Finished assembly on the bones of the trial shelving unit: It’ll stay in the workshop, sans face frame. The first half of one of the office lower shelves is in glue-up on the table saw extension:
Shelving assembly
Shelving begins
Author Archives: bilborg
Fixtures and Late Posting
Last night … I was playing Fallout 3, and went from game to sleep. My bad.
Today, I’m back in fabrication and assembly mode in the woodshop:
Cutting a rabbet
I’m running with the dadoe set installed for cutting 3/4″ slots for the shelves, but by embedding about half of that width into the sacrificial fence, I can also cut the rabbets for the back panel. Notice that I’m using a finger board to help keep the workpiece in control – a 4′ long side needs a third hand, and the finger board provides the safest method of control near the blades.
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Our condolences to Commander Price’s family, friends, and team:
- Cdr. Job W. Price, 42, of Pottstown, Pennsylvania, died Dec. 22 of a non-combat related injury while supporting stability operations in Uruzgan Province, Afghanistan.
One Done
Knife re-handled
Knife and Fixtures
The work on the chef’s knife continued today:
Trimming the knife handle
The epoxy for side two cured overnight. I removed the clamps, and trimmed the sides down to near the tang, all the way around, using the scroll saw.
Sanding the knife handle
Sanding the knife handle was a multi-step process. This first phase used a couple of sizes and grits to get the wood down to the same profile as the tang. I used mini-sanding drums in the drill press for the task. Then I drilled through the rivet guide holes from the other side, then finished drilling the rivet profile in the handle. 0.177″ ∅ through, then 0.25″ ∅ drilled 0.21″ deep from each side for the rivet head.
I seated one side of each rivet using a hammer, after treating the drilled-out surface in the handle with cyanoacrylate adhesive. I put some more adhesive on the threads of the mating side and on the shoulder in the handle, then screwed each rivet together. Oh, yeah, the rivets: I got them from North Coast Knives – pleasant folks, quick & efficient order fulfillment, and lots of parts in stock for just about any sort of knife fabrication and repair you’re contemplating. Recommended!
Hacking off the rivet heads
Removing the rivet heads required application of the hacksaw. Sanding or grinding them all the way down would have caused too much heating … I know this, and caught it before I burnt the handle. Then sanding, a bit of carving, and a lot more sanding at progressively finer grits brought the knife to the place where I could apply the first coat of Danish Oil:
Applying finish
Three or four more applications are due, with sanding and/or rubbing with #0000 steel wool between each coat. This will be done Sunday, I think.
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I also finished building my table saw fixtures today. Here in one image you can see both the outfeed extension table (the leg actually still needs hardware, so I’ll go get that tomorrow) and the over-size cross-cut sled I built. It’s not light, but it makes getting true 90° cuts possible on large pieces:
Tablesaw fixtures
Knife Work
I suppose that means different things to different people. To me, in the context of this week, it means “repairs.” The chef’s knife handle was going to pieces:
Broken Knife
The cracking has been present for a while, but it started getting loose, which is a recipe for damaged knife-wielder, so it was time to fix the problem. It didn’t take much effort to get apart, and it looks like there was a fair bit of rust and corrosion pushing things apart. One crack leads to this, eventually. The next step involves picking some new handle material, and preparing for reassembly:
Repairing the Knife
I am using some offcuts from the hockey glass table project to make the new knife handle. I cleaned up the tang with a wire brush mounted on the drill press, and cut the wood to the correct thickness on the table saw. The end of the wood nearest the blade is canted out at 7° to match the casting. I used JB Weld to epoxy one side onto the tang and let it cure overnight.
Partially Repaired Knife
Today, I pre-drilled through the holes to provide alignment after the other side is epoxied on, and used the scroll saw to get the profile partially cut. Finally, I epoxied on the far side and set that aside to cure until tomorrow. I also executed the first stage of assembly on that cabinet sled I was talking about a couple of days ago. Ciao!
Wood working
I’m getting going on the new office project. Remember that? Anyway, today I went shopping at Exotic Lumber in Gaithersburg. Sadly, I don’t have budget for any actual “exotic” lumber, so I got ten sheets of maple 3/4 ply, one sheet of cherry 3/4 ply, and three each of maple in 1/4 and 1/2 thickness. To get all this home, I rented a U-Haul truck for a few hours. I loaded it all into the garage, then set up for parting out the plywood.
Parting out the plywood
The configuration is easy. Lightly glue (I used a low-tack spray adhesive) some foam to a sheet of plywood. Lay that out on saw horses. Then, one sheet at at time, use a straight edge, a couple of clamps, and a circular saw with a high-tooth count, thin kerf blade to part the sheets into “close” sizes. I sketched out on paper the cuts for each of the cabinets, and laid those out to minimize waste, then started cutting. As each component comes off the foam, I label it with some painters tape and a marker. By the time I was “done” and cleaned up for the day, I’d dismantled 8 sheets into the components to build the carcasses four shelving units, four base cabinets, and one upper cabinet.
