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catsittingstillI've got maker fever. I've got it bad.
In addition to, (and after) doing the taxes, I have spent much of the week stalking around the house and sketching alternating "oh shit, how will I deal with that?" with "that will work!" and "this will be so great!" Partly this was plans for the rolling box for the octave mandolin and partly it was costume ideas. And an idea for a satchel for my music books. And things I could do to fancy up a pair of boots.
Thursday night I remembered I was recording Friday. That didn't leave much time to practice, but I knew Quetico needed new tracks and I had a vocal harmony I thought Last Spaceship could benefit by, so I did those, and it went pretty well.*
Then I raced off to the lumberyard with my gloves and ear protection and a crowbar. They looked at me kind of funny but let me have some scraps of various thicknesses of plywood to whack with my crowbar to test how tough they were. I propped up each scrap on two pieces of 4 x 4 and let it have it with the crowbar. The 3/8 broke pretty easily--but didn't shatter, just kind of splintered out the back The only half inch scraps they had were long strips only three or four inches across, which might be why they broke almost as easily as the 3/8, and more completely. The 3/4 scrap they had I couldn't break. I walloped it several times and could only make a dent, that you could find with your fingertips, if not really see.
If I made a shipping crate out of 3/4 that would probably be tough enough but I'm pretty sure it would exceed the weight allowances. I'm going to make a starter box out of 1/2 inch and see how I like that.
I paid extra to have the nice people cut it. I've done this before--it's my solution to at first not having a table saw, and now having a table saw but with a teeny little table. It only costs a few dollars more, and it's well worth it in my opinion. Now I have box panels sitting in the rumpus room looking hopefully at me in the mornings. Soon I will start messing with it.
Yesterday I was talking to Kip about handles. See, the downside of making it potentially a non-oversized airline checkable crate is that it's only 37 inches high. Which is not high enough to comfortably drag (by a considerable margin--those handles that proudly say they extend to thirty-nine inches aren't long enough--I need about forty-three). Making an extendable handle of wood is...theoretically possible but in practice probably beyond my skill. Kip pointed out I could savage an old piece of luggage (well, I think he said salvage) and get an extendable handle out of it to install in my box. I was looking thoughtfully at our luggage, trying to choose the oldest piece and he said hastily that we could go to the thrift store and get an old one that nobody loved.
Which we did. For seven dollars I had an extendable handle, with an inconvenient suitcase as packaging. Four drilled-out rivets later, the handle was mine! As a bonus I got a plastic housing with a couple of rollers I can fasten to the bottom of the crate. Now, my blind hole probe says I can cut the tubes shorter, which is good because otherwise they would poke the octave mandolin. However the separation between the tubes is such that they fall exactly where I was going to put the plywood walls of the compartments next to the mandolin neck. I have figured out a solution--I will take two or three chunks of two by four, drill 3/4 inch holes in them lengthwise, then notch the top and bottom of each to accept the 1/2 inch plywood of the compartments. That gives me something to fasten the tube ends to, so they can't shift, and lets me keep the compartments the same size.
Now I need to determine how to place the hole in the top of the crate that the extendable handle will come out of. I need it big enough to get my hand in and the handle out, hopefully without compromising the strength of the top too much. I foresee some messing about with cardboard patterns in my future.
And then I was going to get down to the mixing this morning, but I ran across an essay about steampunk on the web, and someone had added as part of a comment "we have bitten the apple of knowledge" and--pow!-- I had an attack of song, which I will try to put up tomorrow. I did do *some* mixing but it happened kind of late in the day.
*Except that the harmony for Last Spaceship goes really low and by the time I worked on it I was kind of tired, so I wasn't as stable on those low notes as I would like. I record again tomorrow so I will see if I can do a better job. Also I'm going to record a bonus song to be added if I can't get Common Ground to work. The bonus will be a surprise :-)
In addition to, (and after) doing the taxes, I have spent much of the week stalking around the house and sketching alternating "oh shit, how will I deal with that?" with "that will work!" and "this will be so great!" Partly this was plans for the rolling box for the octave mandolin and partly it was costume ideas. And an idea for a satchel for my music books. And things I could do to fancy up a pair of boots.
Thursday night I remembered I was recording Friday. That didn't leave much time to practice, but I knew Quetico needed new tracks and I had a vocal harmony I thought Last Spaceship could benefit by, so I did those, and it went pretty well.*
Then I raced off to the lumberyard with my gloves and ear protection and a crowbar. They looked at me kind of funny but let me have some scraps of various thicknesses of plywood to whack with my crowbar to test how tough they were. I propped up each scrap on two pieces of 4 x 4 and let it have it with the crowbar. The 3/8 broke pretty easily--but didn't shatter, just kind of splintered out the back The only half inch scraps they had were long strips only three or four inches across, which might be why they broke almost as easily as the 3/8, and more completely. The 3/4 scrap they had I couldn't break. I walloped it several times and could only make a dent, that you could find with your fingertips, if not really see.
If I made a shipping crate out of 3/4 that would probably be tough enough but I'm pretty sure it would exceed the weight allowances. I'm going to make a starter box out of 1/2 inch and see how I like that.
I paid extra to have the nice people cut it. I've done this before--it's my solution to at first not having a table saw, and now having a table saw but with a teeny little table. It only costs a few dollars more, and it's well worth it in my opinion. Now I have box panels sitting in the rumpus room looking hopefully at me in the mornings. Soon I will start messing with it.
Yesterday I was talking to Kip about handles. See, the downside of making it potentially a non-oversized airline checkable crate is that it's only 37 inches high. Which is not high enough to comfortably drag (by a considerable margin--those handles that proudly say they extend to thirty-nine inches aren't long enough--I need about forty-three). Making an extendable handle of wood is...theoretically possible but in practice probably beyond my skill. Kip pointed out I could savage an old piece of luggage (well, I think he said salvage) and get an extendable handle out of it to install in my box. I was looking thoughtfully at our luggage, trying to choose the oldest piece and he said hastily that we could go to the thrift store and get an old one that nobody loved.
Which we did. For seven dollars I had an extendable handle, with an inconvenient suitcase as packaging. Four drilled-out rivets later, the handle was mine! As a bonus I got a plastic housing with a couple of rollers I can fasten to the bottom of the crate. Now, my blind hole probe says I can cut the tubes shorter, which is good because otherwise they would poke the octave mandolin. However the separation between the tubes is such that they fall exactly where I was going to put the plywood walls of the compartments next to the mandolin neck. I have figured out a solution--I will take two or three chunks of two by four, drill 3/4 inch holes in them lengthwise, then notch the top and bottom of each to accept the 1/2 inch plywood of the compartments. That gives me something to fasten the tube ends to, so they can't shift, and lets me keep the compartments the same size.
Now I need to determine how to place the hole in the top of the crate that the extendable handle will come out of. I need it big enough to get my hand in and the handle out, hopefully without compromising the strength of the top too much. I foresee some messing about with cardboard patterns in my future.
And then I was going to get down to the mixing this morning, but I ran across an essay about steampunk on the web, and someone had added as part of a comment "we have bitten the apple of knowledge" and--pow!-- I had an attack of song, which I will try to put up tomorrow. I did do *some* mixing but it happened kind of late in the day.
*Except that the harmony for Last Spaceship goes really low and by the time I worked on it I was kind of tired, so I wasn't as stable on those low notes as I would like. I record again tomorrow so I will see if I can do a better job. Also I'm going to record a bonus song to be added if I can't get Common Ground to work. The bonus will be a surprise :-)
