Franzinator Part III

As I pondered which of the myriad projects I would tackle last weekend, the fact that I could not, in good conscience, check off the Franzinator as complete, haunted me.  Sure, the weeds were getting out of hand and the trees needed mulching.  There are shutters and window planter boxes to build.  Yoda waits patiently in a corner (that is his specialty, though).  A half-built lamp ages gracelessly atop a pile of cherry wood that someday will take on a more intentional configuration, waiting for the moment that my eyes can no longer draw in enough ambient light to read the paper.  The grill needs new burners.  And the basement progress seems to be reversing as she gives up tools one by one back into the shop.

So, how then does the Franzinator rank immediate attention, especially since it was theoretically finished? 

Let me interject to give thanks that Saint Wife does not ask me these questions.  Humminahumminahummina....amen. 

Anyhow, the answer is simple:  every project needs air--painting the shutters and planter boxes, stain and seal the lamp, sandblast the grill (scrub? nonononono!), final lacquer coat on Yoda, nail gun for the basement.  And....I just don't like yard work.  Lame excuses?  Yes.  The reality is that I really am more interested in seeing the results of this project than the rest, and I am not satisfied that I am getting the best possible results.

Although the original Franzinator design had no inter-cooler at all, working purely from the flash cooling inside the vessel, I still believe that the inter-cooler is the coup des gras.  The method I employed to cool the vessel was to wrap it in copper tube with chilled water circulating through the tubing with lots of insulation around the whole shebang.  Logical, no?  But, as I mentioned in the earlier post, the copper tubing is not conducting because it is not attached to the steel tube vessel.  It is not possible to wrap the tubing tightly enough to ensure conduction, so I was only getting convection, which was meager at best.  So I reasoned that the inter-cooler was probably not contributing much to the equation, and set about rectifying the situation.  (Note:  rectifying does not mean sitting on your ass doing nothing, even though it seems like it should.)

First step, remove insulation and copper tubing, grind the steel pipe to get a good bond able surface.  Intent was to re-wrap the copper tubing and braze it to the pipe to get actual conduction.

 

I dry-fit the assembly back in place and welded the brackets so that they would be in the proper position after I brazed the tubing to the steel pipe.  As I welded, I was not unaware that this permanence surely preceded folly.  Later I would have to grind them off.

That Saturday went down as a lesson in metallurgy.  Using a mini oxy-acetylene torch and various blends of solder and brazing rods, I was unable to get a bond to the steel pipe.  I had learned that flux was not necessary when brazing, but tried anyway after hours of failing without it.  Didn't work.  In a moment of desperation and frustration, I even tried to MIG weld it.  Of course, we all know academically that was a stupid idea.  But sometimes empirical success comes to those willing to ignore logic. Not this time.  What it did do was melt the tubing instantly.  Duh.  So with a new problem, I tried to repair the tubing, which I have done before with ease.  Not today.  I tried to swedge and solder.  Nope.  I tried to sleeve with a larger ID tube.  Nuhuhh.  Simply put, Saturday was not to be Solderday.  Sometimes it goes like that.  It was dinner time.  I turned off the lights and went in for family time.

Sunday started with a hint of promise as Saint Wife decreed that we would not be attending church that day.  I did not need to know why--a gift horse has good teeth.  This gave me a huge head start on Plan B.  The seeds of Plan B were sown by my good friend who is much smarter than I--a real Mr. Ego-crusher.  I initially rejected his idea because I was certain that my coil idea was more practical (and determined to prove that it would work, dammit).  His suggestion was to use a water jacket instead of a coil.  The problem, I reasoned, was that there wasn't a good way to deal with the air line in, the air line out, the bleed valve, and the water lines in and out.  I had been trying to envision a solution to this concept even as I was building my version with the coil.  But with failure on my heels, a gin-lubed thinker, and an hour and a half of watching a Disney movie with the kids, inescapable except into my imagination, I formulated the latest version.

4" PVC sanitary pipe.  Unfortunately, not garden-variety.  Apparently, the value-gods have decreed that foam-core PVC pipe is okydoky for sewer pipe, so that is all that is stocked at the home center.

