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December 27, 2003
For anyone who’s interested, I’ve posted a new recipe: Pumpkin Cheese Coffee Cake.
Also, after receiving some handy advice from
Category: making things
:)
November 17, 2003
Yes, cutting tenons into long oak pieces on a table saw without a dado blade isn’t the best idea. My hands are sore and cramped just from holding the pieces against the miter. But, the results are looking good… I’m going to try to work on these a bit more tomorrow before class, and then I should be set to do some sanding before the major assembly of the head- and footboards go.
Oh, in case you don’t know, I’ve been working on building a solid oak queen-sized bed for about two years now. I was constantly putting the project away in order to work on moving into my condo, the rooms upstairs, or various other things. Well, I finally have a table saw, and with that, most of the tools I needed to keep working. I just need to keep the motivation going… There’s still the finishing of the mortises, cutting of the large curve in the head and foot boards, sanding, assembling the head and foot boards, adding the spindles, finishing the side rails, then staining and applying urethane to everything.
Oh, here’s a picture of the bed I’m making: http://www.dingleberrypie.com/gallery/bed/aac
Here’s the tenons I cut tonight: http://www.dingleberrypie.com/gallery/bed/DCP_1294
Here’s the garage as it was left tonight: http://www.dingleberrypie.com/gallery/bed/DCP_1293
Here’s the whole bed project gallery. Not a lot of pics, as I’m lazy about this project: http://www.dingleberrypie.com/gallery/bed
RIVETHEAD!
October 4, 2003
Wow, I feel like a true out and out rivethead tonight. I just spent the last hour filing, grinding, and wire brushing a 10″ x 20″ piece of 6061 aluminum alloy. See, when the G5 comes, it’s not going to fit on my shelf. Because of this I wanted to make a shelf for the G5, so it’ll sit nicely and look all pretty and stuff. My first choice was a nice 1/2″ thick piece of glass, but that ended up being too pricey; almost $70. Next, I consulted lowcostmetals.com after hearing about them from a friend. Turns out that I was able to get a appropriate sized piece of aluminum for $32, shipped. Not bad at all…
Anyway, the aluminum slab is a little scratched and was rather worn, so I decided to give it the most appropriate finish I could think of: brushed metal. Well, tonight I filed all the edges to nice 45°, put the wire wheel in my drill, and gave all the surfaces a fairly decent brush job, removing all but a couple of scratches. I think it looks pretty good…
As I was in the middle of finishing off the slab of aluminum, I remembered something I read online when reading the 6061 Aluminum Material Property Data Sheet. It seems that if one wishes to artificially age 6061 aluminum, it requires “350°F for 8 hours followed by air cooling” to reach T6 temper. Poking around Google, I found that T6 is a pretty hard temper, and I figured that it would be good to temper this stand, just to hopefully cut down on any more scratches.
So, in the oven it went. Seeing as this is a decent sized slab of metal, I’m going to give it 10 hours in a pre-heated oven. That means come 10:00am, I’m going to wake up, turn off the oven, and let the slab cool. Woo! Before placing the slab on the rack in the oven I made sure to wipe it down with isopropyl alcohol while wearing latex gloves. Hopefully that’ll eliminate any heat-assisted oxidation that may occur. If it does, I’ll just steel wool it off.
After the oven treatment I’m going to throw a number of coats of satin urethane (yes, the same stuff I used in my furniture) on the slab and call it done. Hopefully it’ll look nice… My tests with this urethane on various computer parts and metal pieces seemed to give a nice overall dulling, yet smoothing, effect, which is just what I’m looking for… So, we’ll see what happens. :)
Oh, maybe some pictures…
Slab at beginning of heat treatment.
Click for more pics…
Well, just one, but that’s all right. I also put together the new table saw tonight, but I didn’t cut anything, so that part wasn’t as industrial as it could be… Woo! Italics…
Anyway, I think I’m done for tonight. I also slapped together some extra-low-cost shelves from Target to give me a place to put my vinyl and books in my office. Those worked out really well… Pics will be forthcoming, most likely after I get the office all put together. Finishing that will entail about two hours on my back, tying cables up above my head… Sort of the way I hurt my chest before. Sort of.
!
October 2, 2003
Yay! I stopped at Sears Hardware on the way home and I *finally* have a Vernier caliper. With me being as anal as I am about things being accurate, I can’t believe that I never had one. Now I can finally measure things accurately. No more silly tape measure trying to determine if something is 7/16″ or 3/4″. Heh.
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September 9, 2003
Well, it seems that if you take 6061 Aluminum and heat it to 350°F for 8 hours, then air cool it, it will be hardened to T6 specifications. Once I get the stand shaped as I want, I think I’m going to try to temper it in my oven. I can’t see any reason why it’ll cause any problems, and the chemistry of 6061 doesn’t seem like it contains anything that would be harmful to have heated up in my house.
