Getting my Russian shop set up

[jdurand]

Well, when we moved in we knew we were near where the west backed guys were trying to exterminate the local population. We even helped some escaped people with clothes, medicine, etc.

We just didn't expect our governor to take such a dislike for Americans. A case where going on an extended vacation is prudent.

[jdurand]

It's been some time since I posted an update. The SMO tossed a wrench (metric adjustable) into our plans.

Our business visa was running out and with the SMO on and us holding USA passports, well... NO VISA FOR YOU (right now). We have a second citizenship from a neutral country so we can stay visa-free for 90 days at a time, but then have to leave for 90 days. We're currently home now.

Places we've been so far: Istanbul, Turkiye; Cape Town, South Africa; Uzbekistan; Armenia (we left the day before the recent events).

Anyway, things have cooled enough that we can talk about stuff publically, so we have two interviews coming up and I started a Telegram channel where I'm giving an abbreviated (but still long) account of the ongoing saga. I'm currently up to July, 2018. If anyone is interested in following it, here's the link:

https://t.me/Becoming_Russians

Anyway, currently up to neck is getting some house stuff done before winter. Also have to fix an installation issue with our downstairs shower. It's a good thing we learned how to "shower" in a tub with no shower walls or curtain when we were in Armenia. Our upstairs tub is hooked up but just freestanding. We need to level the floor and install it... later.

I'm also working on two electronics projects, one for a customer in San Diego and one for a product our company will sell.

So, anyway, I'm still alive, just not getting things done as fast as I'd like.

Be well everyone, and keep making chips.

[jdurand]

Life has been... hectic... since that event just to the west of us started 2 years ago.

Anyway, we've been working on finishing our house as we can. Currently we're building arbors for 18 grape vines and I needed a clamp to hold 4mm wire against 12mm bar during assembly.

As you know, most clamps have flat faces and don't do well with round on round.

So, we went browsing hardware stores and bought some cheap C clamps that I modified. It went something like this...

Cut some scrap 6mm bar into short pieces, use a drill bit as a spacer and clamp them in the C clamp.


Remove drill bit and prepare to weld


Weld (20 amps with 0,8mm FCAW)


Done


Build arbors




There will be some cross braces added to these, we just haven't cut the material for that yet.

[Toolmaker51]

Great solution.
I certainly would have overthought this and made a handful of little v-blocks, and been short a 3rd hand to use them.

[jdurand]

I forgot to show the clamp in action! Duh!

[Jon]

Thanks jdurand! We've added your Round Stock Clamp to our Clamps category,
as well as to your builder page: jdurand's Homemade Tools. Your receipt:

Round Stock Clamp by jdurand

tags: C-clamp, clamp

[jdurand]

I had purchased a couple of spools of welding wire back several months. Of course I didn't notice one was broken (still sealed in foil bag) until now when I went to use it.



I have since bought more wire, so I popped on a new spool and finished my project.

Now, about this broken spool. Do I toss it out? What, and be kicked off this forum? How could you even think that?!?!

I clamped a 10m socket into my lathe...



and mounted an empty spool



then, with the lathe on it's lowest speed (47rpm) I started transferring the wire over.



I quickly found I needed to stuff some assorted lathe tools into the gaps in the spool hub to keep the wire from slipping down too far and kinking. Only a few meters of wire lost discovering that.

And then, after what only seemed like two days, I was done.



There's a few wavy sections of wire, but no kinks that would cause problems.

I hope.

I have more welding to do, so will put this spool on the machine while I remember it may have issues.

[jdurand]

So, what have we been making here?

We made two more sections of storm drain cover to make getting out of the driveway easier. The across the street neighbor put up a short wall directly across from us which makes backing out more interesting. Now with the grates on both sides of the driveway I don't need to worry about the ditch. We plan to cover the ditch the entire width of our property in the future.



We also made a security door for our back door.

My wife test fitting the scrolls, she used to do this for a living many years ago.



ready to weld



in place, not finished



her painting



And backside painting done. This is brown blacksmith paint, we've painted other things with it and it seems to hold up well.

[jdurand]

I forgot to mention, that welding wire I respooled worked great. Used the entire spool with no kinks/bends/birdsnests.

[jdurand]

Just an update on our adventures...

Ever since the SMO started business visas became very hard to renew in this region, so we had to switch to being tourists which meant living at home for a bit, then living abroad for a bit.

This summer we were finally granted "quota" which allowed us to apply for the equivalent of "green cards" and stay here as residents.

GREAT! We were about to head home to start the paperwork but... (there's always a but) a new law came into effect to put more oversight on who could actually apply for residency. You have to have entered the country with a special visa by invitation.

We applied for that and after a month, we were granted it through the consulate where we were currently staying (Armenia). We had 4 month visas which qualified us to use that consulate as temporary Armenia residents.

but wait... when we went to the consulate they told us there was another new law, not yet published but they were enforcing it, that we now needed SIX month Armenian visas before the consulate would see us. Unless... we provided the original copies of our "quota" paperwork.

That paperwork is only released to people IN PERSON. sigh. Ok, we flew home (glad it's not far or expensive), collected our paperwork and applied for visas to return to Armenia. My wife got one right away as expected, me... rejected. ???

After a trip to the Armenian embassy we found that someone I met in Armenia reported me as being too anti-American and got me black listed.

At this point the national TV news stepped in and after a bunch of help from them and others we were granted the special visa without having to leave the country. Our green card paperwork is in progress (it takes 6-8 weeks) and we're back to working on the house. Painting, tiles, and building our greenhouse.

We can't reopen our business until we're actually issued our residency paperwork so we're using the time to get other things done.

So far we've had 4 magazine interviews, 3 published, and one TV news interview. The immigration service also used some of the news footage to release their own short bit on us.

Hopefully I'll have interesting things to post here in the future. Mostly things are just on our blog.
https://t.me/Becoming_Russians/10