I needed to tap NPT threads for PVC bushings for the water lines and was concerned about this foam core non-sense.  So as a precaution, I glued a reinforcing patch, then tapped through both.  I did not have the exact drill bit required, so I went 1/64 smaller and it still tapped easily, which was a little troubling.  Since I had insufficient faith that only threading the two PVC parts together would be water tight, I also glued them.  Another harbinger of doom.

Here is how it all goes together.  I solved the air in problem by bypassing it.  It turned out that a standard 4x3 reducing NIBCO fit the OD of the steel fitting flange and the ID of the PVC perfectly.  Go figure.  I connected the water to both ends of the vessel with a piece of the tubing of which I now had a huge surplus.  Of course, one of the bushings leaks, probably because I glued it, so I will have to drill it out and re-do it, but it will be easy since the whole thing comes apart with minimal effort.  Foam core PVC is to blame, in my opinion.  I will re-do with proper pipe.  I am also dissatisfied with the strap I used to hold the whole thing to the bracket.  I couldn't find a 4" pipe collar, so I used strapping that I recall buying to hold some pipe in my first house remodel circa 1991.

And here is the final assembly.  Other than the small bushing leak, it holds water and seems to work well. When I first filled it up, the NIBCO fittings bulged a bit, giving me pause, but they held.  I barely got it all together Sunday, so I haven't taken any temperature readings yet, but I am confident that this will be very effective.  You can see in the picture how I fill the unit with water--simple hose connection to a needle valve on the water cooler reserve tank drain line.

Franzinator Part II

I have completed the Franzinator air dryer/water separator.  This was a lot of fun to build and seems to work, though I have yet to seriously measure the results.  The previous post describes the workings, so here are the final pictures and a few notes.

This shows the Franzinator and his neighbor the Swinging Lumber Rack.  I've insulated the vessel and the water supply and return lines.  The water line is coiled around the vessel inside the insulation.  I need to disassemble the whole thing and solder the copper coil to the vessel, now that I know it all works.

Here is a little improvement--the air bleed valve that allows the compressor to start without pressure on the head was leaking down the tank over a period of about 24 hours.  In order to hold the air better, I added a ball valve so at the end of the day I can shut off the bleed valve.  All the power to the shop is on a disconnect so no machinery is powered unless I am there to turn it on (to keep the 5 year old boy's future texting abilities intact).  I Just have to remember to open it when I start the compressor again.

Here is the little pump head.  This was a great find at the surplus store.  I got this unit, another larger pump (for the shop air conditioning project forthcoming), a linear actuator (don't know where that fits in, but I see mucho possibilities), and four gas springs (which are very hard to find at a reasonable price--for my adjustable roller table--another story) for 40 bucks.

Here is proof that the aluminum cans I used to make the cooling fins for the air intake line were not all beer cans.

Here are the cooling fins during installation.

A closer look.  I drilled a 7/8" hole in the bottom of an aluminum can, then cut the bottom off with the band saw.  I split the ring with tin snips to allow it to fit around the air line.  In order to get a more snug fit, I used this special made tool to crimp the interior of the ring, thereby making the circumference smaller.

Here is the special tool.  I made this to crimp the tang on fretwire during the Yoda rebuild.  It is a cheap pair of lineman's pliers with a groove and tang milled into the jaws and the lower jaws milled out to allow the pliers to close far enough for the tang and groove to engage

Here is the whole shebang assembled.  Note the wall switch above the water cooler.  I initially had the pump wired to the compressor motor starter to come on whenever the compressor came on.  But I decided that I needed more circulation time to cool the vessel, so I put the pump on its own switch so I can pre-cool before I need dry air.  The water cooler is wired hot all the time, so it is thermostatically controlled making 45 degree water per its original design.  But the main disconnect does disengage it so during long periods (weekdays) away from the shop, I'm not wasting electricity.

