Kydex Belt Clip

Continuing on from yesterday, I did a little more work towards making my belt clips from Kydex.

Today I milled a female piece to go with the belt clip mold. Usually Kydex is molded between foam...I wanted something sharper. To make this work, the thickness of the kydex (.080") needs to be taken into account. The female part is two thicknesses (.160") wider than the male part.

Sheath Stuff

Making this sheath got me thinking about things. For one, I don't like how these belt clips only have a single hole. It allows them to turn and that's no fun (so I added another hole and second rivet). Next was, "how do I make a better belt clip?"

Not Much Today...

...just a new knife:

A new Mini. Red C-Tek handles with G10 bolsters over black liners.

Riser Block

I believe I mentioned recently that I wanted to lift the column of my mill. The way to do this is a riser block. This mission has two outcomes: success or failure. Either it works perfectly, or I abandon ship. Progress so far:

Here is a dull picture of a block of aluminum. At this point the two sides have been decked and I've cut reference edges. I see no need to machine the entire block. It would be a waste of time to cut all the way around this block. Add to that the fact that my end mills aren't long enough anyway...and what you see is what you get.

Letr's Talk About Stirling Engines

Since I didn't do anything of note this evening, let's have a chat about Stirling engines. If you don't know what they are, then google one. They are pretty neat.

The one I am building is based on this design. The "Stirling 60."

I am making small changes and changing dimensions from metric to imperial on the fly. Just to add that extra bit of frustration that these projects need. I have neither the time nor the inclination to give a cut-by-cut write up on the construction. I'm a machinist and fabricator first. Writing this blog is just my way to let out the remaining creative energy. In other words, my time is dedicated to making and not writing (it shows, I know).

Cutting the cooling grooves for the power cylinder.

What A Weekend!

Yeesh. I'll tell you what, I work more at home than I do at work. If I got paid for all of this other stuff, I wouldn't need the day job. But hobbies are hobbies, and they rarely pay for themselves.

Friday was mostly spent doing secret squirrel stuff, and some work on my Stirling engine (we'll get to that eventually). Saturday meant working on my truck. Nearly 250,000 miles on it...it needs stuff. Then I drank beer and did stuff like cooking and more secret squirrel work.
Today was another story. I wanted to move the bikes out of the garage and do some cleaning. Set up the welder. Ya know, stuff every dude does on Sunday. Then I decided to fix the alternator on my chopper and shit got weird.

So...replacing the alternator turned into a full engine swap. It turns out that the key that drives the alternator decided to wipe out the crank shaft. A damaged crank means that the whole engine needs to come apart. Damn. The silver lining is that I have the engine from Organ Donor (the bike I crashed). I can swap that in and get back on the road while I rebuild kOOk's real motor. This is what she looks like right now. I'm at the point where I just need to pull two bolts and then get the motor out.

I'm Baaaaaack

Not that anyone is reading, but oh well.
Anyway, the day job is sending me away all of the time and I don't always have time to update. I have a rather involved project at the moment that I will add here soon. Tonight we're just going to talk about my new dividing head for the mill.

New dividing head. An infinitely useful fixture in a machine shop. Used for cutting gears, flutes, flats, hole patterns, and a host of other features.