I'm never quite sure what the best practices are for pre-drilling holes for
screws.
What I have been doing is holding the drill bit in front of the screw at eye
level and trying to sight it to see if I can still see the shaft of the
screw behind it. If I can just /barely/ see it, then I know that the
screw's shaft will be a smidgeon larger than the hole it's teething into,
and that's what I'm aiming for usually.
Note, I'm not talking about the case where I need a hole large enough in a
board for the threads to spin freely to pull the board down to something
underneath. I'm talking about the underneath business, but perhaps there
are rules for the board here too.
Fundamentals:
1. Does pre-drilling generally create a stronger hold, because presumably
there is less wood pushed to the side of the screw? Or does the stress of
the wood split to the side add to the hold against the threads?
2. Should a pre-bore be large enough to only grab the threads? Or is this
only necessary for the harder of the hard woods?
Thanks!
In article <[email protected]>, dpb <[email protected]> wrote:
> Thomas G. Marshall wrote:
> > Stephen M said something like:
> >>>> VAX assembler & BLISS
> >>> Ah....a DEC old-timer.
> >>>
> >> Ouch...I'm only 43!
> >
> > I'm 42. I win :)
>
> Kids! :(
>
> Philco 2000 Assembly/FORTRAN IV... :)
>
> --
Hah. Ada 0.1 on the Difference Engine. :-)
Err, I resemble that statement. Our department has a two-course series:
ECEN 5837 - Mixed-Signal IC Design
3 credit hours
Catalog Description: (1) Design of core analog circuits in mixed analog
and digital systems, including data converters and sampled-data
circuitry, and (2) system level IC design methodologies and CAD based
circuit design and layout techniques in mixed analog and digital IC's.
Prerequisite: ECEN 5827, Analog IC Design
Textbook:
Allen and Holberg, CMOS Analog Circuit Design, Oxford, 2002.
Course objectives: This course is the second in a two-course series
(the first course is ECEN 5827) on integrated circuit design, which
together provide a complete set of fundamental concepts and skills for
the growing number of students who wish to pursue a career in the
semiconductory industry. Graduate students who wish to specialize in
research projects related to IC design and power electronics will be
required to take both courses in the sequence.
Topics:
1. Fully-differential op-amsp, simulation and layout
2. Comparators
3. Switched capacitor circuits
4. Nyquist rate DAC
5. Nyquist rate ADC
6. Over-sampling converters
To be sure, they're graduate-level courses, primarily because most data
acquisition systems are either designed into custom ICs, as the courses
above, or, just as common, engineers these days use "black box"
solutions -- slap together a commercial sample-and-hold, a commercial
ADC and output 'em into a circular buffer.
These days at the undergraduate level our kids get courses that teach
them how to design systems that *use* the black boxes: Circuits I, II,
and III, "Computers as Components," Embedded Systems, and, the topic
most often ignored to the peril of the EE, Digital Signal Processing:
what to do with all that digital data streaming off at MHz or even,
these days, GHz rates.
In the capstone lab they even learn how to solder and wire-wrap. But,
as I tell them, even after they graduate they still won't be able to
fix their dad's stereo amp. :-)
Oh, right, this is the wreck. I better say 73 and get back to the
workshop where I'm fighting with a piece of zebrawood.
In article <[email protected]>, Lew Hodgett
<[email protected]> wrote:
> "Puckdropper" wrote:
>
> > Analog world? That's like 2^128 precision, isn't it?
>
> Try to find designers of analog inputs for high speed digital data
> acquisition systems sometime.
>
> Hasn't been taught at the collegiate level for probably 25-30 years.
>
> Lew
>
>
Give that man a silver dollar. I was installing that big honker LV
10-1/2" steel bench vise on my new bench with hard maple blocks to
offset the vise from the bottom of the bench. I used 3/8" lag screws,
and followed the advice in one of those tables drilled 9/32" pilot
holes. the first screw sheared off when it was 1/2 way in.
In article <[email protected]>, Stephen M
<[email protected]> wrote:
>
> IME, the harder the wood, and the larger the screw, the more particular you
> should be about pilot hole size.
--
Vince Heuring To email, remove the Vince.
> What I have been doing is holding the drill bit in front of the screw at eye
> level and trying to sight it to see if I can still see the shaft of the
> screw behind it. If I can just /barely/ see it, then I know that the
> screw's shaft will be a smidgeon larger than the hole it's teething into,
> and that's what I'm aiming for usually.
Sounds about like my technique - except sometimes I measure the
screw's shank with a dial caliper, and grab the next smallest drill
bit from the size I measured. I'm definitely not suggesting this
level of precision is necessary - just for me, my caliper and decimal-
fraction conversion chart are easier to reach than my drill bits, and
this way I can grab the right drill bit the first time. Sometime if I
get smart I'll measure shanks on all the screw sizes I use commonly,
and write them on the screw bins, so I won't have to measure for most
of them.
