm as the website would indicate -- which is a common diameter, if I am to cut short a cheap barbell to replace this dumbbell's shaft.

In keeping with my preexisting frugality, I purchased a cheap 1-inch barbell, hoping that it adopts the Olympic 28 mm shaft diameter, and not the 29 mm deadlift bar shaft diameter, as the Titan collars have small clearances. Matching neither, I find that this bar is closer to 23 mm, which although will fit into the existing collars, poses its own issues.

Nevertheless, this 7 ft barbell can conveniently be cut in half to yield two 42 inch segments. And then the included bar stops can be loped off, and then the length further refined to 77 cm, thus hiding the marks from the bar stop within the Titan collars, and also centering the (meh) knurling from the cheap bar.

But perhaps a picture will be more explanatory. Here, the original collar is dismantled at the top, showing the original shaft with a groove cut into it, about 1/4-inch from the end. Into that groove would fit two half-rings with an inner diameter of 20.4 mm and an outer diameter of 40 mm. In fact, all the parts inside the collar use 40 mm outer diameter, except the spacer cylinder, which is smaller at 37 mm. All of these parts are held captive within the collar using the C-ring and the geometry of the collar itself.

To deal with the difference between the collar expecting 28 mm, and the cheap bar's 23 cm, I designed an ABS 3d printed part in FreeCAD to act as a bushing, upon which the original Titan brass bushing will ride upon. This ABS bushing is held captive by way of its center bulge, which fits within the dead space inside the collar.

As for how I cut the groove into the end of the new shaft, I still don't own a lathe. So the next best is to mount an angle grinder onto a "cross slide vise" taken from a drill press, with the shaft secured in a wooden jig to only allow axial rotation manually. The vise allows precision control for the cutting wheel's depth, with me pausing frequently to measure how close the groove is to the desired 20.4 mm inner diameter. This is.... not a quick nor precise process. But it definitely works.

After reassembling both collars onto the new shaft and lubricating with white lithium, the final result is a long dumbbell (or short barbell) with Titan's 3.5 inch collars on the end, with 63 cm of shaft exposed and 80 cm from end to end. The ABS bushing is remarkably smooth against the brass bushing, after some sanding with 180 grit. The whole dumbbell weights 5.48 kg empty.

Here is the comparison with the stock Titan dumbbell. It's pretty amazing how the knurling conveniently lined up. It fits well onto the wood mounts of the leg press.

But why would I do all this just to add a weirdly long 3.5-inch collar dumbbell to a leg press, when it already can accept weights underneath the carriage? I will answer that in a follow-up post.

As is their custom, FortNine delivers a two-wheeler review in the most cinematic way possible, along with a dose of British sitcom humor.

I'm not sure I'd ever buy one, but I'd definitely borrow it from a friend haha. I've said before that I like seeing what novel ideas people will build atop two wheels, and this certainly is very unique.