Charlotte, N.C. (PRWEB) January 27, 2015

The new Rockwell BladeRunner X2 is a benchtop saw that can cut nearly everything in its path, including wood, PVC, plastic, aluminum and other non-ferrous metals, plus ceramic tile by using standard T-shank jigsaw blades. It takes the place of a hand saw, hack saw and miter box by making quick and accurate rip, scroll, cross, inside and miter cuts.

BladeRunner X2 is great for home workshops, garage-based shops and basements. Make quick, accurate and easy miter saw cuts in wood for molding and trim, picture frames or signs. Make intricate inside cuts where precision counts. Cut ceramic tile for kitchen back splashes or insets for bathroom/shower tile work.

Winter is the ideal time of the year for project building and creating craft projects indoors. BladeRunner X2, unlike a conventional table saw, can handle a variety of projects by simply changing blades. Its also affordable, compact and weighs less than 15 lbs. The saw has a low profile of 6 in.H, which when mounted to a workbench or table top, is a comfortable working height. The saws tabletop measures 17 in.W x 15-3/4 in.D.

Its a great economical saw for hobbyists and do-it-yourselfers who dont have the room or budget for a conventional table saw, said Brian Renner, Rockwells Product Manager. Plus, theres not a big learning curve in working with BladeRunner. It sets up in seconds and is ready to go.

What distinguishes BladeRunner X2 from other benchtop saws is its blade. Instead of a saw blade, it uses standard 4 in., T-shanked jigsaw blades, which are widely available through hardware stores and home centers. Changing blades is a snap. Simply press down and slide the blade release lever on the left of the saw to seat or release the blade. Blade guide rollers ensure 90 cutting at all times.

The BladeRunner X2s control arm assembly sits at the back of the table- top to accommodate longer and wider workpieces for ripping and crosscutting. It flips out of the way when making interior cuts. The blade guard assembly also incorporates a splitter, which helps keep straight cuts on track. The saws hold-down arm is adjustable and can be raised or lowered to match the thickness of the workpiece. It holds the workpiece against the tabletop to minimize vibration while cutting.

The BladeRunners fence has two adjustable knobs to help align workpieces for straight and accurate cuts. The tabletop has a channel for the fence with two measurement scales, one in the in the front and the other in the rear of the saw. By using the measurement scales to align the fence to the desired cutting width, the user is assured of an accurate cut.

The innovative 3000 spm saw is powered by a 5.5-amp motor. Its cutting capacity is 1 in. in wood; 1 in. in PVC; 3/8 in. in aluminum and ceramic tile, and 1/8 in. in mild steel. The blade stroke is 3/4 in.

The BladeRunners X2 base is impact resistant and constructed for durability. Its supported by four, non-marring rubber feet. The body of the saw features dedicated miter gauge and rip fence storage.

Read the rest here:
New Rockwell BladeRunner X2 Is Compact, Lightweight and Affordable

BAGHDAD (Tribune News Service) There was blood on the white tile floor, on the eight metal gurneys and on the hands of the worker using coarse black thread to sew up an autopsy incision on the latest body to arrive at the moldering central morgue.

A sour smell of blood filled the air as the man worked, a black apron draped across his blue scrubs, rubber boots shielding his feet. The woman had died of natural causes, he said. A doctor sent the body here for an autopsy just in case the death proved suspicious. (It didn't.)

Outside, four more corpses awaited autopsies: two splayed naked on gurneys, a third in a black body bag on the ground, and a fourth wrapped in a fuzzy flowered blanket with a trail of bloodstains from a bullet wound to the neck. More bagged bodies were piled nearby in a makeshift freezer.

Ten doctors and eight additional staff members are assigned to the central morgue. But that's barely enough, employees said, even though the workload is much lighter than during the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the height of Iraqi sectarian warfare four years later.

"The problem is not so much a shortage of doctors. It's a shortage of people willing to do the work," said the morgue worker, an Egyptian immigrant who asked to be identified only as Dr. Adil. "People don't really have the courage for it."

As in much of the world, there is only a small segment of the population willing to work with the dead. And there is also the risk of disease and, in Iraq, the danger of upsetting families who prefer Muslim Iraqi doctors, now in short supply.

Adil said he handles about five cases a day, half the daily total. That is a relatively light load, less than a tenth of the daily total in 2007. But the small staff is still strapped, forced to work quickly with little attention to detail, he said.

Adil has labored here for 18 years but, like many foreign staffers, does not have a full-time contract. Whereas doctors are paid $4,000 a month, he and other immigrant employees get about $210. They are deemed temporary workers, regardless of their length of service.

Temporary staff members can be appointed as permanent employees, he said. "We're hoping with the budget now they'll be appointing more," he said, as another worker wheeled in the body in the flowered blanket, probably a victim of sectarian violence.

Dr. Taha Qasim, head of administration for forensic medicine at the morgue, said the facility has been called upon to do more with fewer staff members, leading to delays.

