catsittingstill | Entries tagged with workshop

The 3/4 inch dowel did not fit in the drill chuck. I should have seen that coming. I ended up sanding by hand, and in the course of checking how things fit made the discovery that the North and South ends of the couch appear to have something different about the holes for the pin, which I guess was good to know before I made both pins the same.

I ended up using part of the dowel I had been using in the couch for years as the business end of one pin, and making the other from fresh dowel. A 3/4 inch hole made for a fit that wasn't so snug as to be difficult to insert the pin, but wasn't wiggly-loose either.

The pins are going to be a circle of 1 inch thick ash board, for something to grip, with a pin of slightly less than 3/4 inch dowel. I made the tactical error of rough-cutting the circles free of the board before drilling them, and then having no way to clamp them on the table for the drill press, and work had to stop for half an hour while I built a clampable jig to make sure the small pieces of ash wouldn't turn or shift while being drilled.

One hole ended up off center, but both were straight and the right size, and off center was correctable by making the circle slightly smaller, which is probably good anyway since my first circle size was a bit too big for a comfortable grip. Yay for the Shopsmith disc sander which is deeply capable, and to which I can attach my shopvac for minimal dust.

I can mix 6 ml of epoxy but that is probably the lower limit given my current syringes.

The glued-up pins are sitting in the shop, allowing the epoxy to cure to full strength (and also chemical inertness so it's safe to sand.) It is frustrating because I'd like to work on them *now* because I want them finished, but I want to give the set up maximum opportunity to hold up under use, and I don't want to have to wear an N95 while working on them, so.

The living room is a lot cleaner than it was, but not really *finished* which seems to have been my standard for housecleaning all the rooms I have attempted so far. I am running a game today so I doubt I will get much cleaning done.

While cleaning the living room I was annoyed AGAIN by the way the dowels I’m using to pin the back of the futon/couch in the up position stick way out to either side of the couch. When we got that couch it had pins (or at least one pin; I don’t remember for sure if it had both even then) that were the right length and diameter for the holes they went into, but one end of the dowel of the pin was imbedded in a disk of wood that gave me something bigger to grip when inserting or removing the dowel. Somewhere in our multiple moves, those pins disappeared, and I bought some 3/4 inch dowel and hacked it down to about 6 inches of length, to make it long enough to grip with my whole hand, but that makes it stick inconveniently far out of the couch.

And I remembered that disk of wood on the end of the original dowel/pin and thought “I could do that. I have hardwood scraps, and a bandsaw, and a drill press, and epoxy and sawdust; I could absolutely do that.

Now the down side is 3/4 inch dowel is just a *smidge* too large. My hunch is that this futon frame was built somewhere that used metric sizes, and the original pins were 1.75 cm in diameter. I carved down the edges of the 3/4 inch dowel and with great effort can jam it in that hole, but it doesn’t go in as far as the design length. I would like 1.75 cm dowel, or 11/16th dowel, which would be a bit thinner but not a lot. But no luck finding anything like that locally. So what I may end up doing is putting the 3/4 inch dowel in the drill press, as if it were a drill bit, and then just gently sanding it, stopping the drill press, measuring with my micrometer, checking it in the hole, rinse and repeat until I get it to the size I want. Not great but I think it will work. I will give it a try in the morning.

And in the meantime I found a bit of 1/4 inch dowel and replaced the one missing 1/4 inch pin in the quilt rack that I received from my mother-in-law when she was downsizing to move to Tulsa. I just walked past that thing just now and that one empty hole caught my eye again and I thought “I can fix that.”

Now I am off to open the windows in the shop and stick fans in them to try to take advantage of the cool evening air to cool my shop down.

I have been undertaking a fairly major house cleaning because I’m having family over for a summer visit in July, and there’s nothing like knowing your parent is coming to make you look around at all those chores and household repairs you’ve been meaning to get to later and realize that later is now.

Last week’s major project was cleaning out the wood shop, which really hadn’t been done for three or four years, but now it is cleaned out; several generations of bug dirt have been swept up and thrown out, lots of things have been put back in their places, some have been given new places and 2 contractor bags worth of garbage and enough wood and plywood scraps to build 2 desks and a treehouse have been thrown away. I only have so much room for wood scrap storage and Choices Were Made.

