Hot, semi-hot, and neutral

[infryq]

Yesterday P helped me bench-test the electrics for the White. I took the motor and lamp of the body of the machine, put that assembly and the power and speed control assembly on a tray, and took it all out to the back porch. We set up a surge protector on a GFCI outlet, had a fire extinguisher ready, and talked through the test protocol — turn on the surge protector, test the lamp switch, test the main power switch, test the speed controller. One-handed operations only for all humans involved. We clamped all potentially moving parts to the porch railing, then went for it. Good news is nothing caught fire or sparked or made threatening noises, and the lamp works perfectly. Bad news is the speed controller mechanism turns the knob the wrong direction, so the “off” position is actually full speed and the “full throttle” position is... less so, but still probably too fast. It’s unloaded of course, but I’ll need to plan to adjust the little minimum speed set pot on the speed controller while everything is hooked up to the machine, which may be tricky to arrange. At least we know the electrics are excellent, so we won’t need quite the fanfare next time. I took everything back to my work table, took the speed controller off the gearbox, and started playing with some spare gears to see if I could fit everything in the same enclosure without screwing up the clearances. I looks like I can, especially if I adjust the length of the linkage bar to the knee lever. I marked all the new holes and left it there.

Crossword after lunch, scrabble after dinner (663, one bingo, didn’t draw the Q until there were too few tiles in the bag for exchanges, and one of us had all the vowels and the other had all the consonants). I finished season one of A Discovery Of Witches, and it looks like they want a subscription to a whole-ass new streaming service to get at season two, so I’m sulking for a bit. Rag And Bone is cleaning up the denouement. I dreamt of being on the Board of Directors for a college, but being too tired to stay awake through meetings; also something about a bad-ass cashier with excellent aim and some kind of floating produce section that required you to toss ping pong balls at them.

I was supposed to roast more beans, but didn’t get started until 3, and gave up and fridged them. This batch will be split butter beans, which I got as a possible alternative to favas.