Rants
...and the occasional Rave when I'm in a good mood! [Rants Home]

Have you ever put a panel together and had problems doing so because the glass pieces were not even or level with the others.  Simple solution, you know all that loose change you get in your laundry; use it.  Just place a penny under the shorter piece and it will bring it up to level with the others. You can use pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters depending upon how much height you need.  Talking about the power of money! Another thing you can use are washers.

I have been doing stained glass for well over 20 years now and there seems to be an on going debate on how to clean and maintain the tip of soldering irons. After doing some research on this process and talking with numerous people I’m sure that this debate will go on for years to come. With that in mind, over the past couple of weeks I have been in contact with several manufactures of soldering equipment to see what they recommend in the maintenance of their soldering irons. I was told everything from using a special paste that only this or that manufacture had, to using the age old tradition of the Sal-Ammoniac block. Through it all the one main theme that did seem to be a consistent item was that you should always be wiping the tip of your iron over a damp sponge after each use.

The big debate was what to do when the tip was now full of gunk that the sponge was no longer removing and the tip is not soldering well. How do you re-tin the tip? Most tips today are a copper core with a few microns of iron placed over the copper and then the tips are etched and a layer of tin placed over the iron and copper. That tined area is only the last portion of the entire tip, the last fractions of inches and what seems to be the most important part of the tip cleaning is just that “the tip” the working end of the iron.

Here is what we found and are doing with our tips and seem to be having relative good success with the process. Take your iron and heat it up to only about 300ºF, use your rheostat if needed, the object is not to get the iron real hot, just hot enough to melt solder. Once your iron is hot, dip only the tip into Nokorode paste flux or FS-100 from Hakko immediately wiped the tip on a damp sponge. Look at the tip and repeat if necessary. After you have done that process once or twice take some 60/40 solder and melt it on the newly cleaned tip, unplug and let it cool off.

It is important to note that this process is not something that you are doing each and every day, but rather something you are doing when the tip is no longer doing what it is suppose to do and the tip is filled with gunk.

We like this method better than the Sal-Ammoniac block for a couple of reasons. There seemed to be less smoke given off which is a bonus, the process was quicker and the tips seem to be cleaner. Again, these are just our opinions, but seem to be working rather well on all our irons, sixteen of them to be exact, everything from Weller, Hakko, Hexacon and others.

OK, I’ve had several of you ask about placing your newly made stained glass window into an existing opening that already has glass in it. Not a problem! The main thing you have to remember is that you need to generate an area between your window and the existing window to allow air to move through that space. Should you seal it tight you will more than likely have moisture build up between those windows and that will cause damage to the windows and frames.

A fast and easy way to do this is with Designer Glass Clips. These clips are a clear plastic and are extremely easy to install in front of dual or single glazed windows. They will not affect the integrity of the existing glass because they are fastened to the trim and not the window. When installed they will form an approximately 1/8” air space which will allow air to circulate thus eliminating moisture and heat build up. And if you don’t like looking at the plastic they can be trimmed out with wood and then stained or painted to match your existing trim.

My son sent this to me. How true!

“I thought English lunch was difficult. Read to the end…a new twist to an oldie.

Can you read these right the first time?

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce.
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4) We must polish the Polish furniture.
5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to
present the present.
A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10) I did not object to the object.
11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row .
13) They were too close to the door to close it.
14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Let’s face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren’t invented in England or French fries in France.
Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren’t sweet, or meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don’t fing, grocers don’t groce and hammers don’t ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn’t the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese?

One index, 2 indices? Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.

There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is “UP.” It’s easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP ? At a meeting, why does a topic come UP? Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a
report ?

We call UP our friends. And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver, we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car. At other times the little word has real special meaning. People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses. To be dressed is one thing but to be dressed UP is special.

And this UP is confusing: A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP . We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night.

We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP! To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions. If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don’t give UP , you may wind UP with a hundred or more. When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP. When the sun comes out
we say it is clearing UP .

When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP. When it doesn’t rain for awhile, things dry UP . One could go on and on, but I’ll wrap it UP , for now my time is UP, so……….. Time to shut UP…..!”

As native speakers we forget how confusing a language it can be!

 With all the goings on in our government I was wondering, If pro is the opposite of con, is progress the opposite of congress?

We want to thank all off you for your kind patience as we try and get our new website and E-Commerce business up and running. It is taking a little longer than we anticipated, but it will be well worth the wait. I got to tell ya though; I can not believe how much works goes into putting a quality e-business together. I know for a fact if it was just me doing it I would be hanging by a noose in the rafters by now. Tom from TC Kopke, Inc. out of Jacksonville Florida has been working his you know what off putting our site together! Here’s to you Tom, Thank YOU!

I love my German family and I have to say that I am very proud to be of German descent, but you have to watch this short clip its great! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rD4roXEY8hk

This says a lot! Think about it.