Instrument case and stuff
Aug. 15th, 2011 09:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catsittingstillI glued the sides to the bottom today. Since this involved gluing the ends of the side planks to the face of the bottom planks, I pre-glued the ends of the side planks. You see, wood grain, especially end grain, positively *drinks* glue. I think it gets sucked up in those little capillaries that dragged water all the way up from the roots of the tree to the cells in its very tip top, maybe hundreds of feet up, back when the wood was part of a living tree. This means that gluing end grain often doesn't work out.
My clever plan to deal with this was to feed the end grain glue well before the final glue up. Let it drink the glue, let the glue solidify in the capillaries, and the second time you glue it, there should be no drinkage. Peter Alway told me that yes, that works, rocket makers do that. So now, when I have to glue end grain to face grain, I put it into practice.
I mixed up 1/2 ounce of epoxy and used a foam brush (cheap in all senses of the word, and I can't use them for anything that will show because they shed crumbs of foam... but this won't show) to dab it carefully on the ends of the side planks. Before I was halfway done with the dabbing, the planks I'd started with had drunk their tiny puddles of epoxy. So I dabbed all the way around, and then all the way around again. And then all the way around again, and then all the way around again. And then I reminded myself that the point was not to use as much epoxy as possible, the point was to seal those thirsty capillaries shut. So I stopped. Besides, otherwise I would have had to mix up more epoxy because that 1/2 ounce was gone. But you could see, no kidding, that the planks had sucked the epoxy back at least a quarter inch from the ends.
I let the epoxy cure about three hours, then made an ounce of epoxy, and painted it once (with the little paintbrushes, like watercolor brushes, that the hardware store sells for 15 cents each) around the pencil line I'd made on the bottom to show where the sides hit. Because even wood that is not end grain still drinks epoxy to some extent. Then I added sawdust to make dookie schmutz and started dabbing the mix on the ends of the side planks. Just once around, this time. Then, with a certain amount of dancing around caused by the fact that I could kind of use a longer workbench, I set the sides on the bottom and lined everything up. And started peering at the join. And decided about 80% of it needed more dookie schmutz.
Not a problem; I had lots, but wedging it in with a popsicle stick was pretty slow. So I pulled out the big gun; the $1.40 60 ml syringe they sell at the feed store with the big tip (so the sawdust in the dookie schmutz won't plug it up.) I used this to force dookie schmutz anywhere it looked like there was a gap, then smoothed it farther in with my gloved finger. At which point I figured out that I really should have taped the sides; I will have a lot of sanding to do tomorrow.
But hopefully this will make a strong join, and once it's faired and fiberglassed it will be strong enough to survive having the form pounded into it to break the hotglue bonds. We shall see.
And, the vinegar worked okay to get the dookie schmutz out of the big syringe, though I did have to use the handle of a rat-tail file to force a piece of paper towel through the tip to get the tip clean . $1.40 may not sound like a lot but the disposables add up after a while.
In other news, it is finally starting to cool off! Kip and I walked around the block just after sundown and when we came in the house was warmer inside than it was outside! I think this is the first time since May that that's happened. I wasn't expecting that in August, but I'm glad it's here and I sense some serious canoe-time in my future. And--ha!--this time I got the canoe finished *before* prime canoeing time instead of almost missing it completely like I did with Constance.
I got Finale PrintMusic 2011 for my half-birthday (the general birthday celebration we conduct while the family is together) plus an inexpensive-but-got-good-reviews pair of earphones to use for mixing. PrintMusic 2011 is now loaded on the newer laptop (I'm pretty sure the old one won't even run it.) It has changed somewhat from the (2007?) version I was running before, but hopefully not so much I can't work with it. I still need to unpackage the earphones and try them out, but I will do that soon. I went to Carson Newman but they don't have the schedule for the building with the studios yet. I have been slowly getting back into practicing but found that--while I can still play reasonably well, and I can still sing everything, I can no longer play and sing for an hour at a time. Well, plus I bet I've lost a lot of the finer edge of my playing, but right now what I'm noticing is the ache in my hand and the wobbling of my voice. However, I have a plan; I practiced 15 minutes this morning and I'm going to go practice 15 minutes when I'm done here, and see if I can work my way up to a solid half hour in a few days.
Also I missed two Alice Days in the run up to having family over and then while family was visiting. I will try to catch up at some point but I think at the moment I'm aiming to make the next Alice Day at the end of this week.
