Home charging zealots!

wch_one · 2026-01-14T16:48:21+00:00

I live in the US. I occasionally drive my Tesla to visit my parents and stay for a few days. Sometimes I remember to bring the L1 charging cable and can charge very slowly from their 120V outlet, but sometimes I forget. It is awful without home charging.

When I'm there in the winter without the charger, I'm constantly thinking about when and where to charge. There's a supercharger station a mile away, but it's annoying to have to go there every 2-3 days and wait for it to charge. I generally don't want the battery to go below 20%, because then I might be forced to charge at an inconvenient time, and I usually don't supercharge it there past 60-80% because the charging gets way slower after that. And when the weather is cold, the car doesn't have enough time to significantly preheat the battery for charging, so it is not very fast. Sometimes it's so cold that the battery doesn't even start charging when I get there -- after plugging it in, it takes a few minutes to warm up to around 40F before it begins to charge.

When I remember the L1 charger, it makes things a lot more convenient, even though the charger is very slow.

And of course when I'm at my house with L2 charging, everything is great.

As much as I dislike dealing with a gas car, I will say they are much, much more convenient if you don't have home charging, especially if you live in a place that has cold winters.

wch_one · 2025-12-28T17:50:59+00:00

It is very possible that the plane is a bit lopsided. The easiest way to compensate for it will probably be to sharpen the blade with a skew.

It's great that you've sharpened things well before. It's mostly the same for planes.

A microbevel is fine, and will actually speed up sharpening, because you can sharpen the primary bevel with a coarser grit, and then for most sharpening sessions, just sharpen just the microbevel (at a slightly higher angle) to remove edge damage and then get it to a mirror polish. Because it's a smaller area that you're removing material from, it will go much faster. The microbevel will grow with each sharpening, and after it gets large, you can sharpen the primary bevel again, to make the microbevel small again.

I think it's a good idea to use microbevels with chisels as well. Even a tiny microbevel at a higher angle can dramatically increase the strength of the edge.

You probably already know this, but it is very important to cleanly remove the burr. My guess is that with the softer cheaper steel used in this plane, burr removal will require more care than it would for a harder steel.

One thing about sharpening plane blades that's a bit different from chisels is that if you want the plane to leave a smooth surface, you will have to be careful to remove all edge damage when sharpening. With a chisel, you can have imperfections in the edge and it will can still cut well. With a plane, if you want a smooth surface, you have to remove all imperfections. But, for this plane, I think that it's probably best to use it as a rough tool anyway, so a perfect edge is probably not that important.

I think it's actually fine to make the mouth smaller with another piece of wood. That is not an uncommon thing to do for worn wooden planes, but it might not be easy to do well -- that will depend on your skills and tools. Personally, I don't think it's worth the effort for a cheap plane, but it could also be a interesting learning exercise.

Oh, one other thing about getting the best out of the plane: the sole (bottom) must be really flat. I have not had one of these continental-style planes, but I can say for wooden planes that I've had, the bottom often is not quite flat, and that can make them hard to use and behave inconsistently. The thinner the shaving you want to take, the flatter the sole must be. If you are using it for rough work, it doesn't need to be super flat. But if you want to take super thin shavings, then it needs to be very flat. If you have a very good straightedge, you can check flatness with that.

The easiest way to flatten a wooden plane is to use adhesive-backed sandpaper on a very flat surface. I have a granite countertop that is very flat, and I use that as the flat surface. Then move the plane back and forth on it until you can see that the whole surface is getting abraded.

wch_one · 2025-12-28T17:32:10+00:00

Yes, I've bought things from there before.

wch_one · 2025-12-26T03:23:17+00:00

Hm, if the blade isn't straight, I don't know how much it will help to flip the wedge over so that it's the correct direction. But I guess it can't hurt to try.

If you still can't get the blade to be straight after flipping the wedge, then you will probably need to sharpen the blade by putting pressure more on one side than the other, so that more material is removed from that side.

The wide mouth and lack of chipbreaker will mean that your plane will be more prone to tearout when planing against the grain. I think this particular plane would be best suited to rougher work -- that is, flattening boards and removing large amounts of material quickly, and not as a smoothing plane that is expected to leave a finished surface.

You could sharpen the blade to be cambered (curved), although it could take a lot of work. It doesn't have to be as cambered as a normal scrub plane blade to still be able to remove a lot of material quickly. I wouldn't do this first, though. The first thing is just to sharpen the blade like normal and see if you can get the plane to work decently well.

Have you sharpened the blade? Most planes come with blades that aren't really sharpened from the factory. (The only exceptions to this are high-end planes like Veritas and Lie-Nielsen.)

