Thursday, July 23, 2015

Leaky toilet update

Operating on the premise that for certain subjects less information is better, I will skip right to the money shot.

My understanding is that it is illegal to attempt to pass defaced currency/coinage as legal tender.  These washers will never be used as currency again.
Brass bolt, chrome plate brass nut, steel washer:  Bad combination.

The washer (example on the left) corroded due to being the galvanic loser in the battery.  After it lost enough thickness, it simply pulled through the hole in the bottom of the stool.  The stool tipped when the user reached for the paper.  The seal was broken.  As Forrest Gump once said, "Shit happens."

The fix was to find some disks of a more suitable metal from a galvanic perspective.  I found some suitable washer blanks that were 24.2mm in diameter and approximately 1.7mm thick of an exotic cupronickle-copper laminate.  They cost twenty-five cents each.  The problem was that I needed to drill holes in them to accommodate the 1/4 inch bolt.

I was not able to find my Ni-MH battery powered drill motor, so I used my nitrocellulose powered drill.  The holes are approximately 7.92mm in diameter.

One of the watersheds between hoplophobes and people like me is that hoplophobes looks at a gun or a knife and sees a pile of corpses as the only inevitable outcome.   Folks like me look at a gun or a knife and see a tool for making holes or a tool for cutting a useable length of twine from a 3000 foot spool of baling twine.

I thank God that I live in a place where I can discharge a firearm a couple of times without generating 9-1-1 calls from my neighbors.

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