The rest is here:
At Baghdad morgue, small staff forced to work quickly with little attention to detail

There was blood on the white tile floor, on the eight metal gurneys and on the hands of the worker using coarse black thread to sew up an autopsy incision on the latest body to arrive at the moldering central morgue.

A sour smell of blood filled the air as the man worked, a black apron draped across his blue scrubs, rubber boots shielding his feet. The woman had died of natural causes, he said. A doctor sent the body here for an autopsy just in case the death proved suspicious. (It didn't.)

Outside, four more corpses awaited autopsies: two splayed naked on gurneys, a third in a black body bag on the ground, and a fourth wrapped in a fuzzy flowered blanket with a trail of bloodstains from a bullet wound to the neck. More bagged bodies were piled nearby in a makeshift freezer.

Ten doctors and eight additional staff members are assigned to the central morgue. But that's barely enough, employees said, even though the workload is much lighter than during the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the height of Iraqi sectarian warfare four years later.

"The problem is not so much a shortage of doctors. It's a shortage of people willing to do the work," said the morgue worker, an Egyptian immigrant who asked to be identified only as Dr. Adil. "People don't really have the courage for it."

As in much of the world, there is only a small segment of the population willing to work with the dead. And there is also the risk of disease and, in Iraq, the danger of upsetting families who prefer Muslim Iraqi doctors, now in short supply.

Adil said he handles about five cases a day, half the daily total. That is a relatively light load, less than a tenth of the daily total in 2007. But the small staff is still strapped, forced to work quickly with little attention to detail, he said.

Adil has labored here for 18 years but, like many foreign staffers, does not have a full-time contract. Whereas doctors are paid $4,000 a month, he and other immigrant employees get about $210. They are deemed temporary workers, regardless of their length of service.

Temporary staff members can be appointed as permanent employees, he said. "We're hoping with the budget now they'll be appointing more," he said, as another worker wheeled in the body in the flowered blanket, probably a victim of sectarian violence.

Dr. Taha Qasim, head of administration for forensic medicine at the morgue, said the facility has been called upon to do more with fewer staff members, leading to delays.

Continued here:
In Iraq, like anywhere, it's hard to find good morgue workers

TULSA, Oklahoma -

There's an effort underway to open the city's first museum to honor firefighters and their history.

They're raising money through "The Find our History a Home Campaign" so they can buy a building from the American Lung Association.

The Fire Alarm Building built in 1931 is an original piece of Tulsa History and, hopefully, in the future, will be the Tulsa Firefighters Museum.

Sitting just east of downtown the Tulsa Fire Alarm building is in nearly perfect condition; the art deco building has been preserved for over 80 years.

"All of the tile work and most of the ceiling except the floor is original," said Debbie Bailey with the TFD Museum Board.

In the early days of the fire department it served as a central communication center for the Tulsa Fire Department.

Boxes were at nearly every street corner and when there was a fire, the lever was pulled and a message was sent to the building.

Firefighters would know what corner to go to and try and find the fire," Bailey said.

Times have changed, but the building remains a part of TFD history.

See more here:
Effort Underway To Create Tulsa Museum Honoring Firefighters, History

Right in the middle of the paddy fields on Thondamuthur Road is an ochre, tile roofed room whose walls bear witness to the works of a few great men, who ensured food for the masses.

And it is in this room the Paddy Breeding Station was born over a century ago. It will soon become a museum showcasing the history of paddy breeding since the British Raj. And, at present, the room is part of the Department of Rice, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU).

Vice-Chancellor K. Ramasamy says that the room will have old implements, photographs, paintings and everything that will bring alive the paddy breeding work that has been going on since 1912, starting with F.R. Parnell, who arrived here as the government economic botanist to collect paddy varieties. Thus was born the modern Indias first paddy breeding station.

The Imperial Government did establish another paddy breeding station in 1911. But, that is in Dakha with the new name, Bangladesh Rice Research Institute.

S. Robin, Head of the Department of Rice, says Parnells job was to collect various paddy varieties in South India, study and document them.

They had the help of an artist, whose paintings are intact and fresh even today and appear as good as photographs.

The museum to-be has a photograph showing the receipt of Valwadam paddy variety from the tahsildar of Bezawada (Vijayawada) on October 1903. Mr. Robin says that though the Imperial Government established the breeding station only in 1912, the work started at least a decade earlier.

The room also has old glass slides with picture negatives of paddy varieties to be projected and shown during seminars, a gold-plated microscope, equipment used in paddy collection, century-old books containing drawings of various paddy varieties and much more.

He says that Parnell, his successor R.O. Iliffe and his successor K. Ramiah and a few others collected close to 2,500 traditional paddy varieties from the Indian sub-continent.

To date, the university has the varieties stored in the Ramiah Cold Storage Bank.

Excerpt from:
Where they breed paddy for over a century

On a back street in Napa, amid the sounds of hammers and saws, workers are putting the final touches on space that could well represent a new era for the arts in Napa.