> 1. Does pre-drilling generally create a stronger hold, because presumably
> there is less wood pushed to the side of the screw? Or does the stress of
> the wood split to the side add to the hold against the threads?
I don't know about this, but it sounds like the beginnings of a very
interesting experiment! I'm guessing it would depend a lot on wood
type, screw type (especially thread depth?), and probably grain
orientation. I'm looking forward to seeing more educated replies and/
or good references for this information.
Sorry I can't actually help more, but I think you're on the right
track. At least you're not alone!
Good luck,
Andy
On Nov 1, 3:54 pm, dpb <[email protected]> wrote:
> Thomas G. Marshall wrote:
> > Stephen M said something like:
> >>>> VAX assembler & BLISS
> >>> Ah....a DEC old-timer.
>
Started with PDP-11/C. Vax was a major step up. BTW, I've moved on to
unix and now to windoze and still maintain that vax/vms was a great OS
- close to crash proof. It still amazes me that after twenty years,
windows is still lacking features present in vax/vms...
Mitch
VMS also had a great command line language. (Called "DCL", IIRC). You
could automate many tasks. Even create simple apps with a little more
work. Also, saying that most crashes are due to <fill in the blank>,
is missing the point. The point is that VMS did not crash. Windows is
where the money is, and VMS is extinct, so that's where I spend my
time out of the woodshop. Mac, with it's unix underpinning might be
interesting to try...
Lew Hodgett wrote:
> "Thomas G. Marshall" wrote:
>
>> I'm never quite sure what the best practices are for pre-drilling
> holes for
>> screws.
>
> Use a dial caliper (About $20) and measure screw.
>
> Use 75% of thread dia for pilot holes.
>
> Use thread dia +.015 for clearance holes.
>
> Have fun.
>
> Lew
>
>
>
Easier yet...Somewhere on the internet (sorry I didn't save the link but
a little googling should get you there) I found some pdf files with all
sorts of interesting shop reference charts. One of these tells you
exactly what size drill bit to use for each different wood screw size.
It even breaks it down to different size bits depending on whether you
are using hardwood or softwood.
I printed out the charts with the info I use frequently, laminated them,
and keep them in easy reach of my workbench.
"J T" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
Wed, Oct 31, 2007, 1:34pm (EDT+4)
[email protected]
(Thomas G. Marshall) doth posteth:
I'm never quite sure what the best practices are for pre-drilling holes
for screws. <snip>
Rules? We're supppsed to have rules now? My rule is to not use
screws unless it's o something I plan to take apart again. On the few
occassions I do use screws, and pre-drill a hole, I just make sure the
bit is no larger than the body of the scew.
So just use a 1/16" bit for all pre-drilling?
Kerry
On 31 Oct, 20:35, [email protected] (J T) wrote:
> Wed, Oct 31, 2007, 11:47am (EDT-3) [email protected]
> (Kerry Montgomery) doth query?
> So just use a 1/16" bit for all pre-drilling?
>
> Are you asking? Or what? Using just one size bit might make sense
> for you, but not for me. I might use screws with a body smaller, or
> larger, than 1/16". How about pre-drilling holes for nails? Any
> thoughts on that? Or furniture glides? I usually pre-drill for those,
> for sure.
>
> JOAT
> It's not hard, if you get your mind right.
> - Granny Weatherwax
I forget where I saw it, but some research was done that proved that
pre-drilling for wire nails (round-shanked nails) made the nails grip
more securely, (probably because the wood contacts the nail over 360
degrees of the nail's circumference, and not just on 2 sides where the
grain divides around the nail).
Wed, Oct 31, 2007, 11:47am (EDT-3) [email protected]
(Kerry=A0Montgomery) doth query?
So just use a 1/16" bit for all pre-drilling?
Are you asking? Or what? Using just one size bit might make sense
for you, but not for me. I might use screws with a body smaller, or
larger, than 1/16". How about pre-drilling holes for nails? Any
thoughts on that? Or furniture glides? I usually pre-drill for those,
for sure.
JOAT
It's not hard, if you get your mind right.
- Granny Weatherwax
Limey Lurker said something like:
...[rip]...
> I forget where I saw it, but some research was done that proved that
> pre-drilling for wire nails (round-shanked nails) made the nails grip
> more securely, (probably because the wood contacts the nail over 360
> degrees of the nail's circumference, and not just on 2 sides where the
> grain divides around the nail).
That much makes intuitive sense, but it's not 100% clear to me that the
force from the memory of the wood (the degree to which it is trying to slam
back in place) isn't a stronger force to hold the nail in place.
J. Clarke wrote:
> MB wrote:
>> On Nov 1, 3:54 pm, dpb <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> Thomas G. Marshall wrote:
>>>> Stephen M said something like:
>>>>>>> VAX assembler & BLISS
>>>>>> Ah....a DEC old-timer.
