{"id":40355,"date":"2022-10-12T14:44:28","date_gmt":"2022-10-12T21:44:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/?p=40355"},"modified":"2022-10-12T14:44:31","modified_gmt":"2022-10-12T21:44:31","slug":"how-to-restore-yellowed-clear-plastic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/how-to-restore-yellowed-clear-plastic\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Restore Yellowed Clear Plastic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Gareth\u2019s Tips, Tools, and Shop Tales is published by Cool Tools Lab. To receive the newsletter a week early, sign up\u00a0here.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I got a phenomenal response to my request for input on this newsletter. Thanks to all who messaged me. Turns out, an overwhelming number of you like the newsletter the way it is and simply offered encouragement. I also got several excellent suggestions for new features which I\u2019ll be rolling out in the coming weeks. Keep\u00a0those cards and letters<\/a>\u00a0coming!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How to Restore Yellowed Clear Plastic<\/strong><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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In this quick Tested video<\/a>, Adam Savage<\/strong> sets out to restore the lid of a gorgeous vintage Nagra IV-S audio recorder he recently acquired. The machine is in surprisingly good condition, but the clear plastic cover was scratched and badly yellowed. Doing research, he found many recommendations for using 12% hydrogen peroxide. He tried it with partial success. He discovered that finishing it up with plastic polishing compound returned it to something close it is original glory.<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Making a Cheap, Simple Air Cleaner for a Small Shop<\/strong><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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In this I Build It<\/em> video<\/a>, John<\/strong> shows how he made a simple and inexpensive air cleaner for his small woodshop. The air cleaner was made from little more than a small fan, a piece of duct piping, some scrap ply, and a several shop vac air filters<\/a>. I love the way it can be expanded (with additional filters) via a threaded rod that holds the filters in place.<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
IKEA Wrenches on Your Pegboard<\/strong><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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I just discovered a use for all of those hex wrenches that come with IKEA and other flat-pack furniture. They make perfect pegboard pegs!<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Oil Can!<\/strong><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"TheThe tin man in dire need of maintenance.<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
The other day, while oiling a squeaky hinge with some lithium grease<\/a>, I flashed on my granddad. A consummate tinkerer and inventor, Gramps<\/strong> was obsessed with maintenance. He frequently had his spring-bottom oiler<\/a> in hand, blue shop rag tangling from his back pocket, going around the house, the yard, his backyard workshop, the car, lovingly maintaining the machinery of his life. I decided in that moment to try and be better at doing the same. Moments later, on Twitter<\/em>, I saw this Kurt Vonnegut<\/strong> quote: \u201cAnother flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.\u201d Exactly. OIL CAN!<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Maker Slang<\/strong><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Slang, jargon, and technical terms for the realms of making things.<\/em><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Crown pulley \u2013\u00a0<\/strong>A pulley design\u00a0<\/strong>where the center has a larger diameter than the outer edges, thus a \u201ccrown.\u201d Perhaps counter-intuitively, the belt on the pulley will always seek the area of highest tension, returning it to the crown. Via\u00a0Maker Update<\/a>.

Promptcrafting<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 In AI art, it\u2019s all about the quality of the prompts you craft. The better your invocation, the better the magic that gets returned.

Rewilding your attention<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 Writer\u00a0Clive Thompson<\/strong>\u00a0has been\u00a0promoting<\/a>\u00a0the creative benefits of exposing yourself to the novel, the offbeat, the serendipitous. Look beyond what the online algorithms feed you \u2013 rewild your attention!<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Shop Talk<\/strong><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
As stated in the intro, I received many fabulous emails from you, dear readers. Here is one from <\/em>Paul Cryan<\/em><\/strong>. Look for some tips from Paul in a coming issue!<\/em><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThanks for doing all you do. Your tip books [Ed:\u00a0Vol 1<\/a>,\u00a0Vol 2<\/a>.] are great and I\u2019m really enjoying the newsletter. I bought and devoured both of your books, in Kindle and PDF formats. I refer to them often and having the search function (via either the Kindle app or iBooks, respectively) is really handy. Every few days, I find myself looking at objects in new ways and going back to your references. This past Friday, I didn\u2019t have a clamp within getting-up-from-my-chair distance at my office desk, so I ended up using a pair of pliers and a rubber band to hold together a plastic part I was gluing. Thanks for putting that seed in my head.

“The only problem I have with the weekly newsletter is that it gives me way too many things to think about and try per unit of time!

“With your tips books, I\u2019ve got months to read through them and try things out. This week, I experimented with the lanolin mineral oil mixture to rustproof tools out of your latest tips book and it seems to hold much more promise than Johnson\u2019s Paste Wax for keeping my old restored Shopsmiths looking and working great. I still need to test whether the stickiness can be buffed sufficiently off the power-tool surfaces to avoid particles grabbing, but so far so good. And who doesn\u2019t like that faint smell of ungulates on their metal? \ud83d\ude09

“With the newsletter, I\u2019m interested in just about everything you cover, which leads me to a weekly frenzy of investigation and implementation. Within the past month I\u2019ve upgraded our broken sink strainers to the\u00a0OXO type<\/a>\u00a0(love them), picked up a\u00a0Williams ratcheting screwdriver<\/a>\u00a0(my new favorite \u2018good enough\u2019 tool), and bought\u00a0Fat Boy pencils<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0FastCap markers<\/a>\u00a0that have me wondering how I didn\u2019t know about these things before. And now I\u2019m\u00a0browsing saw blades<\/a>!\u201d<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gareth’s Tips, Tools, and Shop Tales – Issue #135<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":40356,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[2371],"tags":[2372],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40355"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40355"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40357,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40355\/revisions\/40357"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}