welcome to smoke season, eastern north america

OKAY if you’re out east welcome to smoke season, I’m sorry, I’m seeing numbers out of New York City which are “Spokane surrounded by wildfires” bad, and that’s some bad, bad, bad shit.

The number you need to pay the most attention to is 2.5nm particles. Here’s what you need to build, fortunately it is easy and not expensive and it is MUCH BETTER than any casual filter you’ll buy of Amazon. You’ll need to replace the filter elements once a year or less even assuming a three-month fire season.

Those KF94 and N95 masks you were wearing for COVID? I hope you didn’t throw them out, because 1) COVID is still happening and long Covid is extremely nasty, 2) worn properly, they work GREAT on this kind of smoke.

This will be a recurring feature of your summers now. Not every year, but every couple, and not always this bad, but more than once this bad. Be ready.

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so i have these old boeing surplus c-clamps

Once upon a time, everybody shopped at Boeing Surplus. Not everybody everybody, obviously, but, you know. Everybody. Amongst the other things they were good for that you might not expect were gardening gloves, because they’d give up on welding gloves long before they were actually worn out for most purposes – sometimes even for welding – and they went so far down in size it was delightful. Even I could find gloves that fit, and I wear a women’s small.

Then the whole McDonald-Douglass merger happened and everything went to shit at the Lazy B, including the closure of Boeing Surplus, about which I am still a little angry. And that’s all a long way of saying that’s how I have a few C clamps from Boeing Surplus that I’ve had for just ages, all three of which pretty scuzzy and in need of care, one of which was not just that but also bent up in a few different ways. But had an typically deep throat so I’ve been using it anyway.

Sadly I don’t have any “before” pictures – I’m real bad at that. But I’ll show you one from after first-wire-brush cleaning just because I figured out a neat way to protect threads in a screw that I’m gonna need to hammer straight again. It’s not really a “before” picture either, though maybe you can see some of the bent bits:

C-clamp screw with threads filled with wire wrap, protecting the threads from the result of hammer/mallet impacts.

That worked pretty well. This is after a good scrub, and again, I have no real “before” pictures.

But here, this might give you some idea:

In the photos below you’ll clearly see the maker logo, reading “Pony.”

I didn’t know that was there. I knew something was there, and I kind of suspected it was a maker’s mark, but it was not legible. I thought it had been worn down too much to read. “Made in USA” was legible, and the model number on the other side was legible. But “Pony” wasn’t.

So with that in mind:

“Pony” model 246 deep throated C-clamp, repaired, restored, blued, brand side up

That Pony logo is not particularly subtle – I mean, it’s not screaming in your face, but it’s not exactly hidden either. And yet.

These pics are taken after straightening everything I could, filing away all the casting seams, cleaning with wire-wheel on my drill press, sanding (a lot), a little more filing, more cleaning, more sanding, and finally bluing.

The clamp works much better now. It worked before, but it’s less stupid. It’s not completely not stupid, because there’s a factory defect! The hole they tapped for the clamping screw isn’t done right, and is off-centre, so the screw doesn’t line up right with the clamp base. It’s close enough, barely, I guess, but very annoying, and you wouldn’t see it on modern equipment. If I was more determined and had more tools and knowledge, I could re-do it – it’s the kind of problem I Make A New One would solve by filling it in with welding material, then re-tapping th ehole.

But I’m not him. Also I don’t have welding kit. Or patience with that nonsense. I’m just pleased I made it not bent and not scuzzy.

Here’s the other side:

“Pony” model 246 deep throated C-clamp, repaired, restored, blued, model number side up

It’s so smooth now. No, really, where you actually hold it. All that filing and sanding was on the edges and it’s just so smooooooooooooooth.

Photo taken before bluing but after all other repairs and filing and sanding and stuff, edge-of-clamp facing up. So smooth.

Those edges used to have not-rounded spots, and the casting seam sticking out, and a bunch of factory cutting marks where it got cut out of the mould I guess, and a lot more abrasive spots like that. Now it has basically none of those and it’s so, so smooth. xD

I wasn’t sure whether I was supposed to blue it or not, honestly didn’t know, but I think this un-blued photo shows that was the right call.

Anyway, it’s nice now. It used to be kinda suck particularly because spinning the screw would work fine, then get jerky and sticky and weird where you hit the bend points, and the crossbar was broken and annoying and would get stuck, and now, not only is none of that true, it actually feels nice in your hand.

Which is as good a time as any to recommend My Mechanics (“I Make A New One” guy whose youtube name I finally looked up) as his use of hand files is definitely worthy of study, and an actual good use of video on the internet. I’ve learned a lot from watching him work.

Anyway, well worth the time. I’m glad I did it.

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