New England B.S. Thread

I upgraded my OEM halogens to OEM LEDs. I do get flashed sometimes. If both vehicles are facing each other on flat ground, they're not blinding, but if I'm on uneven ground or an incline and my front end is up even a little, my lights can be blinding. I see that a lot with OEM LEDs on other cars too.

 

My allowance is to HIDs in the stock halogen housings. I have halogen amber lights in there though. I have white fog LED pods that I use for white light.

But yes, my retinas are burning after an hour of night driving nowadays. I usually have to angle my drivers mirror down (I typically just plug along in the right lane, I drive slow).

My 2004 Jeep had the auto dimming/some sort of shenanigans wing mirrors. 2004.

I AM tempted, in all fairness, to try something like this. Maybe not that specific design, I feel like for the wing mirrors I'd need wrap around somehow.

$18 Night Vision Driving Glasses Polarized Anti-glare Clear Sun Glasses Men & Women Fashion(Floral)

https://www.amazon.com/Driving-Glas...231&sprefix=night+glasses+,aps,86&sr=8-7&th=1

 

Start rant:

Don't be That Guy i saw this morning driving around on the street with your ditch lights on...especially if you're driving a Subaru Outback...

End rant

 

To add to this.. don't be the guy with Ditch Lights if you dont plan on going in a ditch.. i have a few neighbors who have modified their trucks/SUVs to make them off road.. those vehicles have never seen anything but pavement.. and maybe potholes

 

They didn't choose the Pottery Barn life, the Pottery Barn life chose them.

 

ONLY that specific design.

 

I relate, especially the first 2. Yet I used to get hassled for my PIAA lights by the cops.

 

Good enough for a TV stand.



There are some changes I want to make with the next iteration, but not too bad.

 

FAR better than "good enough"
Curious if you dowled or biscuit joined the top or was getting a good edge on those pieces sufficient for a tight fit

 

i have yet to master joining edges, just lack of trial at this point, and the right equipment. But, when i made a table top for over our washer dryer i used a kreg jig. Worked pretty good

 

The way I did it was ripping off the bullnoses with the tablesaw, dowel jig, then wayyyy too much hand planing.

 

I always forget that kreg works for flat joints, I always think if them as a corner thing

 

yeah i would use them again, the only thing with the kreg is it goes in at an angle so you have to make sure the edges stay aligned.

 

You must have done some serious clamping from all directions

 

The top is just glued. I cut the planks to rough length, leaving room to trim snipe (I'm using a cheap Hazard Fraud 13" planer right now and you can only dial them so tight - lots of flex due to the way they're built), planed them flat and parallel on the broad faces, and then ganged them up with wood screws through the areas that were going to be trimmed for snipe. I ran the ganged boards through the planer to get one narrow edge each flat (the ganged boards act like their own sled), then squared the opposite narrow edges with the table saw and fence because I don't have a jointer right now. I rebuilt an old cast iron 10" Craftsman 113 table saw and got it dialed dead nuts laserbeam and square, and put a decent Delta fence on it which I also dialed in with a calibrated machinist's square and a lot of patience. With a setup like that you can do a lot if you're creative and get your order of operations right, even if you're limited to the depth of cut on the table (about 4.5" in my case, after jimmying/shimming the arbor to get the blade to < 0.01mm runout vs the tracks in the top and square to the top vs a machinist's square).

I used four pipe clamps and two bar clamps for the glue up on the tabletop. The fit was great (I've made about a thousand end grain cutting boards, I definitely developed a feel and eye for alignment and clamping force to get good glue-ups), and to level the surface I only needed a quick pass with a power planer to take care of one or two high edges - I had to let the planed stock sit for a couple days and they moved a bit just in that time, otherwise I'm accustomed to going from glue right to finish sanding.

One tip that really helps me when working with longer lengths is to let the stock sit as long as possible in your workshop before working, so it can acclimate to the exact conditions (temp, humidity) that you'll be doing a given operation in. It's really surprising how much boards can twist/cup/grow/shrink if, for example, you buy some 2x stock, plane it the same day, then come back to it a little while later for more work. When I'm working with really fancy wood, I try to let it acclimate for as long as possible and do any precision gluing the same day as any planing.

I've done tabletops with pocket holes (Kreg jig) before, and screwing and gluing then planing/power planing the top is not at all a bad way to do it if that's all you have to work with. I started this little hobby with a power drill, a circular saw, a Kreg jig, and a cheap hand plane and I still have the first thing I ever made - a coffee table that looks great mostly due to the very dark stain, which hides many sins.

One thing that really helps when doing tabletops with pocket holes and glue is truing the edges to be glued as best you can to get good, even contact. If you go pick up one of those cheap super-duper long I-beam levels from Harbor Freight, you can use it as a very effective straight edge for your circular saw. And while you can use a hand plane to even the faces up after screwing the stock together, the cheap 4" power planer from HF is an incredible time saver, just make sure you dial it for very shallow passes. Remember - 10 shallow passes is still a Hell of a lot faster than hand planing or even power sanding with 60 grit.

 

@deanosaurus

Are using the hand planer with the long level as a guide or freehand?

 

Headlights are miserable these days. With automatic headlights instances of people running around with high beams on all the time are insane. Couple that with the aforementioned garbage drop-in HID or LED kits and it takes all I can do to just concentrate on the road. I will admit to having HID fogs in the Vette, but they're 880 bulbs so they're barely brighter than a flashlight. I had a professional retrofit which was incredible but GM engineered so much slop into the pop-up assembly that the cutoff light strobed and people pulled over when I was behind them. The pop-up system runs on 55w so unless my battery was fully charged with the HIDs for whatever reason I'd have issues with them not popping up, not shutting off, etc. I gave up and went to an HIR. I should recheck the aim this year.

I will admit I can count on one hand the amount of times I've run my lower LED bar as there's very few areas it makes sense to run. I have a friend who lives deep into Freetown and there's a few areas of Route 105 that are downright pitch black with lots of deer, rapid elevation changes and turns (it's a lovely road to hustle the Vette on when I have good visibility) having all the extra light is a live saver. I find I drive along with my hand hovering over the button in case I see anyone. My "roll bar" mounted lamps are strictly ornamental. They are powerful, no doubt, but there's far too much flex in the bar. Maybe someday I'll firm it up, but they are made to look cool...so win?

I bought a new guitar pickup tonight as I got a gift card to Sweetwater. I'm determined to get back into it.

 

Ooh, what'd you go with?

 

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/de...-duncan-sh-4-jb-model-humbucker-pickup-nickel

Seems like a decent middle of the road pickup for an LP style guitar.

 

I almost feel like my headlights are junk because by comparison to anything new like that I can't see shit. I really notice it when I borrow the Rav4 with the projector headlights..not sure what bulbs though but either way much better.

Thinking about getting LED fogs, nothing costly really just something a little better. Maybe these https://www.extremeterrain.com/axia...PjRIV88A-3yAksaxEegaAomvEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

And I definitely relate re the Freetown example. When I was minding my father in law a lot in Hanover I would drive home all hours of the night on streets with a lot of deer so the brights came in handy.