ADA: Ask Doc Anything!

[DocsMachine]

can you drill and tap a half block pump arm to 4-40 for an A/T pin for me? for... science

-Of course! I could even do it for philosophy or sociology, but I can't promise better than a B+.

Drop me an email to doc "at" docsmachine "dot" com and I'll get'cha taken care of. I'll presume you know where it needs to be drilled, because there's about a dozen different kind of AT kits out here, and they're not all the same.

Doc.

[DocsMachine]

If you had to be both, punched in the face and kick in the nuts, which order would you like to receive them? ie...face then nuts or nuts then face?

-Really doesn't matter. But afterward, you'd best run for your life. And keep running, 'cause when I get angry, you'd need a mountain range or two to hide behind.

Doc.

[Deadmeat99]

Do you still have a back block for a Wraith?

[DocsMachine]

Yes. I was told Tim Firpo wanted it, but I've never received a reply email from him. You want it, I'll let it go cheap.

Doc.

[PaintballTek]

Hey DocsMachine !

If you didn't off that to the other gentleman I'll still grab it! I totally forgot about that until I saw this post!

Send me a PayPal Invoice at Tim@PaintballTek.com or drop me a line there if you would prefer another form for payment or want some stuff in trade and I'll get it sorted out! Sorry for totally spacing on that :-\ completely my fault!

[Fubarius]

Since I know you also do a little photography, what are some good first lenses to get? I got your basic beginner Cannon Rebel T7 kit with a 18-55mm and a 75-300mm "starter" set (Yeah I know, the BE or Tippmann of the DSLR world, but it's me, I'm ok with that). Having a ton of fun figuring out what all the little fiddly settings do.

[DocsMachine]

Since I know you also do a little photography, what are some good first lenses to get? I got your basic beginner Cannon Rebel T7 kit with a 18-55mm and a 75-300mm "starter" set (Yeah I know, the BE or Tippmann of the DSLR world, but it's me, I'm ok with that). Having a ton of fun figuring out what all the little fiddly settings do.

First, don't downplay the Rebel. Canon makes good kit.

Obviously, they may have done some cost-cutting here and there, but it's worth noting that my day-to-day camera is a Rebel XT that I bought new, from B&H Photo, in 2005. That's not a typo. I still use it nearly every day, and at the moment, I'd wager 90% of the photos on my website were taken with that camera.

I still use the original battery, which lasts me literally weeks.

It's also worth noting that the vast majority of the time, I have the original 18-55 "kit" lens on it- of course, I'm also just taking kind of a 'snapshot' to document a build to post online, but the full size images aren't notably worse than with a "better" lens.

Now, that said, the XT is only 8MP, while the T7 is 24MP. The considerably higher resolution is more demanding of your glass. The later "kit" lenses are still pretty good- I have one of the IS ones on a T5i- so don't think you "have" to get better, just because it's the "stock" lens.

Actually, that right there: Asking around online is a minefield. Everyone is a gear snob. Depending on who you ask, you'll be told it's virtually impossible to take a good photograph with anything less than a $9,000 lens, or that it's not even worth pressing the shutter button unless you have at least 35 MP, etc.

Screw those guys. People were taking top-notch pictures with four MP digitals. I took a photo with the XT, from diagonally across an airball field, through a non-image-stabilized $125 75-300, that when blown up to poster sized, was still clear enough you could almost read the serial number on the guy's Dragon Intimidator.

I used my 8.2MP 1DMkIIn from when I bought it in '06, right up to when I gave it to an MCB'er last year, after I'd upgraded to a 1Dx. I never felt that was in any way hobbled over a newer, bigger-better.

I would have no qualms whatsoever in sticking with the stock "kit" lens. It's capable and reliable.

That said, if you wanted something better? I plugged a 24-70/f2.8 onto that 1D all those years ago, and that's been an ideal kind of all-purpose lens. A new MkII version would do very well on your camera, though not the cheapest thing going.

