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WARNING: This is quite a dangerous project if you don’t know what you’re doing. Take proper precautions if you decide to try this: never leave the stove unattended, plug it into a GFCI outlet, use proper wire connections, and use a cord of the proper gauge. Above all, USE COMMON SENSE; IF A SITUATION LOOKS…
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This Repair Café was held at the Museum of American Heritage. First, there was a DeLonghi EC702 espresso machine that wasn’t providing sufficient pressure to push the water through the coffee grounds. Unfortunately, the owner forgotten to bring the portafilter (filter basket), so we couldn’t confirm this; running the machine without the filter in place…
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Introduction There is a medicinal ointment popular in Hong Kong called 白花油 (“White Flower Oil”) that produces a cool, minty feeling when rubbed on the skin and is used as a pain and itch reliever. (A similar product called 风油精 (“Wind Oil Essence”) is used in Mainland China.) Interestingly, one of its main ingredients, which…
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Introduction and Rules 24 is a card game in which players try to use the basic arithmetic operations and each of four numbers exactly once to get the number 24. I play the game with my friends as follows: in each round, 4 cards are dealt face-up, and the first person to yell out a…
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Introduction I have some dirt,I have some sand.Uh! Green sand. I poured zinc,into the green sand,Uh! Sand casting. (The PPAP song went viral when I was in elementary school and the funny lyrics made an impression on me. So here we are.) My previous attempt at casting focused on casting a detailed model with no…
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Introduction This post describes a project I did in the past. It was the first project that I did more-or-less independently of parental encouragement, and I learned a lot of skills in the process. I’d say that this project is the precursor to all my other projects. At some point, my mom bought a wooden…
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This Fixit Clinic was held in the Hayward Library. It was a slow day, possibly because of the July 4th weekend travel rush. First, I watched other people fix a 50-year-old blender running loudly and slowly, even at the highest setting. It was a joy to take apart: a few hex-head self-tapping screws held the…
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I attended this event after taking a bit of a break from Repair Café/Fixit Clinic, which I enjoy and benefit from, in order to self-study two AP courses, which I dislike and… maybe benefit from. Anyhow, this event was at the Saratoga Library and there were a few high schoolers attending! First up was an…
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The other day, as a result of playing with gasoline, I got some second-degree burns. Eight years ago, in preparation for a backpacking trip to Sword Lake, my dad bought a 1-gallon can of Coleman Fuel (a petroleum distillate similar to gasoline but without the engine-performance-enhancing additives), to fuel his Coleman 442 pressure stove. After…
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Introduction For no reason at all, I decided one day to make one of those top-lit updraft (TLUD) wood gasifier stoves that are a common design for DIY small biomass-fueled stove projects. The design has been researched pretty extensively and is viewed as a promising stove design to replace dirty and smoky biomass stoves commonly…