>>>
>>
>> Started with PDP-11/C. Vax was a major step up. BTW, I've moved on
>> to
>> unix and now to windoze and still maintain that vax/vms was a great
>> OS
>> - close to crash proof. It still amazes me that after twenty years,
>> windows is still lacking features present in vax/vms...
>
> I'm curious as to what those features are.
>
It's been a number of years (15 or more) since I used VMS, but as the OP
indicated, it was a nearly bulletproof operating system. The on-line help
was extensive and all the commands reflected the fact that this operating
system was designed vs. evolved. All the commands had the same syntax and
were intuitive. One also had significant control with the command line
instructions like Unix and unlike Microsoft OS's, but the commands also
made sense and were consistent, unlike Unix.
That's about all I remember anymore; I just remember being very frustrated
when I had to move to DOS and Unix OS's after working with VMS. Now, I'm
comfortable with Unix, it was just hard-won experience.
--
If you're going to be dumb, you better be tough
Wed, Oct 31, 2007, 1:34pm (EDT+4)
[email protected]
(Thomas=A0G.=A0Marshall) doth posteth:
I'm never quite sure what the best practices are for pre-drilling holes
for screws. <snip>
Rules? We're supppsed to have rules now? My rule is to not use
screws unless it's o something I plan to take apart again. On the few
occassions I do use screws, and pre-drill a hole, I just make sure the
bit is no larger than the body of the scew.
JOAT
It's not hard, if you get your mind right.
- Granny Weatherwax
Stephen M said something like:
>> "Less cumbersome"?? Not in my opinion.
>
> "seven thirty seconds" is preferable to "seven five"?
>
> I'm not really serious that it's a viable nomenclature, it just seems
> that there 's a while lot of chaff in the current system.
>
>>> But then again I'm comfortable in hexidecimal.
>>
>> So am I (first job out of college was assembly-language programming
>> on a 370/145 DOS/VSE)
>
> VAX assembler & BLISS
Ah....a DEC old-timer.
I actually was a programmer for DEC in high school cira 1981. My junior
year, working in the hiighly coveted "BASIC and RTL" department up in MK2 in
Merrimack, NH.
Big time hooey, because for some reason, BASIC ruled the roost up there.
Bliss was what everything serious was written in and was a very cool idea.
Sitting approximately 2 inches (5.08 cm :) ) above assembly language it was
a pretty nifty portable solution, particularly at the time. At least IMHO.
I wonder if I could write a "JBliss" compiler (to java VM code) ?
Maybe when my table project is done...
PS. Ever do mental arithmetic to compare the old DECsystem 10's to, say, a
Dell 3 Ghz desktop? LOL...
...[john jacob jingleheimer snip]...
"LRod" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On Wed, 31 Oct 2007 13:34:52 GMT, "Thomas G. Marshall"
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Top posted for your convenience.
>
> (In other words, you can look at the earlier text by scrolling down if
> you *want* to, but you're not forced to wade through dozens of lines
> of unedited material to get to the meat of THIS post:)
>
Some might consider it better to snip unwanted text rather than leave that
unedited material in place. Obviously, others don't, but the dozens of
lines of unedited material has never been a good argument for top posting.
In fact, leaving all that irrelevant text in place has never been a good
practice for a lot of reasons. But... I don't really care that much myself
about top or bottom posting and I'm getting out now before this turns into
another extended thread debating the two styles.
--
-Mike-
[email protected]
"Thomas G. Marshall"
<[email protected]> wrote in
news:kn7Wi.6420$pT.2027@trndny07:
>
> Top posting is convenient as you point out for email, because in email
> there are two contributors, and less need for interleaved posting.
>
*snipped and trimmed for content and length*
My newsreader makes reading messages that are either top, middle, or
bottom posted easy. I have it set to display the original message
(denoted with the standard character > by 98% of posts) in a smaller size
font than the new message.
It will also automatically scroll down to the new text when I ask it to.
Because of these settings, I just don't see what the problem with where
someone put his original message is. As long as things are kept neat and
trimmed, reading messages is really quite easy.
Fyi, I'm using Xnews.
Puckdropper
--
Wise is the man who attempts to answer his question before asking it.
To email me directly, send a message to puckdropper (at) fastmail.fm
> What I have been doing is holding the drill bit in front of the screw at
> eye level and trying to sight it to see if I can still see the shaft of
> the screw behind it. If I can just /barely/ see it, then I know that the
> screw's shaft will be a smidgeon larger than the hole it's teething into,
> and that's what I'm aiming for usually.
Yeah, I do that too, plus a little trial and error.
> 2. Should a pre-bore be large enough to only grab the threads? Or is this
> only necessary for the harder of the hard woods?
I think the answer is that it depends on the wood, and to some degree on
the position of the screw.
IME, I seldom need to predrill at all in softwoods. If I am close to the end
of the board, where splitting is more likely, I will predrill more often and
more agressively.
However, I have found reclaimed very old (soft) wood to be brittle and
absotutely required predrilling.