Cabinet Carcass Parts
Now what’s downstairs is ready and of a manageable size to work with the table saw. That and a panel sled, plus some housecleaning should fill the day, tomorrow.
A Week Off
I’m taking this week off of work. I’ll still check email from time to time, but mostly I’m going to do some chores around here, organize a bit of woodworking, and get caught up on my reading.
Wrapping up school: Late this week, the grade for the last course should drop. On the 30th, the degree should be conferred. Fun stuff, really.
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Our condolences to the families, friends, and units of these fallen warriors:
- Petty Officer 1st Class Nicolas D. Checque, 28, of Monroeville, Pennsylvania, died of combat related injuries suffered Dec. 8, while supporting operations near Kabul, Afghanistan.
- Staff Sgt. Wesley R. Williams, 25, of New Carlisle, Ohio, died Dec. 10 in Kandahar, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device.
- Staff Sgt. Nelson D. Trent, 37, of Austin, Texas, died Dec. 13 in Kandahar, Afghanistan, when enemy forces attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device.
- Sgt. Michael J. Guillory, 28, of Pearl River, Louisiana, died Dec. 14 while conducting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan.
- Staff Sgt. Nicholas J. Reid, 26, of Rochester, New York, died Dec. 13 in Landstuhl, Germany from wounds suffered on Dec. 9, in Sperwan Village, Afghanistan, when enemy forces attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device.
- Sgt. 1st Class Kevin E. Lipari, 39, of Baldwin, New York, died Dec. 14 in Logar province, Afghanistan.
And Done!
I turned in the final final, on the 33.3 year path from entering university in the Fall of 1979 to the end of this year. For the last five years, I’ve been taking courses at UMUC, filling in holes in my education, and taking lots of new, shiny, politically correct classes. I’ve had some real trolls for instructors, and some gems. This last one was much more in the latter category, but I have to note the 5-year winner of the category Best Instructor I’ve Had At UMUC: Charles Neimeyer, PhD. I have no idea how the Marine Corps Chief Historian comes to be teaching the History of War at an online college, but I’m glad I took that course.
Overall, I’m very happy with the quality and depth of education I’ve gotten these last few years. UMUC is not a diploma mill. I worked my ass off, usually an additional 20-30 hours a week, a bit more when classes overlapped. I was not the best (or perhaps not the best-behaved) of students, 33 years ago. But application of nasal prominence to gritty rotating device has meant that I’ve gotten an A (I’m assuming that I’m getting an A in the current class, since the work is done and I’m just waiting for the ball to drop) in every class I’ve taken. Whew, tiring, but very glad of the journey.
Thanks, also, to y’all who’ve been with me while I shorted this venue to give time to the studies. Many of you have sent me kind words of support, and I appreciate every one of them.
Last Week
More like: The Last Week. I finished up all of this week’s work yesterday, and did a big hunk of the final week’s worth of schoolwork today. So close I can taste it, this school thing, it will be done. I also did a bit of cleaning here and there, and tidied up the woodshop.
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Our condolences to the families, friends, and units of these fallen warriors:
- Lance Cpl. Anthony J. Denier, 26, of Mechanicville, New York, died Dec. 2, while conducting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan.
- Sgt. 1st Class. Darren M. Linde, 41, of Sidney, Montana, died Dec. 3, in Lashkar Gah City, Helmand province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device.
- Spc. Tyler J. Orgaard, 20, of Bismarck, North Dakota, died Dec. 3, in Lashkar Gah City, Helmand province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device.
Work, Schoolwork, and Statistics…
If you are playing along at home, you might suspect that “Damned” could fit in for “School” in today’s word-swap cipher match. The upside for me is that I’m developing a project website that I’m likely to put into play early next year. But not to discuss until it’s nearly ready. I don’t know whether I’ll take it down the customized blog path, or go back to my beloved bespoke hand-crafted HTML approach that served me so well over the years.
Yesterday I went shopping, because I had about 5.5 hours of work to do today, helping launch a new infrastructure. That went pretty well, all things considered. The planning meetings paid off in spades, much as it pains me to say that. The work was done by about 1330 EST, and then it was back to the schoolwork. Tonight, reading for the coming week, and more tuning and content writing for the project site.
Oh. Well, I’ve actually got nothing about statistics to discuss. But it helped the headline flow, eh?
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Our condolences to the family, friends, and unit of this fallen warrior:
Cpl. Christopher M. Monahan Jr., 25, of Island Heights, New Jersey, died Nov. 26 while conducting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan.