An Interesting Day

Today one of the first things I went to do was to use my calculator only to discover that the batteries were flat. I had a box of batteries, but as they were more than a year old I was not sure of which ones were good and which were not, so I got out my electrical test meter. When I turned this on I discovered that it gave me incorrect readings before it was even connected to anything. I then dug out a second electrical test meter only to discover that its batteries, which were the same as those used in the calculator, were also flat. A third test metre was dug out and proved to function for sufficiently long to check which batteries were good, before it too developed a fault. By this time I was getting very frustrated, but was able to get one test meter working properly and the calculator functioning. I decided that since I had a test instrument which was reliable and was working I had better fix the other two test meters, which I did, one had a faulty range switch and the other a bad connection. Quite pleased with myself regarding the results, I decided to spend the rest of the day fixing things, which had broken; in this household I need far more than one day to do that. However, my forty-year-old Angle Grinder had failed about a week and a half ago and I decided to repair it as I was sure that it was fundamentally still sound. Although it was a little dirty inside, it was still very easy to take apart and I quickly found the fault, which was relatively insignificant. However, far more important than the fault that had caused it to fail, was the fact that all of the rubber insulation on the wires had perished and gone brittle entailing a complete replacement for all of the interconnecting wires. I replaced the wiring to the field windings, using modern silicone rubber insulated wiring and heat shrink sleeving to cover the joints between the field windings and the new flexible wiring, re-varnishing at the field winding end to ensure that everything was watertight and fully insulated. Eventually everything was finished, but as the daylight was fading I decided to reassemble it in the morning.

Today’s picture is of the partially cleaned unit after it was initially stripped down.