The Lucky Penny Community Arts Center opens on Friday night with a production of the joyful musical Oliver!, itself a tale of trials and tribulations that all come right in the end.

To say there is a flurry of activity in the new space now would be an understatement more of a blizzard than a flurry as we get ready to welcome the first audiences, said Barry Martin. He, along with Taylor Bartolucci, are the founders of Napas Lucky Penny Productions, and the driving force behind the new venue.

The facility will not be fully completed, but all the necessary elements will be ready, and were excited, nervous and a little dazed, Martin said.

Just six months ago, Bartolucci and Martin announced their plans to transform a former tile showroom into an arts center, but the project has been in the dreaming stage for a long time.

From the very beginning, back in 2009 when Barry and I founded Lucky Penny, we had a dream and goal of one day having our own facility, Bartolucci said. Performance space in Napa was so limited and costly, and the more productions we produced, the harder it was to find a venue.

Over the past few years, Barry and I have encountered so many different people, and we realized there was a greater need in our county, and that need was a community arts center. As a county that prides itself on tourism, music, arts and culture, its crazy that we dont have a location for our artistic residents to gather, she added.

Yes, we have the Lincoln Theater, City Winery at the Napa Valley Opera House and the Uptown Theatre, but there is no facility in Napa that not only acts as an arts presenter, but also an arts creator and incubator.

Hence, our dream: a facility that brings all art disciplines together. Visual and performing arts, music and dance, and more. An affordable, accessible creation space was not only desperately needed in Napa, but desperately deserved.

The duo were used to dreaming big on a budget. They had, after all, begun Lucky Penny by each contributing $200. They set out on a search throughout high-rent Napa until they finally found a space that could work.

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By dint of donations and hard work, community arts center opens Friday

RIDGID 8 Inch Wet Tile and Paver Saw with Stand - R4040S
I #39;ve done quiet a bit of tile work in the last 15 years with many different saws. I #39;ve used $89 cheapo saws and $1000 pro saws. This Ridgid 8 inch saw falls ...

By: WorkshopAddict

Excerpt from:
RIDGID 8 Inch Wet Tile and Paver Saw with Stand - R4040S - Video

Year 10 pupils from two Coventry schools tested their design skills by building replica biomass-fired power stations.

The Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) challenge days introduced pupils at Bishop Ullathorne Catholic School and Tile Hill Wood School and Language College to the sorts of skills required to work in the energy sector, while completing a series of tasks to design and build parts of a model power station.

The event was organised by E.ON as part of the energy companys interactive Energy Experience education programme.

Pupils were encouraged to think like engineers and work within teams as they undertook challenges throughout separate days at each school.

Working to a strict budget and deadline, tasks included designing a silo for storing the biomass fuel and constructing a flue tower.

Jackie Dines, science teacher at Bishop Ullathorne Catholic School, said: We appreciate being able to offer our pupils alternative ways to learn, and E.ONs STEM workshop covered the topic of biomass and power stations in a really interactive fashion.

Billie Poole, senior community relations officer at E.ON, said: Since it isnt always possible to take a year group into one of our power stations, we developed the STEM workshop instead.

It forms part of E.ONs Energy Experience educational programme and has been designed to support the National Science Curriculum, with practical elements intended to enable young people to learn about energy in a hands-on and fun way.

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Coventry schools team up for power station challenge

Pt. 2 of Algebra Tile Work (5.5)
Pt. 2 of Algebra Tile Work (5.5)

By: Amber Hays

The rest is here:
Pt. 2 of Algebra Tile Work (5.5) - Video

Jose Cajigas can be forgiven for venting his frustration with the highway-widening project along State Road 434 in front of his beauty salon.

After all, construction workers temporarily shut off the water to his business several months ago while a few of his customers sat with shampoo and dye in their hair.

In a panic, Cajigas raced across the busy highway to a nearby convenience store to buy several gallon-jugs of water and hauled them back to his salon.

"Oh, it was horrible," Cajigas said.

He's not the only small-business owner along S.R. 434 losing patience with the construction project that began in August 2012 and continues today, despite assurances from state transportation officials a year ago that the work would have been completed by last August.

"I just want to see it done," said Albert Guillemette, owner of Unique Stone & Tile, as he looked at road crews and heavy-construction machines across the street. "Enough already I get people that avoid this area because of all the work and confusion."

But the end is near, officials with the state's Department of Transportation say. The only work that remains, they promise, is adding a final layer of asphalt, striping and landscaping along the medians.

When those final touches are completed by the end of February, the 1.8-mile stretch of highway will have six lanes between Interstate 4 and Rangeline Road, plus bicycle lanes and wider sidewalks.

That will make the roadway easier to drive and draw more customers to businesses along the thoroughfare, officials said.

DOT spokesman Steve Olson said the project was delayed after workers found aging water lines underground that needed to be replaced.

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Businesses, drivers ready for S.R. 434 road project to be finished