The up side of this is that I have repaired the piece of loose trim next to the back door that had been annoying me since we moved in 10 years ago, and repaired the back of the kitchen cabinet, which was a bit of a production, because it turns out they’d been nailing the pretty veneer and the trim into nothing but the 1/8th inch plywood that covered the back of those cabinets. No wonder that didn’t hold; they might as well have been nailing into cardboard. So I had to get a piece of real wood back there, and ended up using hot glue to stick it back there well enough that I could drill through the thin plywood from the other side, and then put in real wood screws. There are 7 #8 wood screws in the veneer and another 3 in the trim—they will show but they are brass and I think they look nice enough. I’m pretty sure this repair will hold.

And this morning I spent a couple of hours repairing a kitchen chair where the rail had come loose from the leg it was bracing. I cleaned out the old glue as well as I could, painted both parts with epoxy, mixed some silica into the epoxy to improve gap filling, glopped a bunch in the hole and pressed the rail back into place. It will need a couple of days to cure to full strength and then we will see if it can take being sat on.

However I really need to get to the actual “clean the living room” part of this week’s program; it is Wednesday already.

So recently it started warming up and I got back to work on the guitar case.

I'm not claiming this is a cause and effect scenario--but I can't help but notice that having the workshop be slightly warmer has coincided with my being willing to spend more time out there. And once I started standing around looking thoughtfully at the guitar case, it occurred to me that there might be an easier way to get the jig out.

Last time, I built the entire bottom of the octave mandolin case around the jig I used to hold the side strips in place while I glued them together. Removing the jig was quite difficult because while whacking the jig into the case broke the hot glue bonds, the jig became wedged in place. This time I attempted to make jig removal easier by only hotgluing every other strip to the jig and relying on friction to hold the strips between them in place while the glue dried. This worked fairly well in the gluing stage, and I figured breaking half as many hot glue bonds would be about half as hard.

But it occurred to me--maybe I could sand the sides smooth on the outside -- and then fiberglass the sides before I glued the bottom on. So I pulled the screws out (the ones that ran into the columns so I could support the jig on the soup cans while I whacked the top off, remember?) drilled the holes out with a forstner bit, patched them, did the epoxy seal coat, and fiberglassed the sides.

Then I carefully sanded away any fiberglass sticking out from the sides, laid the whole thing flat, and whacked all around the jig with a mallet (and a short piece of 2x2 to direct the mallet's force exactly where I wanted it--think mallet and really blunt chisel). Once the hot glue bonds were broken I simply pushed the whole thing out the open side.

Last time removing the jig took me two hours. This time? Six minutes. As a bonus I can re-use this jig if I want; I did not have to saw large chunks out of it. As a second bonus I went around what will become the bottom half of the sides and removed the blobs of hot glue through the open space where the bottom will go. Much quicker than trying to remove them once the bottom is in place.

I was worried I would tear the fiberglass, but it looks fine. I was worried the sides would be too floppy to glue to the bottom in their proper configuration without the jig. They were definitely a bit floppy. I stabilized them somewhat by laying the lid, open side up, on the workbench, laying a layer of wax paper over the lid (I did NOT want to end up gluing the sides to the lid with a stray drop of epoxy or dookie shmutz (epoxy plus sawdust)) and then fitting the sides into the lid. In one place I used a short stick to brace the sides out where they were trying to squeeze in more narrow than the lid.

That seemed to stabilize the sides properly so I went ahead and glued the bottom on, and spent my work time today sanding the bottom back to match the sides exactly. With a bit of luck I should be done with the outside fiberglassing by the end of next week.

Today was Non-Profit Day, as I spent the morning working in the Jefferson Rural Clinic and the afternoon at a League of Women Voters organizing meeting.

As a result I got nothing done on the instrument case today. However in the previous couple of days I used the new coping saw to saw the top to match the sides reasonably closely, then refastened the top and used spokeshave and sander to get the top as exactly flush with the sides as I could manage. In the process I abraded the skin off the knuckle of my left little finger and started leaving dots of blood on the white pine. Which, by the way, stings.

I can't think of any major woodworking project I've undertaken without shedding (hopefully only a little) blood on it. Maybe this is some kind of metaphor for a maker's investment in her making, but it would be okay with me if it stayed on the metaphorical level. Just saying.

So I mentioned I had family over, and they don't care for my singing plus I was very busy so I didn't practice the whole time they were here. Plus I was so busy for about a week before that I didn't practice much.

