Most recent fragment:
Every office of large enough size should have one person whose job it is to listen to people complain about things. In particular, their commutes to work.
Mon, 30 Aug 2010 05:40:07 -0700
Mushrooms?
What are these things?
I found these growing out in the alley. I guess they're mushrooms? Pretty thin caps, and very frilly, but fungi are weird. They don't look like flowers to me.
2010.08.26 at 12:00am EDT
Toolsday: Carpenter Square
Since I talked about a tool for accuracy last week, let's talk about this slightly less accurate tool, the humble carpenter square.
Carpenter Square
You may also see these referred to as "rafter squares", since they're commonly used when cutting 2-by-4's for construction framing. I don't mean to say they're awfully inaccurate, but they're not exactly built for accuracy. They're mostly just built to enable you to work quickly and easily, marking angles on lumber.
Marking a line 90 degrees from the edge of a board or beam is easy. The upper left edge (in this photo) has a thick ridge. Press this up against the edge of the material and draw a line along the upper right edge.
The square is also a rudimentary protractor. Drive a small nail into the material through the notch near the apex of the square, then pivot the square away from the edge until the angle you want (at the bottom of the square) lines up with the edge of the material. Then, draw your line. Like I said, not truly accurate, but fast.
This square is ABS plastic. You can also find these in different metals, but I figured the plastic would be more durable. You can see I've used a pencil to mark multiple measurements directly on the plastic, which is textured. That doesn't work as well with metal, usually.
2010.08.24 at 10:00am EDT
Excerrent
I was out shopping in the strip the other day, and found some plastic traditional-looking bento boxes for pretty cheap, so I bought them. It was only once I got them home and read the labels, that I realized the enormity of my win.
Bento Label
"Adopt and import the automobile motorcycle material refinedly and succeed, durable in use, characteristic of have slip resistance, tough and tensile, not fragiling etc. Places such as very suitable hotel, bar, coffee house, etc."
Engrish! Comic Sans! Bad photoshopping! Peng!
2010.08.23 at 12:00am EDT
Flutterpiggle
Flutterpiggle
Butterflies really do like the butterfly bush.
2010.08.19 at 7:00pm EDT
Toolsday: Calipers
Stop using a ruler to measure the thickness of objects or the depth of a hole, you lazy bum. Buy some calipers!
Calipers
Ever try to measure the thickness of an irregular 3D object using a ruler? It can be pretty difficult. With a decent pair of calipers, though, it's a piece of cake.
Ever try to check a board to make sure it's the same thickness all the way across? That's pretty tedious with a ruler, but you can set a pair of calipers to a specific thickness and slide it along the edge fairly quickly.
Ever try to measure the depth of a 5/8" diameter hole you just drilled using a ruler that's an inch or more wide? It's impossible, but these calipers have a depth gauge pin at the back end that will measure that depth in a jiffy.
Ever need to measure one thing and see if it will fit in another thing? Use one side of the calipers to measure the outside of objects, and the other side to measure the inside of gaps. Handy dandy.
Unless you need great accuracy, you don't need dial calipers (the kind with the big display dial) or digital calipers (the kind with a digital readout). These simple calipers are all most people need.
Never push or pull on the jaws; always use the thumb wheel to adjust the gap.
2010.08.17 at 9:30pm EDT
Back from Blogcation
Not just blogcation, but actual personal vacation, and not just vacation in space, but in time. It was time for our annnoual vacation into the midle ages, at the Pennsic War.
As usual, it was way too hot. It didn't rain as much as it sometimes does, until the very last day when it poured and the wind blew hard enough to knock some tents down in our camp.
Then, on Sunday, we couldn't get Sharon's car started and it had to be towed. Thanks to our excellent friends (in particular the set with the rented van) we got home without too much trouble, but still, sigh.
I did a bunch of braiding, a bunch of teaching of braiding, a little woodworking, a passel of hanging out discussing projects, and a modicum of drinking. I met a bunch of new people this year, which was terrific, and saw some friends from way back, which was awesome. I took zero pictures, sorry.