IME, the harder the wood, and the larger the screw, the more particular you
should be about pilot hole size.
Cheers,
Steve
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
> I never quite realized that there were numbered and lettered bit sizes for
> intermediate widths.
>
> Makes more sense than things like 37/256th 's. Unless they are primarily
> metric.
The metric debate got me thinking:
Since all the common denomenators for franctional inches are powers of 2,
wouldn't it be much less cumbersome to express the demomenator as the
exponent of the power of 2?
That is:
1/2 = 1/(2^1) could be expressed as 1:1 or "one, one"
3/4 = 3/(2^2) or "three, two"
3/16 would be "three, four"
37/256 would be "thiry seven, eight"
But then again I'm comfortable in hexidecimal.
-Steve
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
> "Less cumbersome"?? Not in my opinion.
"seven thirty seconds" is preferable to "seven five"?
I'm not really serious that it's a viable nomenclature, it just seems that
there 's a while lot of chaff in the current system.
>>But then again I'm comfortable in hexidecimal.
>
> So am I (first job out of college was assembly-language programming on a
> 370/145 DOS/VSE)
VAX assembler & BLISS
> BTW, it's spelled "hexadecimal."
Point taken.
> it appears you've forgotten that somewhere around 99.99% of the
> population isn't.
Really only 10 types though, those that understand binary and...
I bet we could get the whole scentific notation crowd on board for another
.001%
Please note that I did not suggest that 1/32 be represented as 1/20
Cheers,
Steve
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
"Lew Hodgett" <[email protected]> wrote in
news:[email protected]:
>
> "MB" wrote:
>
>> windows is still lacking features present in vax/vms...
>
>
> Why should that surprise you?
>
> In this digital age, try to find people who understand the analog
> world.
>
> Lew
>
>
>
Analog world? That's like 2^128 precision, isn't it?
Puckdropper
--
Wise is the man who attempts to answer his question before asking it.
To email me directly, send a message to puckdropper (at) fastmail.fm
> Most of the Windows crashes I've experienced since 2K shipped have
> been hardware, usually RAM. System crashes still occur but they're
> rare and when they do occur they're often driver crashes.
VMS was capable of taking hardware subsystems off-line (while keeping the
system up and running) when soft error rates exceeded a certain threashold.
Heuristic diagnostics, although only part of the diagnostic suite) turned
out to be very effective.
>One area of
> confusion is that many "crashes" aren't really--the keyboard or
> display driver is hung while the kernel is still up and running.
So you don't consider the display driver in a single-user computer to be
part of the system? Even if you can't fault MS for the dispaly driver code,
it is the O/S architecture that enables that scenario.
On stability:
Secure memory management has been an afterthough in the Windows world. The
legacy of relying on applications to be good citizens is what system craches
and viruses possible.
By contrast, the VAX memory management architecture (the hardware
architecture) was specifically developed to enable secure (that is, a one
process can't access another process' memory data,code,stack) memory access
and paging.
-Steve
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
What does top-posting have to do with changing subjects?
The subject line doesn't change either way.
On Thu, 01 Nov 2007 03:50:41 GMT, "Thomas G. Marshall"
<[email protected]> wrote:
>Puckdropper said something like:
>> "Thomas G. Marshall"
>> <[email protected]> wrote in
>> news:kn7Wi.6420$pT.2027@trndny07:
>>
>>>
>>> Top posting is convenient as you point out for email, because in
>>> email there are two contributors, and less need for interleaved
>>> posting.
>>>
>>
>> *snipped and trimmed for content and length*
>>
>> My newsreader makes reading messages that are either top, middle, or
>> bottom posted easy.
>
>*snipped and trimmed for content and length*
>
>My newsreaders delimit different reply indentation levels with differing
>colors. Does *not* solve the problem of the mess that you're inviting when
>you top post.
>
>As an example I just did what you did. *Of course* you can hack out all but
>one sentence and claim you have trimmed it down neatly and made something
>easy to read. But then you have also misrepresented the entirety of what
>was said.
>
>This is made much worse by the fact that there are some newsreaders out
>there that group messages into threads by subject line and not id's. When
>you change subjects, you have to go out of your way to make sure that the
>entirety of what was said is represented, because people with such
>newsreaders will not easily understand what the original point was because
>it is embodied in a different thread.
>
>There are many well written explanations out there for why top posting is
>bad. A quick google gave me too many to start listing them here.
>
>For the record, years and years ago I used to top-post in usenet myself. I
>felt that it was a cleaner representation of information: place the
>information right at the top, like in email. I was dead wrong.
>
On Wed, 31 Oct 2007 13:34:52 GMT, "Thomas G. Marshall"
<[email protected]> wrote:
Top posted for your convenience.
(In other words, you can look at the earlier text by scrolling down if
you *want* to, but you're not forced to wade through dozens of lines
of unedited material to get to the meat of THIS post:)
**************************************************************
There is an article at WoodCentral which has the correct sizes of
drill bits for screwhead, shank, and root diameters of common sizes.
