The Man Cave

It has been a long time, so I thought I would give a quick update on what has been keeping me busy lately (apart from family, work, and life in general of course). Last year I decided I needed a workshop. I was tired of spending an hour to move cars, arrange machinery, clean up, move machinery, and move cars again, every time I wanted to cut a piece of wood. Not to mention the fact that I could never do anything that required any sort of setup as I couldn't afford to leave things in any sort of steady state (besides "put away") for more than a weekend.

So I started digging.

This is what I started with:




And many, many (*MANY*) wheelbarrow loads later, I was part-way done:



And with a lot of sweat and some help from my good friend Todd, I got even further.



In the process, I was in between many a hard place and these:



But eventually, I got it to the point where I was ready to do something with the space.




And with a lot of understanding from my wife, and a lot of help from my brother, my dad, once again Todd, and the rest of my family and friends, I finally got the beginnings of a workshop.



And with a little more blood, sweat, and swears (and a significant amount of money), and some more help from Todd and my friend John, I have my very own Man Cave.





And tonight, Todd and I used that Man Cave to finish up this little beauty:




I want to say a huge "Thank You" to everyone who helped me make this little workshop a reality. I certainly have a fair amount of work left when the weather warms up again, but having this space to work in is awesome.

All I need now is a beer fridge and a scotch dispenser!
Stay tuned for more posts in the future!

A Bedside Table

It's been awhile...but I've been busy. I've been spending a bit of time trying to get a little more serious about music recently. I've got an audition with a band tomorrow night and I have been trying to write a little music as well. It has been slow going, and most of it has to happen well after midnight when everyone is asleep. Well, everyone except Drew; he's been going strong at 2am when I head upstairs for over a week now. I don't know how he does it!

I also got distracted by Todd and his oak. It made me want to experiment a little more with my router table, so I decided to make a very simple bedside table. The plan is to eventually make two of them, but the first one is complete and didn't turn out too bad at all:





Anyway, time to put the kids in bed so I can get a little more practice in for tomorrow night!

Not Perfect, But Functional!

Now that the warm weather is here I *finally* got back to my router table. I had some fundamental issues when I attempted to actually use it for the first time last year. In particular, the main router plate was sagging in the middle. I managed to score a piece of Lexan (thanks, Paul!) that really wasn't any stiffer than the MDF I had in there, but I figured see-through would be cool, and re-making it would give me a chance to figure out what was wrong and stiffen it up. After working on it all afternoon on Saturday, I had the new lexan piece in place, and even with an aluminum angle stiffener I was no closer to having a non-sag-alicious router plate.

I had an idea to install a tensioner between the linear slides so I could torque them back and maintain a flat surface. I worked late into the night drilling and tapping holes (and removing a snapped off bolt!) and after a quick run to Canadian Tire this morning - it works!



I took some time this afternoon to set up the 45 degree lock miter bit I have (I should only have to do this once) and after quite a few test pieces and fine adjustments the results are quite good!



There are still some things that bug me about this table. In particular, the router plate still is not perfect. If I had to do it all over again I would make it *much* thicker, and probably out of steel or aluminum. I really need to be mindful to keep pressure on the pieces as they are going through to get an even pass.
Also, the linear adjustment is just too sloppy. It is *good enough*, but it just feels home-made.

Ah well, someday when I have room enough for a real shop I will invest in a real router table. It would also be so much easier to fabricate pieces with a few key shop tools like a cut-off saw, and a milling machine! For now, with a little extra care I should be able to make what I need to make on this one.

More Router Table Progress

I made some more progress on the router table today. I got the linear slides mounted and the router bolted in place. Here is what it looks like so far:



I'm still not sure what I am going to use for an adjuster, and I also need to build a nice, rigid fence - but I temporarily clamped my crappy router table fence in place to see how things would work. I really wanted to try out the 45 degree lock miter bit that I bought. I didn't bother to set up the height or fence position (since there is currently no way to do that!) so ignore the misalignment, but I can already tell the joint is going to be really slick.