2010.08.16 at 7:00am EDT
Inception
I'll do my best not to spoil this movie for anybody who has not yet seen it, because this movie is all about its reveals. I say "reveals" and not "surprises", because most of them are built up to very well. This movie has a finely crafted story. It doesn't spring the unexpected on you. It builds a conclusion supported by facts you know, even if you didn't put them together until that moment. Some people have found it confusing, but just sit tight, listen to what they tell you, and incorporate it one piece at a time. These pieces click into place.
This film is wonderfully composed and shot. The scenes are large and dynamic, full of interesting and constantly varying light levels. The sound and music are as layered and complex as the plot, build tension where needed, and release when necessary. The costumes are awesome and build on character traits in interesting ways. Top to bottom, it's beautiful. You want to see this on a big screen with big speakers. I'm not sure an Imax screen is necessary, but don't wait to see this on video.
If you haven't seen it, what you think you know about this movie (from trailers, commercials, and Internet banter) is not everything you will know coming out. It's just too complex to totally spoil. It draws on themes with which you may be familiar, but it uses those themes in service to an original story.
Finally, this movie passes two of the main tests I use to determine if a movie is a quality product:
- Are Sharon and I still discussing it the next day?
- Do I have to look things up to fully appreciate it?
I greatly enjoyed this film. We took some time out of a very busy week to go see it, because I wanted to make sure to catch it while it was still in a good theater. I recommend it.
2010.08.05 at 12:00am EDT
Toolsday: Bench Brush
A few weeks ago, I talked about using a spare paint brush in the shop as a chip brush, but what if the job is somewhat bigger?
Bench Brush
I use this big (It's about 18 inches long) bench brush. It's similar to the kind of brush you might get with a dust pan. I got this great wood-handled one at the Harbor Freight. The larger number of bristles yields superior sweeping power, and the larger size enables you to cover more ground with each sweep. The forward rake of the bristles at the nose hels you dig in to get dust and chips out of crevices and slots. I also bought a big metal dust pan, so I can sweep all this waste onto the basement floor, then lift the piles into the trashcan.
Again, some of these mundane tools aren't very exciting, but having them around makes your life happier. A clean shop has more room for getting things done, and less chance of injury. You don't have to spend big bucks on a shop vacuum if you can manually keep mess under control.
Bonus vocabulary word: When you're machining metal, the beautiful and jagged scraps that come flying out are called "swarf".
2010.08.03 at 7:00am EDT
I just fixed a bug
I just fixed some XML coding bugs in basically three years of
blog posts, so if your RSS feed reading software freaks out, that
would be why. I fixed category tagging so that there is only one
tag per category container, and I fixed the capitalization
on all the pubDate tags so that they are correctly
interCapped.
2010.08.02 at 12:15pm EDT
Project Fail
In case you think I'm perfect, and that everything I try comes out great, you should know that I'm not. So there. Over the weekend, I tried a new technique for making geta and totally failed.
Last year, I made a pair of geta from some cedar. A few months ago, I agreed to run a 1 hour woodworking demo at Pennsic. I decided at that time that I'd demonstrated making geta by hand, and that I'd attach the "teeth" of the geta using sliding dovetail joints. Yesterday, I tried out my technique, and I am totally not good enough yet at sliding dovetails to demonstrate this in front of people.
Part of it is trying to use a "Workmate" portable bench instead of my home workbench, since I won't have my bench at Pennsic. The Workmate I have is totally unsuited for the kind of planing I'm trying to do. Part of it was trying to get the whole thing done quickly. Probably if I'd spent more time measuring and checking to make sure that everything was up to specification, it would have gone more smoothly.
In any case, my wood was splitting, my joinery didn't fit together, and the whole thing was a big failure. I can demonstrate this same technique and explain that I'm still learning, or I can build them using the same technique I used last year. The one I made yesterday is going onto the "burn" pile, though.
2010.08.02 at 10:00am EDT
"This blogging business. LJs and what-not. Over-rated, if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it."
All text and graphics copyright © 2010 Elliott C. Evans except where otherwise noted.