One thing I'd do is pick up a 50mm 1.4, so you can play with the depth-of-focus. And with the extreme ranges of the digital ISO, you can get some awesome nighttime or low-light pics.

After that, it depends on what you want to do, and what your budget is. If I was made of money, my ideal glass collection would be the 50mm f1.4, a 24-70 f2.8 MkII, a 3rd-gen 70-200IS, probably a latest (3rd gen?) 16-35 f2.8, a 300mm f2.8, and a 500 f4. Post-Powerball-win, I'd add the 600 f4 and the 800.

Doc.

[Fubarius]

Awesome answer as always. Sadly all the 24-70 lenses are out of my current price range, but the 50mm f1.4 sounds like it could be great for some of the "artsy" pictures I want to take and isn't too expensive.

And my 75-300 lens, with the camera set to automatic "sports" mode, had dirt track Outlaw cars looking like they were standing still, you could read the writing on their tires, from the far side of the track. I'm MORE than happy with camera quality right now. I just need to remember that race cars look cooler with spiny blurry tires at a 1/200ish shutter instead of the freeze time 1/2000.

[Olsson]

Can we have this thread pinned, please. I find it oddly soothing to read Doc's brilliant answers to questions I have little to no interest in getting answered.
Also, I'm sure I will eventually have a life or death question in need of answering. Well - or any non-paintball question, really. It would be nice to have this thread easily accessible at those stressful times.

[DocsMachine]

Awesome answer as always. Sadly all the 24-70 lenses are out of my current price range, but the 50mm f1.4 sounds like it could be great for some of the "artsy" pictures I want to take and isn't too expensive.

-Yeah, that's the sad fact right there; the good glass for good DSLRs isn't cheap. It took me a long time to save up for that 24-70, and I still wish I could afford the 70-200IS.

BUT, like I said, don't dismiss the "kit" lens. Unless you're shooting a professional scene or something, it'll do you just fine for 90% of your day-to-day photography.

And my 75-300 lens, with the camera set to automatic "sports" mode, had dirt track Outlaw cars looking like they were standing still, you could read the writing on their tires, from the far side of the track. I'm MORE than happy with camera quality right now. I just need to remember that race cars look cooler with spiny blurry tires at a 1/200ish shutter instead of the freeze time 1/2000.

-I'm not closely familiar with what modes are available on the more recent cameras, but on my XT, the vast majority of the time I leave it on aperture priority, leave the 'kit' lens at wide open, and let it choose a shutter speed to get the right exposure. This works for virtually all the point-and-shooting I tend to do, but if it's too bright outside, all I have to do is use the dial to close down the aperture a few stops to get a more reasonable exposure.

I do the same thing if I want to blur an action shot- obviously you don't want to do it that way if you want to keep that 'artsy' depth of focus, but for most action, you're shooting at a distance anyway.

Doc.

[Law]

I do a good deal of computer illustration for work and I’ve always thought I would enjoy cartooning, but never gotten around to it. How did you get started and what software do you find yourself using?

[Spider!]

Doc,

Back in the day at least, you did some welded steel art. Did any particular process or material stand out as easier or more expressive?

Thanks!

[Siress]

What's the most elegant, affordable HPA fill station setup for personal use or a renegade field? (Asking for a friend. 😆) Thinking about the Shoebox or Yong Heng with separators, dryers, and all added vs. the classic big 'ol tank that gets swapped out by Airgas on demand.

[DocsMachine]

I do a good deal of computer illustration for work and I’ve always thought I would enjoy cartooning, but never gotten around to it. How did you get started and what software do you find yourself using?

-TWB started back in 2002, when my airsmithery was just four years old. I was still converting the side-room of my shop (really just an oversized 2-car garage) over to be the machine room/workshop, and one fun thing I did was convert the back door over to a sort of ad-hoc "dutch" door. The top half can be opened separately, and I have a narrow-ish 'shelf' at the top of the bottom door.