Well, I swear to you that my throat got out of shape. (Walking wise I stayed in pretty good shape because we went hiking several times.) Yesterday I sang 2 fifteen minute practices several hours apart because I couldn't hold my voice steady after fifteen minutes. Today I think I did a twenty or twenty five minute practice, and I think I was holding up better.

Of course, having to work back into practicing in short stages is not necessarily a bad thing because my fingers need to get their strength and endurance back and re-toughen the calluses. I lost less technique than I would have thought, and I'm getting both voice and mando back faster than I would have expected, so good on that.

I have written one new song this week, and finished another which sounds like it may sprout harmony, --I'm thinking about putting the latter up for Alice Day--so I'm feeling good about that.

And today I spokeshaved and sanded the bottom of the instrument case flush with the sides. The only problem is my disk sander kind of gouged into the sides because the sandpaper doesn't stick properly on the disk. I think I can sand the gouges out with my random orbital sander but it was kind of annoying, and some of the gouges are fairly deep.

I also bought a coping saw so I can saw the top out by hand and hopefully have to do less spokeshaving and grinding to get it flush with the sides. Getting the top flush will be pretty important because I mean to make the lip in the same way as the sides, and for the lip to glue properly to the top, the fit will have to be pretty close. I have the top about 40% cut out and so far the coping saw is much easier to use than I remember it being the last time I used one. Of course that may have something to do with being more coordinated and patient than I was when I was seven!

I glued the sides to the bottom today. ( The details, for those who are interested. )

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.

I'm making an instrument case for Pearl, since I can't find an octave mandolin case anywhere. It seems to me that if the wood strip method can make canoe hulls, it should be adaptable to other shapes.

( Pictures and discussion )

I figure it will take a month at least, but I will be happy to have a case that doesn't chew on my fingers, and that will be uniquely mine.

So Sunday and Monday I put in a new chisel rack, hinged at the top, so I can still get at the smoothing plane behind it, and now all my chisels can live, not only on the same wall of the shop, but in the same place, all laid out and organized and easy to get to. I got the red-handled chisels for Christmas, but didn't have room for them in my rack setup at the time, so they lived on a different shelf, behind the scrap wood... ah, I would like to say "bin" but realistically at this point it must be termed a "pile." As you can imagine, this meant I didn't use the Christmas chisels all that much. I hope I will use them more now.

I have decided my next project will be trying to make an instrument case for Pearl, because her current case is made for a banjo, and balanced entirely wrong because banjos have a very heavy body and octave mandolins don't, and as a consequence, the current case chews on my fingers anytime I try to carry it for any length of time, which is dissuading me from taking Pearl places.

The easy part is making the flat top and bottom; one of them (I haven't decided which) is pictured here, pinned by a holdfast. I have also secured one corner with a clamp to keep the workpiece from rotating around the point where the holdfast pins it. I hate it when stuff moves when I'm trying to work on it.

Holdfasts are cool and there is a brief description of how they work at the flicker version of this picture. I have got the proto-top and bottom glued up and mostly sanded flat. The next step is to make a form for the side walls; I have glued up 1 x 6 for this and will hopefully saw out 2 outlines and mount them about 4 inches from each other. Pictures will follow if I can make it work.

For my canoes I like to include through-holes as a means of fastening the boat. This means I need to make cylinders of wood (brass is heavy, plastic doesn't look right) and then drill out the centers to make pipes of wood. Holding a cylinder to drill the center out is kind of difficult; this is what I use to do that.
( Behind the cut to spare your f-list )

I am happy to say I laid out and cut the mortises and tenons for the seat today. And i fitted them and glued them up. It looks like a rectangle now (and I can't mess with it until the epoxy is cured) but it is a seat and not some random lengths of wood.

Laying everything out is quite time consuming, but it's a step I can't shortchange. All the outlines I saw and drill must first be scratched onto the wood (a pencil line is too thick for this), along with drawing the "cabinetmaker's triangle" that lets me find again the proper orientation of every piece if I set one down the wrong way around.

You see, my tenons are each fitted individually to their mortises. So if I try to put in the wrong tenon (even if it's the exact same part on the other side of the seat, even if it's the exact same part but I'm trying the top tenon instead of the bottom tenon, even if it's the exact same tenon but I have it twisted 180 degrees)--it won't go. I think this may be a common problem--hence the cabinetmaker's triangle.

This takes a long time to explain and is really obvious in person. I couldn't find any good pictures on the web so I took some.

( Explanatory pictures (and bonus picture of Moxie!) behind the cut )