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August 29, 2003
Ahh… New Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 speakers came today. I’ve now replaced my older Altec Lansings from 1995. The ALs were really, really nice, better than most other speakers, but they had a bad 60Hz buzz coming from the subwoofer. I got these speakers as refurbs for $99 for the pair, with sub. They retail for $179 – $199. Not a bad deal… I’ve only had two problems. First, they forgot to ship the speaker cables with them. A phone call later and they are on their way. I’d been wanting to make some custom 16 gauge cables for them anyway, so I got out two 3.5mm mono plugs (yes, the back of the speaker accepts 3.5mm plugs for the amped signal, for some unknown reason…) and the speaker wire, then made up the connectors. I thought about putting six-way binding posts on the back of each speaker, but I can probably leave this work for another day. If it’s even worth it… Anyway, I hook everything up and they sounded like shite. After some troubleshooting it looks like there might be a problem with the input line, some wiggling around in the iMic (USB sound device for the G4 Cube) and everything is good. These speakers sound real, real nice. Definitely worth $99 for the pair. Now I only need to rearrange the office… And find a new place to mount the iSight, as it had sat on top of the old speaker.
:)
August 28, 2003
Ahh… Tonight I went to my first day of college. Ever. Tonight’s class was HIST-2000 (formerly HIST-200) which is all about the history of invention and technology in America. Tonight’s class wasn’t anything special, just a hand-out of the class syllabus, a schedule, things like that. The class seems interesting, and judging by the students, shouldn’t be too hard to pass. There were a bunch of fresh high school grads, a couple older people, and me. It seemed like there are a few other twenty-something students, but they didn’t really stand out.
After I got back home I decided to start in on staining wood again. I applied the second coat of stain to all the table tops and bottoms and one set of the legs. That leaves only eight more table leg sets to receive their second coat of stain. After that comes the top coat… This will be the hard part. I think I have a plan, but we’ll have to see how it works out. It’ll likely involve eight or ten separate sessions of urethane application. That’s a lot. At least it’ll be worth it in the end. Tonight I took a test piece of oak that I had stained and then applied four or five coats of urethane to. I let my intentionally very wet glass set on the surface. No ring. Then I dropped the corner of the glass from a height of about five inches. Slight dent, but no cracking. Obviously the parawood would dent a bit more, but what I was looking for was a lack of cracking. The only test left is a very hot bowl or mug of tea. If this passes the test, I might forgo the glass surfaces. If not, all horizontal surfaces will have custom cut pieces of glass fitted to them. It ought to be nice to finally be able to sit in my living room, listen to music, and have tables to set things on.
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August 28, 2003
[Yes, this has been cross posted. Sorry, but I’m trying to get lots of opinions.]
Sometime around the end of October I should be receiving a Apple PowerMac G5. I want to build a stand for it… I’m curious what people think of this idea:
– 1/2″ thick aluminum plate
– sized approximately 1/2″ larger than the G5 on each side
– Wire brushed or sand blasted to apply texture to metal
– Lacquer or epoxy coated to prevent corrosion
– Thin piece of glass on top of Al block
– G5 setting on top of assembly
– Possibly casters, if I ever decide to put it all on the floor
So, how do people think this will turn out?
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August 25, 2003
So I just emailed IBM… I’m hoping for some help from their historical / archive department. I’ve got the bit of core memory that I think came from an IBM machine. See, I want to frame these pieces, but it’d be nice to add a tag crediting where these pieces actually came from. Maybe even some photos of the machine itself. Hopefully they’ll write me back…
… — …
July 16, 2003
Ahh. Got the bit of patch trim around the moulding in the halls done, also installed the new smoke detectors.
I think that the next project after the living room painting will be to build a L-shaped desk that allows me to face the corner while using the computer. I’m still not sure if I want a freestanding desk or if I want one that hangs on the wall. The freestanding desk has the advantage of being movable, should I ever want my desk elsewhere. The on-the-wall the desk has the advantage of providing more leg room, possibly easier cable management, and just looking cooler. I still don’t know how I’d hang the desk on the wall, but the more I think about it, the more I wish I could weld nice steel supports and epoxy coat them, then place a nice glass top on the desk. If I go with the hanging-on-the-wall desk, I’ll likely end up with something wood, supported with metal (steel or iron) braces, with a plastic laminate on the top. If the stand-alone desk is built, then there will be two end panels, a center support in the corner, and cable management hangers. Well, I guess we’ll just have to see what ends up getting done… This project is probably a month out at this point.
What does everyone think, though? Free-standing desk, or one that hangs off of the wall? I’ve had my desk in it’s current position for the last ~2 years I’ve lived here, and I’m pretty happy with it here. The only way I’d move it is if someone moved in here or something.