In a crude test using my voltmeter to measure temperatures, I got the following:
Ambient: 69 degrees
Humidity: uncomfortable
Air Line from Compressor into vessel after 10 minute run time: 195 degrees
Air Line from vessel into air tank: 150 degrees
Water pump head after run up: 55 degrees
Water drained from vessel: not measured, but looked to be about 25ml (a guestimate based on my memory from junior high science of what a 50ml graduated cylinder looks like).

So, if my "data" is any indication, I am on the right track.  I plan to take more scientific measurements in the future, perhaps a before and after when I re-coil the cooling coil after I clean the vessel and solder the coil in place to get proper conduction.

Mr. Compressor Meets "The Franzinator"

 Recently I became the caretaker of a cute little plasma cutter.  I have been wanting one of these for some time and was excited to foster its care while its owner re-arranged his shop situation.  I immediately hooked it up and started playing around, cutting steel letters with very poor results.  Knowing from research that this was not what I should expect, I began to delve into the "whys".  Not unlike my miserable success with spraying finishes, much had to do with lack of any experience, so I expect that perseverance will eventually pay.

Upon talking to the plasma cutter's owner, I learned that the consumables are probably in need of replacement, so I undertook acquiring those supplies.  Additionally, he said that the compressed air feed must be very dry.   Hmmm.  I have no dryer on my air lines.  I thought this may also be part of my spray finishing problem.  And, the plasma cutter had a little brother--a media blaster--that I was also housing.  He, too, would need very dry air.  So, I went about looking into air drying.  Lots of methods, products, and opinions on that one, trust me.  Purchasing drying equipment was way out of the budget (budget always starts at $0 and eventually piles up to more money in parts to build a solution than the total cost to buy a solution--but where is the fun in that?).

So I fired up my sputnik and launched into the Blogosphere.  I am constantly amazed at how many people have the same problems and ideas that I have, but have already tried and failed or succeeded, then blogged about it.  What a great tool, this internet--thank you Al Gore.

After reading many ideas about drying air, I decided that the cooling approach (cool air won't hold water) makes the most sense, since that is how it is done industrially.  In many posts, a design referred to as the "Franzinator", named for an internet curmudgeon called Franz, was lauded as the best low cost solution.  So I decided to build one.  Although I cannot take credit for the concept, the means and methods are mine and I think my approach is reasonably blog-able.

Two dimensions stuck out as critical to this concept:  the pipe must be 2" diameter and 36" long.  The air must enter the vessel in the middle.  In essence, this is an inter-cooler.  Air is piped with 3/4" copper from the compressor head into the middle of the vessel and out the top of the vessel and then into the storage tank.  Steel pipe is preferred for the vessel since it transfers heat through convection better than copper.  Plus, copper pipe and fittings this size would cost a fortune.  Of course this size steel pipe and fittings aren't exactly Lowe's items either.  Enter your neighborhood fire suppression contractor.  Fortunately, I do business with just such a guy.  He supplied me with (2) 17" x 2" threaded pipes, a 2" x 1" T, and (2) 2" x 1" reducers.

The critical part in this mess is inside the vessel.  As the air comes from the compressor in 3/4" copper, it enters into the middle of the vessel through the T and then makes a 90 degree bend downward.  The outlet from the copper line into the vessel is a reduced orifice +/- 1/4".  This increases the pressure and flash cools the air while directing it towards the bottom of the vessel, where it then redirects upward towards the exit at the top through a 3/4" copper line and into the storage tank.  This process significantly cools the air and causes it to lose most of its water inside the vessel, where it condenses on the inside walls of the pipe and runs down to the bottom, where there is a boiler drain.  This also intercepts much of the oil from the compressor.
 

I made the transition from copper to steel with a simple threaded copper fitting.  I reduced the 3/4" line to 1/2" with a bushing inside a 3/4" coupling, then put the threaded fitting on the  coupling.  This gave me a 1/2" copper pipe inside the 3/4 pipe protruding past the threaded coupling into the steel T.  Inside the T, I sweat a 90 then the closed end of a fixture stub (used in new construction at the point where a fixture will be connected so that an air test can be done without a valve).  I chucked the fixture stub into my lathe and bored a 1/4 hole, making the orifice.  With this basic "metering device" sweat in place, I simply threaded the bottom pipe into the T and had the unit ready to go.

