Reverse Shopping

During lock-down it became impossible to perform my regular routine of ‘Reverse Shopping’, bringing unused items to the local thrift shops or bring old tools to the Gered Gereedschap https://www.geredgereedschap.nl/ collection bin. (Tools for Self Reliance https://www.tfsr.org/). Only online sales via our local Ebay variant Marktplaats.nl were possible to some extent.

The Thrift shop around the corner actually closed down and did not reopen after lock down. They seem to have consolidated to having only one shop in the city center. Also the bins for Gered Gereedschap probably could not handle the clean-up and DIY craze of the last months. So they closed them temporarily, but luckily recently they opened again!

For unsold books, I found another nice way to ‘Reverse Shop’. A system of small libraries called MiniBieb https://minibieb.nl/
Just leave your book in one of those! (but please don’t dump totally useless books like readers digest there...)

the MiniBieb where I left JPod and some Suske & Wiske comics

This MiniBieb along the cycle path I could not find on the map on minibieb.nl. The owner contacted me via Marktplaats for some comics I had up for grabs. And it just happened to be located on only a small detour to my cycle route to work! Nice!

Creating space like this probably gives me an excuse to buy some more bicycle tools...

Comments

ADR modules part 2, to recap or not?

Electrolytic capacitors have a wet dielectric which degrades with age and temperature. As a result the extremely thin oxide layers may become less isolating when stored over decades. Either the capacitor shorts or opens at some point, or just doesn't perform as good when it was new. Re-capping is the usual procedure to replace (all) electrolytic caps in restoring old audio equipment. The most common coupling capacitor value in these modules is 15uF / 40V. These smaller values might be replaceable with solid foil capacitors, though it largely depends on the space on the circuit board if this is possible and the cost involved. High-end audio nut cases (no relation to this blog) may spend top dollar/euro/yen on such things. Here it just has to be in line with the actual value of these units. So we will only use foil if the costs are limited. Otherwise just stick to cheap but good quality electrolytic caps. The likes of Nichicon, Panasonic, Vishay. Vishay bought a lot of the old Eur

ADR modules part 1

This is a restoration project I’ve been procrastinating around since about 2015. This will be quite some work, but then if one doesn’t start at least it will not happen at all. This will be a step by step project, and see how far we get with this Kaizen like approach. So first a short intro of the four audio modules made by Audio & Design (Recording) Ltd, in the mid 70s based in Shinfield Green, Reading, Berkshire UK. The company still exists to this date and is still active in pro-audio and is now in a different location but still in Reading. These modules can be dated to the mid 1970s, more precisely found the E900 Equaliser unit quality checklists to be dated 12 November 1976. There are two E900 equaliser modules, and two F760N Compressor/Limiters. A picture of the now dismantled mixing desk with the four modules. The mixing desk was in a quite dusty and sorry state. The desk was too space consuming and heavy to keep and many other parts were sold as separate items.

Kruishout - Marking/Scratch Gauge

And Now for Something Completely Different: the kruishout (Dutch), or you might know it as a marking or scratch gauge. This is an essential measurement tool in woodworking! Note the sharp needle or point on the left side of the beam. This is used to scratch a line in the wood. This specific one was from my grandfather. He was a carpenter specialised in making ship interiors. Carpenters can own multiple of these gauges on a project, so they only need to set them to a specific size and have less work re-adjusting constantly. Some variations may even use the tip of a knifeblade to actually cut a deeper line, e.g. when the grain is too strong to make a proper straight line. Or to actually cut very even widths of veneer. The Japanese or Chinese variants seem to use the knife tips. I’m not so much into woodworking at the moment, but this surely is a keeper! It’s also fairly easy to make some of your own. If you know a special use of this tool other than most uses shown on youtube, please

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