Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Lesson Learned - 2/5/13

For a stuck tenon-and-socket joint, cold seems to be the best tool for easing separation. The parts usually seize when they're hot from friction, and in some cases just letting them sit and cool off for a few minutes allows things to contract enough that they'll come apart. But when that's not sufficient, cooling the joint in some way - in today's case I used ice on a sax neck socket - makes the parts contract to the point that they come separate much more easily. On the joint I was working today, almost an hour of flexing and wobbling did nothing to separate the tenon and socket. But after icing the socket for 10 minutes, I was able to wobble the tenon out in just a few seconds. In future, cold will be my go-to resource in that situation.

On a totally arbitrary and unrelated note, I learned that if you're chipping ice out of a mini-fridge that needs to be defrosted, you should be careful not to puncture the little piece of bent metal that forms the wall of the freezer, because there's Freon flowing through it and a hole will allow that Freon to escape, meaning that the fridge can no longer cool itself and just becomes a box that you plug in to the wall and sucks up power. Also, all the remaining ice that you didn't chip out because you were afraid of the Freon gas poisoning you/turning you into Mr. Freeze will start to melt and make a god-awful mess on the countertop. Like I say, that's just a completely arbitrary tangent that popped into my head for no specific reason and definitely didn't happen today.