I mounted some uni-strut to the compressor and used fence post brackets to connect the vessel to the uni-strut.  The whole thing was too flimsy and I hoped that connecting the copper lines would stiffen it up.  Once connected, the system was much more stable, but still not enough for the vibration of the compressor, so I am resigned to bracing it back to the wall with some all-thread stand-offs.  On the first run test, I must say I was a little nervous about the pipe-bomb that I had created.  But I reasoned that 100 psi is not that much and all of the materials are routinely tested to much higher pressures.  I soap sprayed all my fittings and everything is air tight (amazingly).  I had often wondered if the cooling fins on the air line between the two compressor heads actually did any good.  The answer was evident when I put my hand on the new air line without fins running from the head to the vessel--burned me.  In phase two, I will take heat measurements, but for now, I can say that I cannot touch the pre-cooler line, and I can grab and hold the post cooler line.

I am super excited about this weekend, because I am going to finish this baby up with the coup des grace: an after cooler!  First, I have saved some empty beer and soda cans that will become cooling fins on the incoming air line.  Second, I am installing a 1/4" copper coil around the vessel and circulating water through an old drinking fountain (job scrap) with a recently liberated condensate pump.  More on that later.

Swinging Lumber Rack

Scraps of lumber are always tough to manage.  You constantly are sorting through, looking for the piece that will work for your current project, and it ends up in a mess.  My first pass at managing this problem was to build the brackets below the windows for long pieces.  this is a minimalist approach that helps but definitely does not solve the problem.  Most recently, I built the carriage below the brackets.  This is essentially an open ended box made of welded uni-strut.  the kicker, though, is that it pivots on a "lolly column" salvaged out of the bone-yard.  the column is bolted to the slab at the bottom, and the screw-jack top is captured in a uni-strut bracket at the top.  A pipe is slipped over the column to form a hinge.  Uni-strut is welded tot he pipe-hinge with a cable run down diagonally to the opposite end to serve as a brace.  The whole unit can support a lot of weight (I can stand on the end with it fully loaded and swing without rubbing the slab) and swings freely away from the wall to give better access to items from the end or the back, accommodating loading and unloading long unwieldy objects.  Works great.

Katy Step Stool

Whew, its been a busy winter, at least at home (the commercial construction business still limps along).  It seems like my treasured weekends have been usurped by life.  But between naps, I have eked out a few little projects.

During a holiday visit from one of my young nieces, it occurred to me that the little step stools that I made for my two preschoolers (to be able to reach the sinks to wash their hands and brush their teeth) are useful to older children (8-10 ish),  too, for reaching taller cabinets and working in the kitchen.  My niece had a birthday coming up, so I promised I would make her a step stool and send it to her.

Each of the several stools I have made have been a different design, as I search for the most sturdy and best aesthetic.  This newest version is made from the leftover cut-offs from the curved stage nosing for the church building I finished in December.  I used the already glued up cut outs from the inside radius for legs and took the design inspiration from the curve.

 You can see the resulting leg shape with a slight curvature.  this would be exaggerated by setting the angle of the legs at about 15 degrees.  I used the Mill as an overhead router and came up with a nifty way to clamp curved objects in a parallel vise--note the piece of roundish wood in the vise--a cutoff from a broken sledge hammer handle (from wood splitting--see the early axe modification post ).




I routed the mortises with a 5 degree tapered end mill, reasoning that when driven tight, this would make a super strong joint.  Although I still think this was a good idea, I think oak is not the right material for this approach.  the wood is too strong and did not compress in the slot as I imagined.  this may work better with a softer wood.  After routing the brace mortises and assembling the legs, I wanted to true-up the legs to make sure I didn't get any wobble.  I built this jig to cut the assembled tops and bottoms flush.

The assembled legs, all trued up on the table saw, still had a little wobble.  I found that the assemble could still be "torqued" around to change the relationship of the legs.  But on  a flat surface with a flat top, the stool is true.  I temporarily hot-melt-glued the top in place, then drilled dowel mortises through the top into the legs for the permanent connection.  I made the dowels on my Southbend Lathe, again, with a little taper to make the tighter as I drove them in.  the result is very sturdy and, I believe, not glue-dependent.

