Wednesday, July 8, 2026

One of my vices is vises, broken one

Seen on Marketplace. Rather disappointing for something that doesn't look very old or misused.. I expect this is shoddy material rather than misuse?


 

NR750 cutaway


 The oval piston street bike. Surely, one of the most exotic production vehicles of all time. Honda made 300 and I bet very few were ever ridden more than a few miles. Said to be the inspiration for the styling of the Ducati 916.

Monday, July 6, 2026

Stationary steam engine


 Look at those castings. No human included for scale but that's an impressive hunk of iron.

Blowing engine - Wikipedia 

Longines poster; The measure of time


Another great poster from the European art deco era of graphic design. 

Artist: René Bleuer

Sunday, July 5, 2026

Sidecar Sunday, missed opportunity


  Back in the 1980s when everyone was overreacting about the 3wheel ATCs, Missile Engineering offered a two wheel conversion kit to convert the machines into proper two wheelers. I never saw the kit back in the day, but to me an obvious project would be to utilize that now-underemployed third wheel to create a sidecar rig for the machine. A bit tongue-in-cheek perhaps, but I wonder if anyone ever did.




Drew discovered that Dirt Wheels tested the machine in 1989 and sent me this. Link here.
 


Sidecar Sunday



 

The Lockheed EC-121 Warning Star


 I found this picture of a Constellation with radomes in an old Popular Electronics magazine, figured it must have been an artist's rendition of someone's fantasy but nope, there are lots of better pictures online.
 The Navy actually ordered 142 of these aircraft and used them for all sorts of early warning duties over the years. They were in service from 1949 till the mid seventies with one remaining- on display at the National Museum of Naval Aviation in Pensacola.




Saturday, July 4, 2026

Lathe vs Milling machine


The message is clear, nerds run lathes but cool, tough guys run mills.

John Feirer and Earl Tetro,  Machine Tool Metalworking, McGraw-Hill, 1961