Radiola

 

A friend asked me to look at their radio. The radio was a present from their father for doing well at high school exams, but it no longer worked.

The radio is an AWA Radiola model B24Z first made in 1964. The original power supply was an Eveready 9 volt battery (type 2362), and is no longer available. I tested the radio with a modern 9 volt alkaline battery (6LR61) and it worked very well. So I replaced the battery connectors with new 9 volt snap connectors, I added a cardboard holder for the new battery as it was considerably smaller than the original and I installed the new battery.

These radios have great reception with a five inch ferrite rod antenna internal shielding and an all metal front face. They are a great collectable radio.

So the radio from 1964 - 57 years ago - works very well. I wonder if anything else that man purchased in 1964 is still in working order.

Tightening my Belt

 

I have lost some weight and my circumference is less than before.

Consequently I have use a hollow punch to allow my belt to tighten a bit extra.

Measuring Tape

 

As a boy I watched my grandfather use his tape measure - it has a big red button to retract the tape. 

The tape measure was recently given to me. The first foot had a lot of damage and it was hard to use. It also lacked metric markings.

When I looked for a replacement tape blade I found that The Evan's measuring tape was a well loved artifact and is even collected by enthusiasts. Replacement blades were expensive and with freight some offered prices were over $100. And none of the replacement blades were metric.

Instead I purchased a 2 metre metric tape measure with the same blade width for less than $6 from my favourite hardware warehouse. Then I transferred the measuring blade from the new tape measure to the Evan's tape measure.

For curiosity, I disassembled the Evan's tape measure and it is in perfect condition internally - no wonder people collect them.

The tape measure is now ready for another 50 years service.

I also note that the Evan's tape measure has no plastic components and  the $6 tape measure is plastic except the spring and the measuring blade.

Wax on

As I wandered through my favourite hardware warehouse, I saw a product new to me - food safe wax.

I have now waxed all the cutting boards in the kitchen and in the caravan.

They were all looking very pale and worn out and they were starting to crack. they look much better now.

 

Down to Earth

 Op shopping I also found Down to Earth by Rhonda Hetzel (ISBN 978-0-670-07592-8, 2012). She is also from South-east Queensland.

So far I've only read five chapters but it is engaging, and she has a recipe for making soap. Her theme is simple living and it is from the view of a retiree.

She also has a blog https://down---to---earth.blogspot.com/

Canali

 

Like Mars, my home is is covered with canali.

My home is on a slight slope and water flowed from the neighbours house under mine then to the shed (flooding it) and out the back corner of my property.

Formerly in the wet season the doors within my home would stick. I guessed that the moisture around the house stumps was lifting the house and so the doors were no longer swinging true.

My solution was to under take civil engineering works steering water away from under the house and guiding it passed the shed. 

I built embankments to gather the water from the neighbours yard and steer it to the backyard. I also built a Grand Canal under the house for the times of heavy rainfall to take overflow from the embankment directly from the high side of the house directly to the low side without pooling.

Investigating the shed, I found an old trench across the front to divert water. So I cleaned this out and reinstated it. I added a weather strip to the shed door to keep the water out.

The doors no longer stick in the wet season. And the shed flooding is minimal.

If it works...

When on holiday, the caravan mixer tap became stiff and was difficult to turn on and off. Armed with my plumbing tools I prepared to disassemble the tap and investigate the cause. I turned off the water pump. I turned on the tap to release the pressure and turned it off again - it was easy to operate. I checked again with the water pump on -it was working fine.

I put my tools away. There is an engineering rule I learned as as a student - If it works don't fix it.

Radio Fix

My emergency AM/FM radio went silent, it was only 20 years old. It was a Sanyo which I thought was a good brand. It runs on three D cells and so lasts a long long time on battery power.

I opened it up. I did not find any leaking capacitors or burnt tracks. When I plugged in an ear phone it worked.

I guessed that the speaker was faulty. I found a replacement speaker at Jaycar for $4.95. After installing a new speaker it was working again.

Sealed in

My home is air conditioned. It never used to be and I love a a high speed fan for feeling cool. But the air conditioning is installed now and I makes sleeping through the night very easy.

To assuage my conscience I have sealed all the external and internal doors so that the heat does not leak in. It was a tough job.-
1) All the internal doors had large gaps at the bottom because the house was once carpeted. Now the floors are polished hardwood.
2) Not all the doors shut
3) The floors are not even.

For the external doors I installed weather strips at the bottom so this stopped rain blowing in (a job that has been on my list a while) as well as stopping warm air blowing in. I added rubber seals around the frame.

The internal doors had to be taken down and have coverstrips added onto the bottom to restore their length then nylon brush seals were added. The brushes were able to cope with the changing floor floor levels as the door swung open and closed. I also shaved the doors to fit the door frames and repositioned the locks so the the doors actually shut.

A surprise was the amount of warm air blowing into the house under the toilet door - the toilet is permanently naturally ventilated with fixed louvres.

Since sealing the doors I have adjusted the air conditioner - it does not have to work so hard.

And I still use a high speed fan to cool down fast.

Colour under the sun.

I chose the exterior colours of my house from the Colorbond range - this means that they can be matched by different manufacturers and that they are fade resistant. For example the facia could match the gutters.

My Colorbond  palette is:
Pale Eucalypt
Headland
Ironstone
Surfmist

and the windows are gloss white.

I was helping a friend paint his house recently. One  of his colours was Colorbond Pale Eucalypt. There was plenty left over - so if I need some paint in the future I might be able to buy his left over stock.

Colour confidence

The current fashion is definitely for all interior walls to be white. Its what you see on architecture shows on TV and in apartments on real estate websites. White on white on white - no offence and no personality.

I prefer colour on the walls.

I found a book in the library Colour Now by Kevin McCloud (2009, ISBN 978-1-84949-219-5). It has lots of complex colour combinations. To translate the colours into an obtainable paint colour I took the book to Bunnings and asked for the full Dulux Colour book I then compared the colours to select the Dulux equivalent. The paint desk at Bunnings had some natural light which helped getting the colours right.

The combinations in the the book gave me confidence to be bold.