And I have three more little things to change on the LWV Booklet and then it's ready to print out a copy for our Thursday meeting for the "board" (leadership team?) to sign off on. Then that goes to the printers, a comfortable three weeks before I need to hand it out.
So life is actually pretty good with me. I hope you folks are all doing well too.
My clever plan to deal with this was to feed the end grain glue well before the final glue up. Let it drink the glue, let the glue solidify in the capillaries, and the second time you glue it, there should be no drinkage. Peter Alway told me that yes, that works, rocket makers do that. So now, when I have to glue end grain to face grain, I put it into practice.
I mixed up 1/2 ounce of epoxy and used a foam brush (cheap in all senses of the word, and I can't use them for anything that will show because they shed crumbs of foam... but this won't show) to dab it carefully on the ends of the side planks. Before I was halfway done with the dabbing, the planks I'd started with had drunk their tiny puddles of epoxy. So I dabbed all the way around, and then all the way around again. And then all the way around again, and then all the way around again. And then I reminded myself that the point was not to use as much epoxy as possible, the point was to seal those thirsty capillaries shut. So I stopped. Besides, otherwise I would have had to mix up more epoxy because that 1/2 ounce was gone. But you could see, no kidding, that the planks had sucked the epoxy back at least a quarter inch from the ends.
I let the epoxy cure about three hours, then made an ounce of epoxy, and painted it once (with the little paintbrushes, like watercolor brushes, that the hardware store sells for 15 cents each) around the pencil line I'd made on the bottom to show where the sides hit. Because even wood that is not end grain still drinks epoxy to some extent. Then I added sawdust to make dookie schmutz and started dabbing the mix on the ends of the side planks. Just once around, this time. Then, with a certain amount of dancing around caused by the fact that I could kind of use a longer workbench, I set the sides on the bottom and lined everything up. And started peering at the join. And decided about 80% of it needed more dookie schmutz.
Not a problem; I had lots, but wedging it in with a popsicle stick was pretty slow. So I pulled out the big gun; the $1.40 60 ml syringe they sell at the feed store with the big tip (so the sawdust in the dookie schmutz won't plug it up.) I used this to force dookie schmutz anywhere it looked like there was a gap, then smoothed it farther in with my gloved finger. At which point I figured out that I really should have taped the sides; I will have a lot of sanding to do tomorrow.
But hopefully this will make a strong join, and once it's faired and fiberglassed it will be strong enough to survive having the form pounded into it to break the hotglue bonds. We shall see.
And, the vinegar worked okay to get the dookie schmutz out of the big syringe, though I did have to use the handle of a rat-tail file to force a piece of paper towel through the tip to get the tip clean . $1.40 may not sound like a lot but the disposables add up after a while.
In other news, it is finally starting to cool off! Kip and I walked around the block just after sundown and when we came in the house was warmer inside than it was outside! I think this is the first time since May that that's happened. I wasn't expecting that in August, but I'm glad it's here and I sense some serious canoe-time in my future. And--ha!--this time I got the canoe finished *before* prime canoeing time instead of almost missing it completely like I did with Constance.
I got Finale PrintMusic 2011 for my half-birthday (the general birthday celebration we conduct while the family is together) plus an inexpensive-but-got-good-reviews pair of earphones to use for mixing. PrintMusic 2011 is now loaded on the newer laptop (I'm pretty sure the old one won't even run it.) It has changed somewhat from the (2007?) version I was running before, but hopefully not so much I can't work with it. I still need to unpackage the earphones and try them out, but I will do that soon. I went to Carson Newman but they don't have the schedule for the building with the studios yet. I have been slowly getting back into practicing but found that--while I can still play reasonably well, and I can still sing everything, I can no longer play and sing for an hour at a time. Well, plus I bet I've lost a lot of the finer edge of my playing, but right now what I'm noticing is the ache in my hand and the wobbling of my voice. However, I have a plan; I practiced 15 minutes this morning and I'm going to go practice 15 minutes when I'm done here, and see if I can work my way up to a solid half hour in a few days.
Also I missed two Alice Days in the run up to having family over and then while family was visiting. I will try to catch up at some point but I think at the moment I'm aiming to make the next Alice Day at the end of this week.
And I have three more little things to change on the LWV Booklet and then it's ready to print out a copy for our Thursday meeting for the "board" (leadership team?) to sign off on. Then that goes to the printers, a comfortable three weeks before I need to hand it out.
So life is actually pretty good with me. I hope you folks are all doing well too.