That way, during the winter time, or on a nasty, rainy day, etc. I can just open the top half, set my tools and chrono on the shelf, and test/tune the guns from there. Nice and convenient, still use the setup today, although I've also since put a bigger mill in that corner, and the oversized table kind of intrudes a bit.

Anyway, I use a lot of whiteboards- or dry-erase boards- in the shop, for notes and details and just scratch-paper type uses. The top section of the door was perfect to add a fourth one, so I'd then have one on each wall.

To 'inaugurate' said shiny new whiteboard, I drew this comic: http://www.the-whiteboard.com/autowb001.html

I then snapped a pic of it with my Olympus 1.3MP point-and-shoot digital, tweaked and cropped it a bit, and posted it to the Tinker's Guild. I'm pretty sure I just wrote "the whiteboard" on it just as a gag- at the time I had no plans to turn it into a regular thing. That was well-received in the Guild, so I did a few more, and almost immediately people suggested doing a regular feature- "web" comics having already long since been a thing, and quite popular.

I thought that, a semi-regular feature would be a good draw to bring people to my site- basically the comic would be advertising for the machine shop. I've been a sketch-artist since childhood, so I was already comfortable drawing, but I'd focused mainly on cars, tanks, monster trucks, etc. and wasn't so good with people. That's why 'Doc' is a polar bear and the 'people' were the "neckless nobodies".

It really started coming together when I found out that "the-whiteboard.com" was still available as a domain name, and one of the forum regulars wrote me a quickie little script to automate the updating and archiving.

I honestly figured it'd only last four to six months, maybe eight at the outside, before I lost interest, ran out of ideas, whatever, and abandoned it. And here it is having recently passed eighteen years later, over 3,000 strips, sixteen books, and something like 16,000 daily readers and is still going.

TL-DR version, I fell into it kind of accidentally, but through blind luck and a little natural talent, made it work.

The software is a funny one: Years ago, back when "CompUSA" was still a thing and I'd just started this biz, I wanted some good graphics software to tweak the various photos and things I was just starting to put online. "Digital downloads" weren't yet a thing, so I went up to the big city to CompUSA to buy something. Proper Photoshop (probably 6.0 back then) was something like $600. An alternative was PaintShop Pro, for just $99.

Well, my car at the time didn't cost $600, and since even today "airsmith" will not be found on any Fortune 500 type list, Photoshop was simply out of the question. Just a hundred bucks for PSP was a pretty serious dent in my finances, but it was at least doable, so I bought it.

I started out using it to simply crop and rotate photos, then add my "watermark" URL (since swiping photos to put on your private Geocities page was still a common thing ) and of course later used to to tweak the photos of the early TWB drawings, and after that, tweak the pen-and-ink paper drawings.

I am still using that software today.

It's 21 years old (I bought it off the shelf in 1999) and it's been on close to two dozen computers since then, including laptops and the like. It still works great, and I know it inside and out. And silly as it sounds to be using such antiquated software, it's actually ideal for the comic, because it's so simple. I don't have 20,000 brushes to choose from, and twelve dozen drop-down menus to pick some effect. TWB art is B&W line drawings, flood-filled and cel-shaded. There's really not much the strip needs that I can't do.

I do, now, have better software- recent versions of PSP which are very close to modern Photoshop in power, options and quality, but I hardly ever use it, simply because generally I don't need all those extra features.

And, on top of the software, the other key bit of kit is I use a 27" Wacom tablet, which lets me draw directly on the screen, quite easily and naturally. Remember, I was drawing with a pen on paper long before I started doing any kind of digital work, so I'm still very much used to that style. The tablet cost me a fortune, but it was worth every penny- it makes the whole process easier, which is important because of course I'm doing a comic every weekday now. (To the tune of 2 to 4 hours a night on average.)