Finishing has been a bane to me that I resolved to vanquish.  I have been reading and experimenting with techniques and materials and still have not found a good process.  This time around, I decided to try a French-Polish (old fashioned finishing technique, not WWII Biggest Losers).  This involves rubbing shellac into the wood continually building the coats while wet.  It takes a bit of practice but yields a very hand-rubbed appearance.  this is a very NOT durable finish and is particularly susceptible to alcohol damage since that is the solvent for shellac.  But it is a very natural finish and is easy to repair.  It came out OK for a first try and not too good to walk on.

Curved Stair Nosings Installed and Finished

Well the church is finished just in time for Christmas service.  Below are a few pictures of the wood step nosings installed just prior to project completion:

Curved Stage Nosings

I've been working on building a new church in my work life for the past year.  We are closing in on completion now.  The stage has a thin hardwood flooring and is shaped in a semi circle.  The semi circle has a radius of 8'-2" that terminates into a 1-1/2" thick nosing to the lower floor.  The radius nosing had to be custom built for this application and I thought it would be fun to do in my shop.

Glue ups of double 3/4" for 1-1/2" thick nosing

 

Template for three radii

Nosing rough cut with band saw ready for smooth cut with router and template

Nosing inside (third) radius template

Routed inside radii, ready for outside radius

Shop Vac Redemption

Feeling more than a little foolish about the trash bag in the shop vac, I took another shot at the concept.  I imagined that if I had a bag with a little more [m]ass, the suction would not pull the sides into the filter so easily.  I though about just adding some ballast to the bag, but this seemed a little like admitting defeat.  When working on a new foot stool for my niece, I remembered that I had replaced the filter-bag on my dust collector with a less permeable one.  I had kept the original bag and it fit nice and snug into the shop vac canister.  I added a pair of my daughters tights to the filter for extra filter life and the system does work well after much more extensive testing.  So, I can now recommend this approach.

Shop Vac Redoux

Update:  Plastic bag in shop vac = bad idea.  I don't know what I was thinking--I knew that the plastic bag would get sucked around the filter and cause the vac to have no suction--similar to the water intake on an outdrive.  I have a heavy canvas bag that will fit into the canister--going to try that.  Maybe an internally expanding ring of some sort to keep the bag away from the filter, hmmm.....Maybe an MDF disk cut the ID of the canister that stays in the bag...

Shop Vac

While I was working on a project this weekend (curved oak stair nosings for a church I am building--more on that later), I was forced to perform a most dreaded shop chore--emptying the shop vac.  There are many problems with shop vacs, some of which can be improved, some, one must live with.  I use two vacs in the shop: one dedicated to the miter saw for dust collection powered through a triggered switch that powers up when I start the saw and runs a few seconds after I release the saw trigger.  This vac is buried behind the saw stand and thankfully doesn't require emptying often due to its exclusivity.  My other vac gets used for dust collection on the router table and also for general shop cleanup, so it sees much more use.  I have my router table wired with a 30 AMP switch that activates the internal outlet that the router is plugged into and an external outlet that the vac is plugged into so that they come on simultaneously, like the miter saw.


The multi-use vac is mounted on a light duty convertible dolly, the type that looks handy when one acquires it, but ultimately is of little use.  I am lucky enough to have received two of these dollies from individuals who became tired of looking at them.  One is dedicated to my recycling totes and the other has become the bottom half of my shop vac.

You might be thinking "hey, most shop vacs come with wheels".  If you are really thinking, you would finish that thought with "that aren't worth a damn".  If the wheels aren't yet broken, they are the perfect size for tripping over any object that you would find on the ground at any given time, including the vac's own cord.  This usually results in a tipped over vac or a dislocated hose, or both, and at the moment you are experienced the most weakened good humor.  The dolly's large rear wheels and good pivoting ability greatly reduce both hazards.