There's also drilling and tapping information for metal work.
http://www.woodcentral.com/articles/shop/articles_713.shtml
>I'm never quite sure what the best practices are for pre-drilling holes for
>screws.
>
>What I have been doing is holding the drill bit in front of the screw at eye
>level and trying to sight it to see if I can still see the shaft of the
>screw behind it. If I can just /barely/ see it, then I know that the
>screw's shaft will be a smidgeon larger than the hole it's teething into,
>and that's what I'm aiming for usually.
>
>Note, I'm not talking about the case where I need a hole large enough in a
>board for the threads to spin freely to pull the board down to something
>underneath. I'm talking about the underneath business, but perhaps there
>are rules for the board here too.
>
>Fundamentals:
>
>1. Does pre-drilling generally create a stronger hold, because presumably
>there is less wood pushed to the side of the screw? Or does the stress of
>the wood split to the side add to the hold against the threads?
>
>2. Should a pre-bore be large enough to only grab the threads? Or is this
>only necessary for the harder of the hard woods?
>
>Thanks!
>
--
LRod
Master Woodbutcher and seasoned termite
Shamelessly whoring my website since 1999
http://www.woodbutcher.net
Proud participant of rec.woodworking since February, 1997
email addy de-spam-ified due to 1,000 spams per month.
If you can't figure out how to use it, I probably wouldn't
care to correspond with you anyway.
"Thomas G. Marshall"
<[email protected]> wrote:
>Charlie M. 1958 said something like:
>> Lew Hodgett wrote:
>>> "Thomas G. Marshall" wrote:
>>>
>>>> I'm never quite sure what the best practices are for pre-drilling
>>>> holes for screws.
>>>
>>> Use a dial caliper (About $20) and measure screw.
>>>
>>> Use 75% of thread dia for pilot holes.
>>>
>>> Use thread dia +.015 for clearance holes.
>
>.015 %? You mean .00015 times (or 1/6666th of) the diameter larger? :)
>Yikes!
>
Well, the percent sign after the ".015" got clipped (if it was ever
there) in your quoted text. In its absence, I would assume .015 times,
unless I wanted to be reasonable, in which case I would recognize that
he likely meant .015" or 1/64".
--
Alex -- Replace "nospam" with "mail" to reply by email. Checked infrequently.
"David Todtman" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> All this is interesting. I too, occasionally, use callipers to help in
> pilot drill bit choice. However, I usually just eyeball it: hold a bit
> against the screw seeking the bit that looks like it is the same size as
the
> shank of the screw. I don't build wood stuff for NASA.
I usually do that too unless I'm afraid of something splitting or I want to
be more exact and then I fit the screw to one of the holes in my drill
index. I can tell what kind of grab the screw will have depending on how far
up the shaft the threads grab in the index.
John said something like:
> What does top-posting have to do with changing subjects?
> The subject line doesn't change either way.
Re-read my post. It follows the paragraph discussing the "snipped and
trimmed for content and length" broken logic.
When you change the subject line, you have *got* to make sure that you
include everything point you can from the replied-to post, otherwise you've
potentially started a new thread with a statement from someone else devoid
of the context of that statement.
I isolated it below, but of course, this doesn't flow properly because of
your top post.
> On Thu, 01 Nov 2007 03:50:41 GMT, "Thomas G. Marshall"
> <[email protected]> wrote:
...[rip]...
>> As an example I just did what you did. *Of course* you can hack out
>> all but one sentence and claim you have trimmed it down neatly and
>> made something easy to read. But then you have also misrepresented
>> the entirety of what was said.
>>
>> This is made much worse by the fact that there are some newsreaders
>> out there that group messages into threads by subject line and not
>> id's. When you change subjects, you have to go out of your way to
>> make sure that the entirety of what was said is represented, because
>> people with such newsreaders will not easily understand what the
>> original point was because it is embodied in a different thread.
...[rip]...
--
"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!"
Thomas G. Marshall wrote:
> I'm never quite sure what the best practices are for pre-drilling holes for
> screws.
>
<snip>
See:
http://www.internetwoodworking.com/w5/screws.html
--
Jack Novak
Buffalo, NY - USA
[email protected]
Charlie M. 1958 said something like:
> Lew Hodgett wrote:
>> "Thomas G. Marshall" wrote:
>>
>>> I'm never quite sure what the best practices are for pre-drilling
>>> holes for screws.
>>
>> Use a dial caliper (About $20) and measure screw.
>>
>> Use 75% of thread dia for pilot holes.
>>
>> Use thread dia +.015 for clearance holes.
.015 %? You mean .00015 times (or 1/6666th of) the diameter larger? :)
Yikes!
LRod said something like:
...[rip]...
> There is an article at WoodCentral which has the correct sizes of
> drill bits for screwhead, shank, and root diameters of common sizes.
> There's also drilling and tapping information for metal work.