(I would also be remiss if I didn't plug my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/docsmachine That support has been extremely helpful in keeping this little business of mine afloat, and even a buck or two goes a long way towards helping out if you wanted to consider joining. Fair warning; occasional boob alert. )

Doc.

[DocsMachine]

Back in the day at least, you did some welded steel art. Did any particular process or material stand out as easier or more expressive?

-"Expressive" is in how the medium is manipulated. You can make "expressive" art with clay, wood, jumbled rags or spray paint on a boxcar. Whatever medium you choose, you have to know how to work it to get the feeling or appearance you want. That's not something I can teach you here.

It's interesting to note, however, that when I made that sculpture back in 2006 (http://www.docsmachine.com/rage/index.html) I used maybe three ball-peen hammers (most with loose heads and cracked handles) a borrowed plasma cutter, a cheap "suitcase" 110V MIG, and two or three well-used and kinda-worn Weiss snips. I think I did go and buy a new snips, which worked well to start with, but was some off-brand and dulled surprisingly rapidly.

As I was making it, I very much wanted better tools. I wanted a better MIG, I'd have killed for a bench shear, I wanted my own plaz, I wanted better hammers- special-purpose stuff like wide "body" hammers, etc.- and I wanted a proper anvil.

Over the next... well, decade-plus, because A, this is Alaska, and you don't just find things like that around every corner, and B, I fix paintball guns for a living, which on the income scale comes in just above professional coat-hanger straightening, and just below hamster ranching. Anyway, over the next decade, I slowly collected all that. I bought a pretty decent MIG (which I got cheap ;cause it was broken) an adequate plaz (cheap because it was broken- that's a recurring theme here) a pretty darn good anvil (cheap because it'd been beat to crap) a bench shear (new, but Asian import- I want a Beverly but can't afford one) and a pretty fair collection of hammers, gathered one at a time from secondhand stores and garage sales.

I really want to do another one of those- actually several- but time is always short.

Doc.

[DocsMachine]

What's the most elegant, affordable HPA fill station setup for personal use or a renegade field? (Asking for a friend. 😆) Thinking about the Shoebox or Yong Heng with separators, dryers, and all added vs. the classic big 'ol tank that gets swapped out by Airgas on demand.

-I made do with SCUBA tanks for many years. The local dive shop or fire-extinguisher dealer would fill them for me for like $10 (and the latter would hydro them as needed.)

I think I had $100 each in the tanks and $50-$75 in the fill yokes.

I had a Bauer, I think it was, compressor for a while, I got it cheap because it was well-used and needed serious service, but I was never able to fix it to the point where I'd get decent pressure out of it. It took forever to get to 2,000 psi, and struggled mightily to get over 2,200. And it was horribly noisy all the while. It wasn't worth it- $10 for a SCUBA fill was a LOT easier.

A few years ago, I finally picked up a Shoebox, and I'm VERY happy with it. It's nice and quiet (though by no means "silent") and I can fill up a 68 or 90 to usable levels in maybe an hour. I'll occasionally let it run to charge up one of the SCUBAs just to have air on hand.

However, I was recently told that Kaye has stopped making the Shoeboxes, tanks to the market being flooded with the cheap Chinese units. If true, that's a shame- I haven't tried one of the Chinese ones, and have no idea how long they last, but personally, I'd rather buy an American-made unit from a paintball guy, than some commie knockoff.

I don't beat on my Shoebox much, and have at least one rebuild kit, so I figure it'll last me a good long while yet. If I had to start over, today, well, given my finances I'd probably just stick with a couple SCUBA and a fill yoke. Keeping in mind that I'm generally just testing a marker, so even just having 1K psi on hand is usually plenty. (I also have 20-lb CO2 tanks on hand for the MIG welders, and can and have pressed those into service for gun testing, too.)

If I need to play, the fields have their own compressors, or I'll go get one of the SCUBAs topped up.

But that's just me. If you need more air, might be worth looking into one of the imports.

Doc.

[Chuck E Ducky]

Any progress on the Duke? I need one in my life!