That Sinking Feeling

Adventure Location: Rockport, Texas

A busy day it has been with chores and chores and more chores. The main adventure was changing out attachments for most of the cabinet doors.  The cabinet doors on the Castle are made of solid pieces of oak and HEAVY.  That looks good and is strong but the hinges are the standard light weight hinges for lighter doors.  The screws holding the hinges are barely adequate.  The top hinge screws have been loosening for the last year.  It was time for corrective action.

The top screw and sometimes both screws were changed out to bolts with washers except for two hinges where the back side of the attachment point is not accessible. In that case much larger screws were installed. Over the last five years the old trick of putting tooth pick pieces in the hole to increase the screws holding power has helped but not solved the trouble.  Hopefully this latest effort will do the trick.

First the screw was removed. Then the hole was enlarged to a size that gave an interference fit to the #8-32 machine bolt that went into the hole.  The head chosen was a taper head to help hold the hinge in the proper position.

After the bolt was laboriously screwed into the hole with the OFM in contortionist positions, a flat washer and locking nut were tightened on the bolt.  This is the only one that the camera could get a picture of the tightening.  All the other had obstructions that made for difficult touch only tightening.

When the bolt was snugged down well, the fix seemed to be a good one.  Ten screws in all were replaced.  There are several more that might need replacing in the future. Here is the final appearance.

It is a long way from “factory” but also MUCH stronger.  Those heavy doors can really put a knot on your noggin when they swing open and catch you on the head.

This evening a couple of hours of fishing produced a mixed result.  About every five casts a fish would hit my silver spoon.  But the fish would get off.  The eight or ten that held on long enough to be seen were all ladyfish.  My guess is the spoon was too large for the fish to get into their mouth.  But it was fun.

The unusual thing was there was a Coast Guard cutter messing around in one spot out in the bay. This is taken at full zoom and then expanded a lot.

That is the end of the harbor pier in the picture.  It is about two miles across the water to the cutter according to Google maps.

Finally after quite a while it came to my mind to look around for something causing the cutter to hang around. My first thought was a drug runner interception. But when my vision moved far enough south, there was the trouble. 

Apparently some sort of drilling rig type platform seemed to be listing rather badly. My guess is that one of the barges that normally transport rigs had ripped a seam and sank. This is another maximum zoom then enlarged a lot picture.

To add to the fun, a friend and blog reader, Paul, emailed me to meet up with him tomorrow down at Light House Lakes. That is making it easy to try to have tooooo much fun. TheOFM.