[Coco] CoCo Ethernet for $25-$30...

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 14 April 2013 21:26:41 Luis Antoniosi (CoCoDemus) did opine:

> when the mortgage ends that means one thing: YOU'RE OLD! :P
 
Chuckle, no use denying it, 78 ATM...  I don't think that makes me the 
senior member of this list, but on a lot of the lists I'm on, it sure does, 
so I'm the official old fart.  The thinker seems to be holding up better 
than the rest of me.

Today I got the rider out of the boat shed, jacked it up and put 2 new 
blades on it, put the tools away & sat to rest my back for a bit & let my 
burning legs recover too, then fired it back up and did what I can get to 
of our lot, filled it up and drove about a block to knock down another 
patch of almost flat stuff 30 feet wide & 120 or so feet long, that if we 
don't, turns into a copperhead sanctuary.  Verlin "Tap" Cooper on the 
corner across the road from it did do it fairly regular, but he died last 
year at 87, leaving me the oldest in the neighborhood, so I've taken to 
doing it if no one else does for a while.  One of those things that needs 
to be done, and I guess I elected me.

Put it away, closed all the gates and such, came in & sat for 15 minutes, 
then went to the shop to see how much trouble it was going to be to make a 
custom part I'd made for a black powder rifle, a bit stronger as I broke it 
yesterday on the 3rd shot of the test series, not because it was all that 
weak, but I was talking to another older gent, loaded it, put a 209 in it, 
and forgot to push my new "bolt" forward where it would have latched itself 
into the action, so when I pulled the trigger, it all went fwd in one 
piece, and when the primer fired, thats about a 600 lb slap backwards just 
from the ignition of the #209, which combined with a nipple that wasn't 
designed with vents in it like the OEM nipple has, meant the #209 served as 
a piston for about the first .2" of its rearward travel with possibly 
900-1000lbs of push till it cleared the nipple, but that imparted enough 
energy to the whole thing that it all went back far enough that had my 
finger not been holding the trigger down, would have re-cocked it.  That 
rearward motion was attempted to be stopped by a pair of hardened 0-80 cap 
screws that were holding the little brass cocking handle on the latching 
bar, so they sheared and the handle wound up on the shooting bench about 6" 
away, and I never did find the remains of the #209.

The latch bar I made had a single, soft, 0-80 screw which served as the 
stress point when I pulled back on the handle to cock it, and that also 
broke in the almost excitement.  So this evening I cut a T at the head of 
the slot in the bolt that this latch rides in, then made a new bar with a T 
head on one end which will be about 50 times stronger than the 0-80 bolt 
ever was.

And I need to make an unlatched? won't fire safety of some sort because 
mistakes like that are exactly like cement cracking, its not if, but when 
will I get distracted and do it again? :(

So the new bar is about 1/2 made, needs trimmed to exact length yet, 
assembled, witness marks made on it with a sharp knife, and the 2 tapped 
0-80 holes for attaching the cocking handle have yet to be done.  Not much 
I can do about that, that handle must be removable else the rest of it 
cannot be disassembled.

And that was my day, only half a days work for a younger person.

As for the paid for part, when Dee & I said our I Do's, and I got the child 
support out of the way, I looked at her mortgage, which she would still be 
paying on at 73, her age now, and said we're in the money with both of us 
working so lets see if we can fix this time bomb.  I hit the local banks 
and one of them offered me about 2.5% less interest, and with nominally 
double the payment, 7 years to payoff. Done in a New York second needless 
to say.  So its been paid in full for about 15 years now.  Smartest thing I 
ever did money-wise.

That of course is not the end of the story unless its the end of me, and I 
managed to wake up this morning, and I hope to do it again tomorrow 
morning.

Cheers, Gene
-- 
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