Harbor Freight

R

rfitzpatrick

Well-known member
I'd bought one of the lit fixtures called "helping-hands", has this lit magnifying glass on it. Drove away this morning, leaving the garage door open. The Sun came up and set some instructions papers I'd left there with the glass to smoldering, it burn thru a couple pages.
Caught it just as drove back, the smoke was amazing, no harm was done other than losing some instruction papers.


Luckly -- my PicUp was on the road!
 
I guess this is technically a pro-Harbor-Freight post, since you've stated that the magnifying glass does indeed work.
 
In the late 70's I was involved in testing some solar concentrators in a roof-top facility. They used parabolic mirrors to concentrate the sunlight on high tech, water cooled, solar cells. One weekend the fire department was called because the mirrors had set the roof on fire.

Now solar concentrators are dead due to the very low cost of the solar cells and the high cost of the mirrors, lenses, and tracking devices.
 
I got tired of turning around to check if I had closed my garage door...Of course I did...
I purchased this $21 garage door monitoring system off of Amazon. It works off of the home wi-fi and sends a message to my cell phone when the door is opened or closed. You can check the current door status by opening the app on your phone. What is even cooler is that I can open or close my garage door from anywhere I have a cell signal. I was able to open it from 1600 miles away when I wanted a neighbor to take a delivery from my porch into the garage. He text me the task was done and I closed the door.

Here is the link; https://www.amazon.com/Smart-Garage-Opener-Chamberlain-MYQ-G0301/dp/B075H7Z5L8/?tag=atomicindus08-20

Chap
 
Re: Harbor Freight spontaneous combustion FIRE causes

On the same subject ... something to remember ...

One afternoon in the mid 50's when we returned from a tour of The Greenfield Village I found a fire behind the Farmall Cub tractor shed.

The rabbits were all at the far end of their cage with the other end ablaze.

The hose was handy and fire was put out quickly.

The cause was a one gallon jug of water sitting on top of the cage which turned into a magnifying glass in the sun.

FWIW ...
 
Many old fire starting kits of old was a brass container for tinder, flint, steel, and a small magnifying glass set in the top for just that purpose.
Good info, now you know harbor freight has a decent glass.
 
My wife's parabolic makeup mirror set the wooden trim around a window to smoking real bad on a sunny day . I caught it just in time I could smell the smoke in the next room .
 
They can be pretty powerful. I once sat at a light and watch some fellow trying to light his cigarette with the lens on his glasses. He was pretty shaky and the light changed before I could see if he succeeded.
 
My third grade teacher showed us how to burn ants with a magnifying glass.I guess things were a little different in 1963.Not to say my teacher was old,but both my father and grandfather had her as a teacher also.And,her father had shaken hands with Abraham Lincoln.That Harbor Freight glass can be real handy.I don't use the finger clips on it much,but it is just right to take slivers out of my hands.
 
Gave my wife a 5" dia. crystal ball as a gift. Damn thing burned a hole in the back of her desk cabinet at work.
 
I bought some goggles with LED light on Amazon. Perfect for hands free locating then removing slivers.
 
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