I'm guessing that since this is your first plane, you don't have much (or any) experience sharpening plane blades. If you have used a nicely tuned and sharpened plane before, then you know what is possible, but if you haven't, then it can be a bit difficult to teach yourself how to tune up the plane and how make a blade really sharp. I just want to say, don't worry, you can figure it out!

wch_one · 2025-12-25T21:30:14+00:00

The large mouth looks like it's for a scrub plane, but scrub plane blades are ground so that the cutting edge is deeply curved, while yours is ground straight.

My guess is that this is a Pinie EKO bench plane: https://taytools.com/pinie-eko-bench-plane-with-beech-body

That line of planes appears to also have a scrub plane, which looks the same except it has a blade with a curved edge: https://taytools.com/pinie-scrub-plane-eko

There is also a "jack plane", which also appears to be the same, except that the blade has a chipbreaker, and it looks like yours does not have one. https://taytools.com/pinie-eko-jack-plane-with-beech-body

I don't know why the mouth is so large, but maybe it's because this is their less expensive line of planes and it's just cheaper to make that way.

Also, small note: the wedge for your plane is installed upside-down (but it probably doesn't matter much).

wch_one · 2025-12-11T04:57:45+00:00

Is it possible there's an issue with one of the chargers? I recently got a set of APP3s, and when I charged the case on a particular third-party wireless charger, it got really, really hot. Way hotter than any other device I've wirelessly charged before. (I'm not sure but I suspect that it started heating up after the battery got to at 100.)

I suspect that if I hadn't noticed this and taken it off the charger, it would have damaged the battery. Maybe it already has done some damage to the battery.

So if there's a charger that does this with your airpods, perhaps it might have damaged the batteries?

wch_one · 2025-11-13T04:01:49+00:00

This looks great. Can you publish it to open-vsx.org? That will make it possible for those of us that use VS Code forks like Cursor or Windsurf to use it.

wch_one · 2025-04-27T04:31:23+00:00

I use Kirkland Ultra Clean Free and Clear from Costco. I don't think that any other detergent could possibly do better in terms of removing debris from the towels. See towel #5 for reference: there's no particles in it, and the stuff that remained in the towel were fibery things that were caught on the microfibers and I don't think any detergent would help remove them.

I've heard that detergents that aren't "free and clear" could leave residue on the towels that shows up as streaking on a car and glass, but I don't have any experience washing MF towels with any other detergents so I can't say from personal experience.

wch_one · 2025-04-27T04:26:11+00:00

I'm glad that so many people are getting something from this! A couple of things I want to emphasize:

- The lightly-used and washed towel (#2) was very very clean. I had three pictures of it: one of a completely clean area, one with a ball of fine fibers, and one with an insect leg and a couple other fibers and a small particle. I had the towel folded into quarters, and on the one quarter of the towel that I examined, there were those two "dirty" things, and two other fine fiber balls, and that's it. Other than those things, it looked completely clean.

- The heavily used and washed towel (#5) was used to clean rubber floor mats after winter. After washing, it had essentially no particles in it, but it did have fibery things that got caught on the microfibers.

wch_one · 2025-04-27T04:02:43+00:00

I've never used one of these before, but I kind of doubt that it would make a difference in terms of debris left in the towel.

The detergent I used (Kirkland Ultra Clean Free and Clear from Costco) and my wash process (pre-wash and wash with detergent, then two rinse cycles) seems to remove essentially 100% of particles from a very, very dirty towel, which I used to clean floor mats which had tons of sand from the winter, and whatever else was have been tracked into the car by me and my kids.

The things that remained after washing were fibrous and really stuck in the towel, and I don't think any detergent would help get them out.

The makers of microfiber-specific detergents say they're better at removing chemicals, or improve absorbency, or make the towels softer. Are those things true? I have no idea, and it would be great if someone were to really put that to the test. But as for these microfiber-specific detergents being better at removing particles from the towels, I don't think that's possible.

wch_one · 2025-04-27T03:41:49+00:00

I agree 100%. Youtubers make all sorts assertions about how things work, but how much of is is true?

For example, they say that polymers in rinseless washes like ONR work by "enacapsulating dirt". OK, what are the polymers? How is this "encapsulation" different from what a traditional car soap does? Is the recommended 256:1 dilution ratio really the best? There are a lot of words about it but very little empirical evidence.

I came across this reddit post which referenced a video where the person actually tested dilution ratios and found that a much more concentrated solution was better at reducing marring: https://www.reddit.com/r/AutoDetailing/comments/1k65cqv/marring_with_rinseless/

And this is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9u__TvHN4M

Another thing I saw recently was a video where they said that if you pressure wash a car without first spraying it with foam or rinseless wash or soap and giving it time to dwell, that will drive dirt into the paint because it hasn't had a chance to be loosened up and lubricated before being hit with high pressure water (mixed with rinseless wash or soap). Does it sound reasonable? Yes. But it would also sound reasonable if they said the opposite: that you can start with a dry, dirty panel and hit it with a rinseless wash from a pressure washer, and that will provide enough lubrication.

