Wow, this is highly informative, thanks for taking the time to put that much effort into your reply!

I expect the drums are probably fine as the squeaking only started very recently and only occurs at the very end of coming to a complete stop (it does not happen during otherwise normal brake usage).

The cost effectiveness that you have noted for a few different maintenance items really affirms my interest in this. My auto-dealer gives me free oil changes, but only under the condition that I stay with their service schedule. I know how easy and cheap it is to change out oil so while that might sound appealing to other people, it really is not for me because as you have shown, I could be saving much more money if I learned how to do the other kinds of maintenance myself.

I guess I can use whatever the dealer has on their service schedule as something to orient myself on what items I should go learn how to do, but I think something that would be handy in that regard would be to first learn how to diagnose what should be getting replaced or fixed.

As you noted, I can use calipers to check the brake drums to make a determination on replacement there, and the fact that I can hear the brakes beginning to squeak implies that the pads should be changed.

I wonder if there is a resource somewhere which has information on this specifically - just how to make these checks to make that determination on what should be done. Surely I know a few others. I know how to check if the oil is low, or the washer fluid etc, but would be really interested in other items like this, because for me I think it would be a really great jumping-off point.

Thanks!

Thank you, this is really informative!

Thanks for the recommendation!

Oh this is great! My vehicle is in there as well, thanks a lot!

True enough, thanks.

Thanks!

I can replace a flat fine, I understand how to use a jack and a torque wrench and have tangential knowledge regarding a little bit of mechanical engineering from a previous job.

The feeling I get is that auto work goes much much deeper though, and I am interested in resources that offer that knowledge.

Today on my win11 work system, the windows menu stopped producing output when I typed into it and webpages stopped loading. Had to perform a full system restart to get it to work again.

If I had a group or the time, I would definitely do so!

It’s nice for sure, but be sure to stock up on medical supplies if you get into it because it is pretty much inevitable you will cut yourself (sometimes fairly badly).

I keep good stock of a lot of sanitary cotton and medical tape (much more useful than a standard adhesive bandage when it comes to bandaging odd angles on your hands), alcohol, polysporin, and cyanoacrylate glue (super glue) - which I have had to use twice since I started playing around with hand carving.

The super glue helps for deep (but not wide) cuts to protect them while they heal and to hold them closed once you have a handle on the bleeding - if the cut is both wide and deep then I would still highly recommend getting a doctor to apply stitches, though thankfully I haven’t had to do that due to the hobby so far.

I got away without any injuries on this project though!

Thanks!

Thanks, and yes I found the paint was a necessity here. Because of how the grain runs and how the stain turned out - I saw that in spots like those finer flowers toward the tip, that the carving was kind of ‘washed out’ and hard to see the shape of, so the paint helps a lot.

Thanks! I made this from a poplar dowel which was large enough in diameter that when I purchased it at the hardware store it turned the heads of several employees who also asked this haha. The color is from stain however. For that I used Minwax Penetrating Stain (Dark Walnut 2716) which is an oil based stain.

I really want to find a good wood supplier locally because if I had a better choice I would have tried with real walnut. I would also love to work with maple or cherry (though some of these are hard to hand carve with because they are very hard woods). Poplar is relatively soft so it is nicer for hand carving.

Thanks! I had to buy a magnifying visor and some pin files for this project because while carving that out was pretty straightforward, sanding inside of the grooves etc there was not haha.

Maybe the answer is not to flash some obscure on life support operating system on your Google pixel but rather… maybe the answer is to work within the system and simply adjust privacy controls as allotted?

And when those controls are removed because most people went along with it and they were determined as a waste of development time by a corporate or government entity because people also give up on that then what? This is not an answer to anything, it’s complacency that will just erode privacy more and make the problem worse.

þ

Can I ask why you used this in place of “th” mostly but not always?

Three actually I think.

Oh haha, Gee whiz neighbor, I wish I could say different but I’m quite certain I would eat the lips clean off your head if I had to.

That’s not to say I would never consider doing that with some friends though.

When you have a new PC, put it on the old one too. You could run a Jellyfin server off it it or use it as a NAS device or something.

Well that’s not too bad honestly, so long as you know where you are to begin with. Thanks for testing!