>
> http://www.woodcentral.com/articles/shop/articles_713.shtml
I never quite realized that there were numbered and lettered bit sizes for
intermediate widths.
Makes more sense than things like 37/256th 's. Unless they are primarily
metric.
...[rip]...
In article <[email protected]>, "Stephen M" <[email protected]> wrote:
>The metric debate got me thinking:
>
>Since all the common denomenators for franctional inches are powers of 2,
>wouldn't it be much less cumbersome to express the demomenator as the
>exponent of the power of 2?
>
>That is:
>
>1/2 = 1/(2^1) could be expressed as 1:1 or "one, one"
>3/4 = 3/(2^2) or "three, two"
>3/16 would be "three, four"
>37/256 would be "thiry seven, eight"
"Less cumbersome"?? Not in my opinion.
>
>But then again I'm comfortable in hexidecimal.
So am I (first job out of college was assembly-language programming on a
370/145 DOS/VSE) -- but I still think that's a really bad idea, starting with
the fact that while you and I are perfectly comfortable doing math in hex, it
appears you've forgotten that somewhere around 99.99% of the population isn't.
BTW, it's spelled "hexadecimal."
--
Regards,
Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)
It's time to throw all their damned tea in the harbor again.
Mike Marlow said something like:
> "LRod" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>> On Wed, 31 Oct 2007 13:34:52 GMT, "Thomas G. Marshall"
>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> Top posted for your convenience.
>>
>> (In other words, you can look at the earlier text by scrolling down
>> if you *want* to, but you're not forced to wade through dozens of
>> lines of unedited material to get to the meat of THIS post:)
>>
>
> Some might consider it better to snip unwanted text rather than leave
> that unedited material in place. Obviously, others don't, but the
> dozens of lines of unedited material has never been a good argument
> for top posting. In fact, leaving all that irrelevant text in place
> has never been a good practice for a lot of reasons. But... I don't
> really care that much myself about top or bottom posting and I'm
> getting out now before this turns into another extended thread
> debating the two styles.
Good idea. I was convinced once that top posting was superior, but it
wasn't long before I figured out why.
But of all the usenet skills, getting out before the flame happens is one of
the better ones. :)
Thomas G. Marshall said something like:
...[rip]...
> Good idea. I was convinced once that top posting was superior, but it
> wasn't long before I figured out why.
....oops. should be "before I figured out why *not* ."
>
> But of all the usenet skills, getting out before the flame happens is
> one of the better ones. :)
Let's go to the source:
http://www.wlfuller.com/html/what_size___.html
PS: One of the older and largest producers of drill bits.
Thomas G. Marshall wrote:
> I'm never quite sure what the best practices are for pre-drilling holes for
> screws.
>
> What I have been doing is holding the drill bit in front of the screw at eye
> level and trying to sight it to see if I can still see the shaft of the
> screw behind it. If I can just /barely/ see it, then I know that the
> screw's shaft will be a smidgeon larger than the hole it's teething into,
> and that's what I'm aiming for usually.
>
> Note, I'm not talking about the case where I need a hole large enough in a
> board for the threads to spin freely to pull the board down to something
> underneath. I'm talking about the underneath business, but perhaps there
> are rules for the board here too.
>
> Fundamentals:
>
> 1. Does pre-drilling generally create a stronger hold, because presumably
> there is less wood pushed to the side of the screw? Or does the stress of
> the wood split to the side add to the hold against the threads?
>
> 2. Should a pre-bore be large enough to only grab the threads? Or is this
> only necessary for the harder of the hard woods?
>
> Thanks!
>
>
MB said something like:
> VMS also had a great command line language. (Called "DCL", IIRC). You
> could automate many tasks. Even create simple apps with a little more
> work. Also, saying that most crashes are due to <fill in the blank>,
> is missing the point. The point is that VMS did not crash. Windows is
> where the money is, and VMS is extinct, so that's where I spend my
> time out of the woodshop. Mac, with it's unix underpinning might be
> interesting to try...
I rather like that apple (Jobs) decided to give up their broken NIH syndrome
and go with unix.
Shows levelheadedness, with a touch of chutzpah...
FTR, I started out on DEC machines, and loved VMS until I ran into Unix,
which was a horrific culture shock at the time, but I grew to love it over
VMS.
--
"I don't want FOP, God dammit! I'm a DAPPER DAN MAN!"
In article <[email protected]>, "Stephen M" <[email protected]> wrote:
>> "Less cumbersome"?? Not in my opinion.
>
>"seven thirty seconds" is preferable to "seven five"?
Yep. Much more easily understood. Even by the geeks.
--
Regards,
Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)
It's time to throw all their damned tea in the harbor again.
MB wrote:
> On Nov 1, 3:54 pm, dpb <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Thomas G. Marshall wrote:
>>> Stephen M said something like:
>>>>>> VAX assembler & BLISS
>>>>> Ah....a DEC old-timer.
