Install Lighting at the Recycling Facility at Leinster Marts

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Just an idea so we don't end up stepping on broken-bottle ends at night, which I've seen every so often. I usually bring a torch, but safety shoes with steel insoles would be advised. Getting ESB Networks to install an electrical supply for lighting always seems to be a hassle and costly, as we saw recently when a pedestrian crossing was installed, so maybe lights could be solar powered and on sensors? They'd only need to turn on intermittently, so average power use would be low and therefore solar panels for powering the system wouldn't have to be large. In fact, a sensor could be mounted on the nearest light to the gate to control a string of maybe three streetlamps.

Edit: Grok made the image, so send the Grammar Police to them if you're concerned about spelling.

Bad Water Quality In Kilcullen

AI image created by Grok for illustrative purposes.

Am I the only one who is experiencing corrosion of aluminium fittings because of the excessive lime in the water? Lime builds up in lumps, these act as sponges, holding water in contact with metal. Chlorine in water can make it acidic or alkaline and fluorine in the water also makes it acidic. The result is pitting damage on for example the frame members of showers.
Maybe it's time to lobby Uisce Éireann again? They say water quality is to recommended standards, but I have my doubts. It may be safe to drink, but it's obviously causing problems. Have there been any changes at the water treatment plant at Srowland, Athy to improve water quality since this article in the Kilcullen Diary in 2022?

Saw Setting and Yield Strength

© Eugene Brennan

 

My bow saw blade is years old. I've cut up loads of logs and full trees with it and I sharpen it every so often (an extremely boring and tedious job, because there's probably over a hundred edges to do.) However, it was binding, because I reckoned, the faces of the teeth were worn and there was no kerf remaining. The teeth of a saw blade are alternately set to the left and right, so that they point slightly away from the blade. This gives the saw a kerf, making the width of the cut wider than the body of the blade behind the teeth so the blade doesn't bind. Without a kerf, a blade would stick in damp timber. I used a saw set tool on the blade (one of several old hand tools belonging to my grandfather) and it's working beautifully now, no problem cutting logs up to 5" thick. (Handier than taking out the chainsaw and good for upper body exercise.)

I tried using a saw set on a carpenter's hand saw once and it broke one of the teeth. So I'm wondering can only some modern saws/saw blades be used with a saw set because the teeth are so hard and the ultimate strength of the steel isn't much higher than the yield strength. I.e. once the elastic limit is reached, teeth don't deform plastically and just break? The engineering aspect of this post is that materials have a yield strength which is the max strain they can undergo elastically without permanent deformation. After that they deform plastically and don't spring back into shape. The ultimate strength, measured in units of newtons per square metre or pascals (a pressure measurement) is the point at which a material will fracture.

Parish Centre Windows and Lawn Mower Decks

A counterbalance used to balance a lever. These are often seen on road barriers where one end of the lever is much shorter than the other end. © Eugene Brennan

Standing at the side of the parish church this morning, collecting for the SVP, I noticed the parish centre still has sash windows. I’m not sure whether these are the original ones; I would have thought they’d have rotted away by now. So maybe some or all of them are timber replacements. As six-year-olds in Sr Brendan's senior infants or "high infants" as we called it, one of the chores that was sought after was being allowed to sweep the leaves on the lane up to the playing field, where the Millstream Court houses are now located. The other was being given the job of opening or closing the sash windows in the classroom. In our young minds, either of these tasks gave us a sense of being very important people.

ESB Networks Account

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Did you know, you can register for an ESB Networks account that allows you to access lots of information about the electricity usage logged by your smart meter, irrespective of which supplier you're with? The details are more comprehensive than those provided by electricity providers. Also, meter readings are shown and it's possible to download a comma separated values (CSV) file that contains meter readings which can be read by spreadsheet software such as Excel. Time and date-stamped daily readings are provided, with a precision of two decimal places. I switched to SSE Airtricity recently and was annoyed to discover that their bills don't show meter readings, just usage. So there's no way to double check whether the figure they quote tallies with meter readings.

Artemis II On Schedule

Artemis II crew. Image credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

The Artemis I mission, launched in 2022, involved sending an uncrewed Orion spacecraft into orbit around the Moon and bringing it back to Earth. Artemis II will be a crewed mission, launching four astronauts into a free-return orbit around the Moon and back to Earth, the first time humans will have been in lunar orbit since 1972. The mission had been delayed until September 2026 due to technical problems, but has now been brought forward to April of next year or possibly earlier. NASA's Orion spacecraft comprising of a command and service module sits on top of the unimaginatively-named Space Launch System (SLS), the equivalent of the Saturn V rocket used for the Apollo program. The 8.4 m (27.6 ft) diameter, 98 m (322 ft) tall SLS is a two-and-a-half-stage rocket, powered by engines that burn liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, assisted by two solid rocket boosters.