This weekend I was able to add Fire to the Ruben's Tube!
It all started Saturday... but first, darn, I need to read about a zillion pages of World Civilizations. Interesting stuff, so it's hard to read fast.
By about 11:30pm Saturday, I decided I wasn't going to finish my chapters, so I put the book down and get ready to go to the Taiji graduation and new year's party... I promised, so I had to go.
That was fun, and I got the first food of the day into me. Home, and then I can go to the shop to assemble the Ruben's Tube. Oh, but first, we need to move that gravel.
So I shoveled and barrowed a cubic yard of gravel out into the back yard path, while Marla valiantly hacked the rose bushes down (er, trimmed them). Whew. And now I needed to finish the path with mulch -- so the pattern from the house to the fence is gravel, mulch, grass, mulch (and not gravel, gravel, grass, mulch). It's more artistic this way.
Oh goodness it's getting late now. NOW I get to assemble the Ruben's Tube. I test fit all the pieces, smear them with silicon, put them together again, and clamp. I assemble two four-inch clamps into an eight-inch clamp to hold the speaker assembly on.
And then I set it aside to dry.
Long day! We crash on the couch early and wake up on Sunday.
Ahh, I really have to finish that history reading. I still have 2/3 of a zillion pages to read.
Okay, by about 1 again, I have to stop. It's time to fire the tube up! Oh, but first, we need to move the rest of that mulch. I start forking up and barrowing mulch to the beds, while Marla valiantly weeds just ahead of me. That takes a few hours; all in all we moved nearly four cubic yards of material this weekend. There's just a tad more mulching to do for next weekend.
By about 3 I'm free to light things on fire! Fire! Oh, darn, there's this message -- fraud control on this unused credit card. Okay. Wiring harnesses, power, cables, soldering, come on already! A dry test of the power amplifier and speaker, oh, that's some powerful thumping coming from the tube there! Nice speaker.
Attach the propane, test the valves, blow the air out of everything. And. Fire! I can get a pretty satisfying high flame out of those teeny holes in the tube!
I wander over to the amplifier, once my fire seems stable, and notice flames licking around the speaker. Oh, that's not good. Turn off the tank, the flames die down. Hmm.
Re-test the speaker... nothing. The amplifier shows the "overload protection" light. Dammit. I cooked the speaker.
Oh and look at the time, have to go to Michelle's now!
And a few hours there, and then some very light shopping, and then home again. Tired, dispirited, and facing the ugly end of Monday soon.
But I have to know.
So I take the speaker off and am surprised that as soon as I loosened the clamp, the speaker assembly poppped right out. It seems that, while building the clamp, I had forgotten that I didn't add the silicon. That explains the leak, it wasn't sealed!
I look at the plastic barrier. Intact. The speaker looks fine. No visible heat damage. With the Ohmmeter, I test the coils... perfect, like new resistance. Okay, I have no idea why the amplifier was showing overload; maybe it was the weird mismatch between line-in and the headphone jack on the boombox I was using to power it.
A mystery for another time... I ended the weekend reading World Civilizations. And as of now, I still have 20 pages left to read. Tomorrow. Right after I test the audio system again.
Posted by Edwin at February 19, 2007 07:32 AM