How To

A simple fix for a non-working Parkside orbital sander

My orbital sander (Parkside PAEXS 20-Li B2) stopped working without any signs of an electrical short or a mechanical malfunction. Here’s how I got it working again, by simply spraying a bit of contact cleaner directly into the power switch, which had gotten clogged up with small dust particles.

I realize that in this case, it was an easy fix. Chances are — given that the switch is unsealed — for most of these orbital sanders that stop working for no apparent reason, that the switch is at fault, and it may only require a bit of judicious use of contact cleaner spray.

As I said in the video, the problem will re-occur, exactly because the switch is unsealed. It did for me, just a day after the fix. What I ended up doing afterward was to remove the sliding switch which sits on top of the regular, unsealed switch and now, with the real switch exposed, I can continue to spray contact cleaner directly into it, every time it gets clogged. It’s simple and it’s practical and it saves me from having to source a sealed switch of the exact same dimensions and solder it onto the contacts, which would take extra time and effort.

Hope this helps!

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How To

A primer bulb replacement on my string trimmer

I have á Stihl FS 94 C string trimmer which has been working very well for the past 8-9 years that I’ve had it. I’d been having issues when starting the trimmer because it required more pulls than usual, and I didn’t know what was causing the problem until I investigated more closely.

It turned out to be the primer bulb (purge bulb or primer pump), which had cracked and needed to be replaced. Believe it or not, in all these years I haven’t even replaced the spark plug on this thing and it still works great. Don’t think I’ve been neglecting its upkeep though. I have been lubricating the axle and using good gasoline mixed with the correct amount of 2T oil and watching and listening closely to the engine noises, to see if anything needed to be fixed. Nothing ever did, until now. If all our other tools and products we use in our homes were made this well, our lives would be a whole lot easier.

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How To

A repair and a small upgrade to our plumbing

I’ve recently had to deal with a plumbing issue at our country house: the cold water pressure was very low. As it turned out, the bladder (or diaphragm) inside the well pump expansion tank had burst. I replaced the entire pump assembly with a spare one.

I then decided to install a Y filter after the filtration system, which may sound counterintuitive but isn’t. Adding a Y filter (also known as a Y strainer) în between your whole house filtration system and the house pipes is an easy way to ensure that no particulates from faulty filters ever enter the pipes, clumping inside them throughout the house, causing reduced water flow and clogging your faucets.

As long as I was recording video of the repairs, I thought I’d also talk about the way I use teflon tape on my brass fittings. I know most people prefer to use hemp fibers and pipe dope, but I like the ease of use and the serviceability of the tape.

I hope these videos are helpful to some of you.

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This marks (the end of?) a particularly prolonged pause in my posts. No guarantee of timely future posts though. I’ve been busy with other projects.

I was tempted to set an AI-generated featured image for this post. It’s getting so good it makes me feel superfluous. These three are my own photographs, for what it’s worth.

Also, no thanks to WordPress for continually changing the design and the options on the edit page. I wasted half an hour fiddling with the new nonsense till I finally switched to the classic editor. A word of advice to them: just because you can dazzle with more options, bells and whistles, it doesn’t mean they’re needed, particularly when the publish button is nowhere to be found. (I believe this is an issue that occurs on Firefox ESR.) When a longtime user has to check the forums just to publish a post on a platform that made its name for its simplicity and ease of use, that’s when you ought to know you’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere. I’ve been using WordPress since 2004, so my critique ought to hold some value.

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How To

Repairing the severed power cord of my Makita planer

While working on a project, I accidentally cut through the power cord of my Makita planer with its own blade. This is how I fixed it.

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