>>
>
> Started with PDP-11/C. Vax was a major step up. BTW, I've moved on
> to
> unix and now to windoze and still maintain that vax/vms was a great
> OS
> - close to crash proof. It still amazes me that after twenty years,
> windows is still lacking features present in vax/vms...
I'm curious as to what those features are.
--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)
MB wrote:
> On Nov 1, 3:54 pm, dpb <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Thomas G. Marshall wrote:
>>> Stephen M said something like:
>>>>>> VAX assembler & BLISS
>>>>> Ah....a DEC old-timer.
>
> Started with PDP-11/C. Vax was a major step up. BTW, I've moved on to
> unix and now to windoze and still maintain that vax/vms was a great OS
> - close to crash proof. It still amazes me that after twenty years,
> windows is still lacking features present in vax/vms...
Don't know why that would be amazing considering the relative pedigree
of the two.
VMS was/is quite nice system -- the V4.3 upgrade brought the VAX to a
near crawl, however... :(
--
J. Clarke wrote:
> MB wrote:
>> On Nov 1, 3:54 pm, dpb <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> Thomas G. Marshall wrote:
>>>> Stephen M said something like:
>>>>>>> VAX assembler & BLISS
>>>>>> Ah....a DEC old-timer.
>> Started with PDP-11/C. Vax was a major step up. BTW, I've moved on
>> to
>> unix and now to windoze and still maintain that vax/vms was a great
>> OS
>> - close to crash proof. It still amazes me that after twenty years,
>> windows is still lacking features present in vax/vms...
>
> I'm curious as to what those features are.
"Nearly crash-proof" as a start... :) (In fact, I don't believe the the
VAX when I was using it ever had a fault/failure that was OS related in
the eight years I was there...one hardware failure that I remember was
the only non-scheduled downtime I remember ever.)
Multi-user comes to mind...
--
dpb wrote:
> J. Clarke wrote:
>> MB wrote:
>>> On Nov 1, 3:54 pm, dpb <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>> Thomas G. Marshall wrote:
>>>>> Stephen M said something like:
>>>>>>>> VAX assembler & BLISS
>>>>>>> Ah....a DEC old-timer.
>>> Started with PDP-11/C. Vax was a major step up. BTW, I've moved on
>>> to
>>> unix and now to windoze and still maintain that vax/vms was a
>>> great
>>> OS
>>> - close to crash proof. It still amazes me that after twenty
>>> years,
>>> windows is still lacking features present in vax/vms...
>>
>> I'm curious as to what those features are.
>
> "Nearly crash-proof" as a start... :) (In fact, I don't believe the
> the VAX when I was using it ever had a fault/failure that was OS
> related in the eight years I was there...one hardware failure that I
> remember was the only non-scheduled downtime I remember ever.)
Most of the Windows crashes I've experienced since 2K shipped have
been hardware, usually RAM. System crashes still occur but they're
rare and when they do occur they're often driver crashes. One area of
confusion is that many "crashes" aren't really--the keyboard or
display driver is hung while the kernel is still up and running. On a
single-user machine with only the one keyboard and display it is
difficult to clear these other than by reboot (although briefly
pressing the power button may lead to an orderly shutdown--by briefly
I mean tap it, don't hold it to force a hardware shutdown), but the
same sort of problem on a server can often be corrected by logging in
from another terminal and killing the offending session.
> Multi-user comes to mind...
Windows has been multiuser since 2K Server shipped. There's a Unix
client called "rdesktop". Prior to 2K Server Microsoft had a separate
product called "Terminal Services" that added the capability to NT.
The multiuser support is disabled on the single-user versions though
so you won't see it unless you have access to one of the server
products and the administrator has enabled the capability--by default
it's turned off.
--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)
Argon wrote:
> In article <[email protected]>, dpb <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Thomas G. Marshall wrote:
>>> Stephen M said something like:
>>>>>> VAX assembler & BLISS
>>>>> Ah....a DEC old-timer.
>>>>>
>>>> Ouch...I'm only 43!
>>> I'm 42. I win :)
>> Kids! :(
>>
>> Philco 2000 Assembly/FORTRAN IV... :)
>>
>> --
>
> Hah. Ada 0.1 on the Difference Engine. :-)
I'll see your abacus and raise you a cuneiform script stick... :)
--
MB wrote:
> VMS also had a great command line language. (Called "DCL", IIRC). You
> could automate many tasks. Even create simple apps with a little more
> work. Also, saying that most crashes are due to <fill in the blank>,
> is missing the point. The point is that VMS did not crash. Windows is
> where the money is, and VMS is extinct, ...
Not quite...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenVMS
--
MB wrote:
> VMS also had a great command line language. (Called "DCL", IIRC).
> You
> could automate many tasks.
Windows has several different scripting languages available. Don't
assume that the DOS shell is the only shell available.
> Even create simple apps with a little more
> work. Also, saying that most crashes are due to <fill in the blank>,
> is missing the point. The point is that VMS did not crash.