A Busy Night

I had a busy night tonight. Dave came over and we set up Robosaw to finger joint some oak for a bookshelf he is building. It worked great!

Since I had the mess going I figured I would do some more work on the router table I am designing for my new router. I got quite a bit done, and basically just need to somehow mount the linear slides, create some sort of manual adjuster, and build a fixed fence. OK, I guess I have quite a ways to go yet...

Oh yeah! On the weekend Todd and I finished tolexing Coco so I could use the amp for band practice on Saturday. She's looking and sounding pretty darn sweet!



All that is left really is to come up with some nice faceplates to finish it off.

Now if you'll excuse me - I am going to go wash the sawdust out of my eyes, cough up a lungful of powdered MDF, and go to bed.

My New Router Is Here!

So my new router (the wood kind, not the ethernet kind) arrived today and it is a beast! Check it out:


I can't wait to try it out with the new 45 degree lock miter bit I picked up recently. I'm interested in seeing if a lock miter joint is as strong as the finger joints I am currently making with Robosaw. It would sure be a heck of a lot easier. The setup doesn't look too bad either.

The big thing is having a decent router table setup. The new router has above-the-table micro-adjustment, plus above-the-table bit changing - which for the price is awesome. My current router table sucks however, so I need to start shopping for a reasonably priced one that will allow me to use this new router to its full potential.

The Major Woodworking Is Done!

Well, I finished routering all of the edges of the prototype cabinet as well as profiling the sound hole in the speaker baffle. Check it out:



So, all that is left is a good sanding, and then start hiding all the flaws with tolex and grill cloth. ;o)

More Amp Pics

One or two years ago I was taking a lot of photos as we built Model II, I just never got around to putting them anywhere.

Now they are up on my Picasa page. Here is a sample:



This is the cabinet *before* I went and ruined the absolutely gorgeous curly maple with stain. I had this vision of a vibrant yellow amp (and blue for the other one) that still had the wood grain glowing through. Unfortunately it didn't turn out that well. I was happier with mine (the yellow one) rather than Justin's (the blue one) - sorry Justin - but it still wasn't what I envisioned. I think I stained, re-sanded down to bare wood, and re-stained each amp three times and eventually gave up. I think the stain I chose (I went with a water-based product) just isn't the right stuff to use.

More Tube Amping

I spent some more time on the cabinet for the next amp prototype tonight. Here's a pic:



It's a good thing this is a prototype, because there is waaaay too much labor involved in these damn cabinets! Even with Robosaw fighting the good fight, it still takes forever. And I would consider my woodworking skills above average. I definitely need to settle on a design and focus on mass-producing (where mass-produce means > 1) these parts instead of crafting one piece at a time. It doesn't help that the design is still morphing in my head as I go.

While I'm Up

I may as well post about my activities on the weekend as well. I spent the long weekend (finally) working on the next guitar amp. In particular, I took my robotic table saw for its maiden voyage and cut the finger-jointed pieces out for the cabinet. It worked great! There were definitely some lessons learned, and I think I'll have to improve the cycle time for any sort of volume production, but I am happy with the result.



You can see more pictures, and a couple of videos on my Picasa page.

Robosaw Links

So, one of my projects has been "roboticizing" my table saw to cut hyper-accurate finger joints (fully automated, of course). I have completed it enough to actually make joints automatically, but it is a pain to adjust the spacing as the drives are programmed in a very limited assembly language, and I need to update the programs in both drives to tweak things. It is a pain because of the trial and error involved in getting the indexes to match the cut widths due to the tolerance of a blade cutting through wood (it's not at all like machining metal...).

Anyway, here is a Picasa album of the various stages in the process as well as a couple poorly-lit video clips.

http://picasaweb.google.com/mark.melvin/RoboSaw

http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-5829562471987966238
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-3239961827766871169

The next step in the process is to write a PC-based interface to this. The drives will actually accept commands via a serial connection, so it will be much easier to send the commands in the order I want and tweak the numbers that way. I just need the time to do it...