Hobbies

Sourdough

I bake naturally leavened bread, mostly batards and boules from a well-kept starter, and now and then an einkorn miche. The ritual suits me: a levain built in the morning, a long autolyse, folds through the afternoon, a cold proof overnight, and a hot oven the next day. I keep a written log of each bake, with flour blends, hydration, and timings, and adjust from there. Lately I have been working on a high-hydration white batard made with half bread flour and half Rouge de Bordeaux, baked hard for a deep brown crust.

A round of dough dusted with flour, proofing in a spiral-patterned banneton basket. — A boule proofing in the banneton.

A large round einkorn miche, cut in half to show a dense, even crumb, with a dark crust scored in a diamond pattern and dusted with flour. — An einkorn miche, cut open.

A hand holds a slice of sourdough with an open, glossy, irregular crumb inside a thin golden crust. — The crumb my sons consistently prefer: open, irregular, and glossy.

Restoring a Heathkit TT-1

Heathkit's TT-1 is a vacuum-tube tester from the era when serious test equipment was sold as a kit you built yourself. Mine needed what any sixty-year-old electronics needs: every capacitor measured and most of them replaced, resistors checked against the manual's values, and the wiring gone over joint by joint. I keep a spreadsheet of each part, what it measured, and whether it stayed or went. The tester's job, now that it is trustworthy again, is to sort the good tubes from the tired ones in my guitar amplifiers.

The Heathkit TT-1 mutual conductance tube tester open on a bench, its grey panel full of black knobs and tube sockets under a large meter, with boxes of new Mesa/Boogie and JJ Electronic tubes and a book on tube design beside it. — The TT-1 on the bench, with a stock of new tubes waiting to be tested.

The TT-1 chassis out of its case on a towel: the multi-tap transformer's terminal board bristling with colored wires at the top, the paper roll chart of tube settings on its spool in the middle, new capacitors at the bottom, and pliers, cutters, flux, and tape around it. — The chassis out of its case: the multi-tap transformer, the paper roll chart, and the tools of the trade.

The underside of the TT-1 chassis: a dense field of cloth-covered wires in many colors, tube sockets, and old components. — Under the chassis, with the original wiring.

Fingers hold a small black tubular capacitor marked .05 MFD 200 VDC. — An original 0.05 µF paper capacitor, on the replace list.

An orange 20 microfarad, 350 volt electrolytic capacitor clipped to a handheld ESR meter, whose screen reads 47.26 microfarads and 0.28 ohms. — Measuring a 20 µF electrolytic: it read 47 µF, so it was replaced.

Two new black electrolytic capacitors and a green film capacitor wired into the chassis beside older brown and cream components. — New capacitors in place of the old.

The back of a rotary selector switch, rewired with a ring of new resistors and a small white capacitor. — The back of the signal-strength selector, with fresh resistors.

A rectangular metal can capacitor stamped Industrial Condenser Corp., Chicago, 3.6 plus 3.6 plus 7.1 MFD, 125 VAC. — The oil-filled ballast capacitor. It measured fine, and it stayed for a second reason: it serves the constant-current filament test used by very old tubes, and I have none that need it.

Music and other making

Music is on its own page: the West Liberty Dulcimer Revue. I also like to repair and build things at home, from guitar amplifiers to furniture. More of that may appear here in time.