On bad hardware it did. Most Windows 2K/XP/Vista crashes are
hardware.
What you're saying, whether you realize it or not, is that a VAX or
Alpha with VMS didn't crash. You're ignoring the reliability of the
hardware. Put OpenVMS on a non-ECC Itanic with crap RAM and work it
hard and you're likely to get a surprise.
> Windows is
> where the money is, and VMS is extinct, so that's where I spend my
> time out of the woodshop. Mac, with it's unix underpinning might be
> interesting to try...
--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)
LRod said something like:
> On Wed, 31 Oct 2007 13:34:52 GMT, "Thomas G. Marshall"
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Top posted for your convenience.
>
> (In other words, you can look at the earlier text by scrolling down if
> you *want* to, but you're not forced to wade through dozens of lines
> of unedited material to get to the meat of THIS post:)
Top posting is convenient as you point out for email, because in email there
are two contributors, and less need for interleaved posting.
Please see further down (for a visual demonstration.)
>
> **************************************************************
>
> There is an article at WoodCentral which has the correct sizes of
> drill bits for screwhead, shank, and root diameters of common sizes.
> There's also drilling and tapping information for metal work.
>
> http://www.woodcentral.com/articles/shop/articles_713.shtml
>
>
>
>> I'm never quite sure what the best practices are for pre-drilling holes
>> for
>> screws.
But if in a usenet environment, you have many interleaved posting
opportunities. Pretend I was someone who wanted to repond to both your post
and this part of my post. In such a case, top posting is the formula for a
mess.
Please scroll further down....
>>
>> What I have been doing is holding the drill bit in front of the screw at
>> eye
>> level and trying to sight it to see if I can still see the shaft of the
>> screw behind it. If I can just /barely/ see it, then I know that the
>> screw's shaft will be a smidgeon larger than the hole it's teething into,
>> and that's what I'm aiming for usually.
Someone replying now to this point as well would want to interleave here.
Interleaved posts by their nature follow top-down. An interleaved comment
follows immediately the paragraph or line it refers to. But your top post
is bottom up. But a response to a *part* of your top post (interleaved)
would be top down. If there were several cycles of interleaved posts and
top posts a complicated conversation would be nearly impossible to follow.
And you have no idea as to how complicated a conversation an existing thread
might turn into.
>>
>> Note, I'm not talking about the case where I need a hole large enough in
>> a
>> board for the threads to spin freely to pull the board down to something
>> underneath. I'm talking about the underneath business, but perhaps there
>> are rules for the board here too.
>>
>> Fundamentals:
>>
>> 1. Does pre-drilling generally create a stronger hold, because presumably
>> there is less wood pushed to the side of the screw? Or does the stress
>> of
>> the wood split to the side add to the hold against the threads?
>>
>> 2. Should a pre-bore be large enough to only grab the threads? Or is
>> this
>> only necessary for the harder of the hard woods?
>>
>> Thanks!
--
"Well, ain't this place a geographical oddity!
Two weeks from everywhere!"
Puckdropper said something like:
> "Thomas G. Marshall"
> <[email protected]> wrote in
> news:kn7Wi.6420$pT.2027@trndny07:
>
>>
>> Top posting is convenient as you point out for email, because in
>> email there are two contributors, and less need for interleaved
>> posting.
>>
>
> *snipped and trimmed for content and length*
>
> My newsreader makes reading messages that are either top, middle, or
> bottom posted easy.
*snipped and trimmed for content and length*
My newsreaders delimit different reply indentation levels with differing
colors. Does *not* solve the problem of the mess that you're inviting when
you top post.
As an example I just did what you did. *Of course* you can hack out all but
one sentence and claim you have trimmed it down neatly and made something
easy to read. But then you have also misrepresented the entirety of what
was said.
This is made much worse by the fact that there are some newsreaders out
there that group messages into threads by subject line and not id's. When
you change subjects, you have to go out of your way to make sure that the
entirety of what was said is represented, because people with such
newsreaders will not easily understand what the original point was because
it is embodied in a different thread.
There are many well written explanations out there for why top posting is
bad. A quick google gave me too many to start listing them here.
For the record, years and years ago I used to top-post in usenet myself. I
felt that it was a cleaner representation of information: place the
information right at the top, like in email. I was dead wrong.
On Thu, 01 Nov 2007 10:01:08 -0400, Stephen M wrote:
>> "Less cumbersome"?? Not in my opinion.
>
> "seven thirty seconds" is preferable to "seven five"?
>
>
>>>But then again I'm comfortable in hexidecimal.
>>
hex, octal, bi-quinary, excess3, and so on. Who cares.
We could simplify the whole mess by referring to everything in 32nds or
64ths. Using 32nds, 1/2 could then be 16/, 1/4 would be 8/, and so on.
But if the US wouldn't adopt a system as simple as metric, my somewhat
tongue-in-cheek idea doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell :-).