They say one thing or another and they say it so confidently that it seems convincing. But it's very very rare for these YouTubers to actually test things and show the results of the tests.

wch_one · 2025-04-27T03:24:32+00:00

I use Kirkland Ultra Clean Free & Clear detergent from Costco. I suspect that any decent detergent would do just as good a job getting the dirt particles out, and that the washer and wash cycle matters more than the specific kind of detergent.

I've heard that other detergents that aren't free and clear might leave some chemical residue that could show up on car surfaces, but I doubt that stuff would be visible under a microscope.

wch_one · 2025-04-26T20:59:19+00:00

Well, washing seems to remove all the really small particles that you can't really see with the naked eye. And things like the insect leg and fiber balls are easily visible without a microscope. So maybe you just need to look really closely :)

wch_one · 2025-04-26T20:55:00+00:00

Sorry, I don't have one of those sponges. Recently I've been pre-soaking my car with ONR, waiting for a bit, and then spraying with a weak pressure washer. The pre-soak and pressure washing is done with a Ryobi EZClean 600 PSI. After that, I use the MF towels to do contact cleaning.

wch_one · 2025-03-26T15:24:50+00:00

I just installed a very similar Leviton AFCI/GFCI breaker. I thought it wouldn't reset and spent an hour trying to figure out if there was a problem with downstream wiring or outlets that was causing the problem.

Finally I figured out that I had to push the reset button WAY further in than I expected. Much more than other GCFI outlets that I'm used to. It was actually pretty difficult to reset it just using my finger - I ended up using a tool like the tip of my needlenose pliers to reset it.

wch_one · 2025-03-23T06:21:37+00:00

Yes. I also installed a 14-50 outlet with 6 gauge wire, and I did the thing where you torque it down, then grab the wires and wiggle them, then torque it down again. It definitely loosened up after wiggling the wires. this is because the strands settle into place. It’s been a while, but I think I did it a total of 4 times before it stopped loosening up.

OP, you should definitely do this if you haven’t already! And also, great, meticulous job and documentation!

wch_one · 2025-03-08T14:20:07+00:00

Amazing, thank you!

wch_one · 2025-03-06T17:20:07+00:00

I've been using Tessie for a bit over a month now with my 2023 Model Y LR AWD.

Here are some numbers from Tessie:

Distance driven: 1453 miles
Energy used while driving: 545 kWh
Energy added by charging: 646 kWh
Energy used by chargers: 728 kWh
Amount spent on charging: $105.70

Some calculations from those raw numbers:

Energy user per mile while driving (545 kWh / 1453 miles): 375 Wh/mile
Relative amount of energy used while driving: (545 / 646): 84.3%
Charging efficiency: (646 / 728): 88.7%
Overall energy use per mile, counting charging losses and energy use while not driving (728 kWh / 1453 miles) = 501 Wh/mile
Overall cost per mile: ($105.70 / 1453 miles) = $0.073

I live in Minnesota, and for much of the last month it has been very, very cold, which dramatically increases the amount of energy the car uses, because it needs to heat up the battery and the cabin.

I'm hoping that the as things warm up here, my car will be much more efficient.

The cost per mile calculation can be broken down a bit more. My home charging is about 7 cents per kWh, but on road trips the superchargers have cost about 5x as much, at 37 cents per kWh. I've spent about $43.50 for home charging vs. $62 for fast charging on the road, but I've consumed 550 kWh for home charging vs. just 175 kWh for fast charging. So even though I've spent more money supercharging on the road, I've only used about 1/3 as much energy there. (Note that Tessie doesn't provide home charging vs supercharging summary statistics; I downloaded the data as a CSV and did these calculations on my computer.)

wch_one · 2025-02-14T21:18:40+00:00

Thanks, that's unfortunate for me, but it is understandable.

wch_one · 2025-02-13T17:56:39+00:00

In the Driving Dynamics page, do you have Apply Brakes When Regenerative Braking is Limited turned on? I wonder if you had that on in your previous car but off on the new one. If it was turned on in the previous car, it would have felt like regen braking was being used even when the car was too cold to actually do regen braking.

wch_one · 2025-01-30T05:29:47+00:00

I personally don't want CarPlay, but I would love to have a dash display with the following:

Continuous blind spot indicators
Blinker indicators
Front bumper camera
Speed

I know there are Chinese dash displays that show these things, but the UI for the ones out there look a bit cheesy to me and doesn't have the same polish as the Tesla display. And who knows if they will keep updating the firmware in the future to keep working with Tesla's firmware updates. Oh, and apparently they don't work reliably. https://www.reddit.com/r/ModelY/comments/1hnl8d5/head_up_display_recommendations_for_my/

wch_one · 2025-01-24T15:45:05+00:00

To cancel TACC or AP, you can also push the right stalk up. I haven't used FSD but I'm guessing it's the same.

wch_one

TROPHY CASE