Apr
26
I now have cabinet carcasses. You could set a book on one if you wanted but it would look a little silly. I still need to stick the back boards on the boxes but I’ll hold off on that until I’ve painted the box. Bill was kind enough to loan me his paint spray gun. I also want to see if they actually fit in the room too in case I need to have a bonfire. Wouldn’t want to waste paint on kindling. So, what’s left? Backs on the cabinets, glue the book cases, backs on the book cases, make face frames and tops… on second thought let’s not go enumerating all of the remaining things so I don’t feel terrible. Let’s rather say that some day I will finish the shelves and perhaps books will not be completely obsolete by then. Yes, we’ll say that. Anyway, here’s pictures.
Also, I know I’m doing it wrong with the lap joints on the panels but I don’t care so nyah.
Mar
23
So there’s this old woodworking adage, “Measure twice, cut once.” That’s super. I did all my maths and then did them again and decided that the rabbet in the back of the bookshelves to accept the back sheet of plywood should be 3/8″ X 1/4″. That would allow the plywood to be recessed into the case by 1/8″ and fit snugly to make sure the case was square and did not rack. So I set up my saw with the dado cutter to do 1/4″ wide cut, 3/8″ deep and ran the pieces through. Oops. That should have been 3/8″ wide and 1/4″ deep. See illustration. I think I know what I’m going to do to fix this without buying new plywood but man, what a pain in the ass. I would propose an amendment to the rule to be “Measure twice, cut once, don’t be a dumbass” but I think that last part is supposed to be understood.
A:Reality B:Design
Mar
18
No. It is not. But I’m making progress. The bookshelf project has benefited from my sudden surplus of free time. All of the wood has been cut to size and the hardwood blanks got run through the jointer this afternoon to remove the saw marks and try to square them up a little. Pictures!
I will need to spend a little time getting the various dadoes and other milling things well defined and written down before tackling the next part but that’s ok because it’s time to get the garden ready so I’ll be able to think about that whilst carting around rocks and dirt. Now that it seems spring is here to stay more flowers have appeared in the yard. The wisteria in the front is blooming again and the bumble bees are fighting over it. Also, the daffodils in the back bed are blooming and there are more of them this year than last which is encouraging. There’s also a pink shrubby thing in the back by the sago palms that is very pretty but I can’t remember what it is called and I haven’t managed to take a decent picture of it for the album. More pictures!
Nov
16
I am whupped. This weekend was spent mostly in the garage. There are new shelves on the walls replacing the craptacular free standing metal and MDF shelving I had before. It’s wire shelving that has standards which hang from a top rail like the Elfa stuff they sell at the container store though it has a different brand name. I wonder if it’s actually the same stuff. I still need two more shelves since the Home Depot was running low when I was there but I already have most of the stuff off the floor which was the goal. The table saw is now on its new rolling platform parked neatly under the hanging shelves which is very nice. It took me an hour and a half to put the “mobile base” together though, mostly due to the fact that math is hard.
The jointer came from Amazon on Thursday and I put that together this afternoon. I think it may actually be heavier than the table saw. It works well though so I’m looking forward to the start of the cabinet building. Of course I didn’t actually manage to do any actual woodworking this weekend with all of the shelving, organizing, cleaning and construction. Maybe next weekend. Also, I have six cans of WD-40. I think I’m set on that for the rest of my life.
Nov
06
I had a little vacation last week. It was great. Didn’t bring the camera though so you’ll just have to use your imagination. Since MoMA is having their van Gogh exhibit now and it’s unlikely that I’ll be able to see all of those paintings again in my lifetime I figured out a way to go and see it. I flew to Philadelphia Thursday, had a nice dinner at Brasserie Perrier that night which was superb. I had pumpkin ravioli to start followed by the crispy duck breast and a side of root vegetable au gratin and pear crisp for dessert. It was all very good and the service was excellent. I got up early Friday morning, took the Amtrak into Penn Station in Manhattan and walked the twenty blocks up to the museum. First of all, the membership is great. There was a huge line to get in and a timed entry ticket system for the van Gogh both of which I got to skip completely thanks to my magic plastic card. The van Gogh exhibit itself was very crowded but completely worth the trip. The Starry Night Over the Rhône is amazing. I haven’t seen a picture of it that does it justice. In fact I ended up going through the show three separate times throughout the day.
The rest of the museum is fantastic as well. There is a gallery of the painting and sculpture highlights on their website that is representative of the collection. I was in awe all day long. It’s funny to go into a place and see things which were in your textbooks growing up. I’m just going to start linking in things I saw that were superb. Boccioni, Rousseau, Picasso, also Picasso, Pollock, Monet. I briefly considered hosting the images locally and in-lining them here but I think that might have some unpleasant copyright implications so instead you should just click the links and enjoy the show.
I also saw the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall in Philadelphia and had a Philly cheese steak and a slice of genuine New York style pizza. It was a great trip. Hopefully I’ll get to go back again soon.
Let’s see, other stuff. Before I went on vacation I finished the cutting diagrams and bought the wood for my bookshelves. I’ll start breaking that down into the component parts this weekend. This project has been a long time in the works and I’m not expecting it to get done quickly but I’d like to have the individual cases constructed by the end of the year at least. I’m pretty happy with how the design came out. The asymmetry is minimal considering the limitations of the room. My current complaints are that a) Engineered bamboo plywood costs about ten times what it should meaning I will have to get creative for the desktop and b) Lowes doesn’t sell my choice of jointer anymore so I ended up ordering one from Amazon. They’re giving me free shipping though so that’s nice.
The not-so-super, not-so-secret dining room lighting project also continues. The electronic proof of concept has been designed and laid out and the PCB is in queue to be manufactured on the other side of the world. The company providing this service is BatchPCB which takes a bunch of board designs puts them all onto one big 11″ x 15″ panel and then has them cut apart. It’s a pretty good deal for prototyping. When it comes time to have 120 half-inch square boards made I may need to re-evaluate my vendor. The whole design process has turned out to be much less difficult than I had expected it to be. SparkFun has good tutorials on using Eagle to do schematic and PCB design and the software only took about a week to get comfortable with. I’m sure it’s quite a bit more powerful than I’m currently exploiting but it was quick to pick up. All the actual electronic parts and my shiny new soldering iron came in last week so now I just need the board to finish up and I’m ready to see if I’m any good at routing electrons.
With all of the projects in progress and the fab shutdown and the holidays and art shows coming up it’s looking to be a busy winter. Plus there’s this video game I used to play that has an expansion next week. I may have to get some folks to lash me to the mast lest I be overcome by its call. I have to admit that though my account remains inactive my client is up to date as of this week so all it would take now is a moment of weakness and a scroll of resurrection.