But, in order to keep the vac on the dolly, I have bungied it front and rear.  This adds another step to the already irritating process of emptying the thing.  This process begins when you realize that you have no more suction.  You take off the top and dust floats gently into your nostrils.  You unscrew the filter retainer and pull the filter off its stanchion, causing another cloud.  Then you must knock the caked dust off the filter into the vac, which is a major mess, so you leave the filter in the vac and drag the whole unit to your dumping point, which is for me, the woods  (shut up, I'm composting).  On the way, the many useless attachments that are handily mounted onto the vac fall off, leaving a trail.  In my particular case, the man-door to the back yard is partially blocked to accommodate my storage needs.  It opens enough for a man to pass through, but not a man with a clump of shop vac.  This means I must go around through the overhead door to the back, which is blocked by a nifty stone wall, effectively making the trip one for which you may want to pack a lunch.

Yesterday, I had an epiphany.  After a particularly rigorous encounter with a too long neglected vac, it occurred to me that I could simply put a plastic garbage bag in the vac so that emptying it is a matter of lifting out the bag, which can then go into a garbage can, or fit through the back door with me to be emptied in the compost heap without disconnecting and wrestling with the entire apparatus.

Life is full of simple pleasures.

The Pook Age 0 to 4

Several years ago I was noodling around with a few gadgets I acquired over the years and ended up with a few musical compositions.  Using a BOSS 8 track digital recorder and a Yamaha digital sequencer, I dubbed in a few guitar chords and some melody lines using various guitars.  These recordings were one take spontaneous experiments--no actual composing was done; I simply laid in a basic sequence or chord progression, then a melody track.

This particular track was pretty organic.  Although I lined-in an acoustic/electric Taylor 714CE in order to get a bit of chorus for the chord progression, I mic'd the melody line using a condenser mic with a little delay effect in the mixer.  I played the melody with a Taylor NS something or other--a nylon stringed classical guitar (which is my favorite because it doesn't hurt my hands to play big chords--I have some sort of affliction in my left hand that has always made it hard to hold the necessary pressure on bar chords--no matter how much I have played over the years, I have never gotten past that--big impediment that the classical set up eases tremendously due to less string tension).  The fancy equipment has all the necessary gadgetry to mix a much better recording, but requires more than an hour or so at a time to learn how to use and I have yet to invest the effort.  Some day.  In the meantime, raw is what I get.

The kids were not yet born when I made the recordings, so there is no connection.  Honestly, I have simply been trying to figure out how to post audio to this site and the only way I have found so far is to create a video.  Shows you how the world is changing, eh?  In the high school garage band days, our state of the art recordings were direct to one track cassette through a "boom box" with built in mic.  Heady days.  Its just as well, though--better technology would not have served our style and abilities.

The Rock-Preamble

Many years ago, I'm not sure how many, my uncle (the one who has the country place that no one knows about) set about the daunting task of building a major earth dam across a huge ravine that had been carved out over many decades of watershed.  By design, this dam created a pretty little pond that is spring fed and full of blue gills who think they are piranha.  In the process of creating this little Walden, a very large flat limestone rock was unearthed.  By large, I mean 12' square, roughly, by about 12" thick, more or less.  As the legend goes, a very large dozer puffed mightily as it pushed this leviathan up from the depths of the hole.  The operator shoved it up next to an old tree (I really should know what kind of tree, but I cant recall), and there it sat for several years.  The pond filled quickly, we sowed some grass, and today it looks as if it was always there.

But the rock taunted me, laying there year after year, looking quite out of place and useless.  Many beers were drunk while imagining a use for this rock.  It is not particularly striking in any way except in its size.  Certainly not the type of rock one would buy to add to the landscape of his home.  It really only has one quality: persistence in its vocation (that of being a big rock).    But I could not be in its vicinity without it catching the corner of my eye, laying there all smug.  It did not belong there.  It knew it. We all knew it.  And year after year it dared us to do something about it.

The problem one has with monoliths is Newtonian in nature.  The whole mass at rest thing is problematic proportionate to the mass.  This is compounded by economic principles that dictate that the relative value of a relocated rock times the expenditures of moving it equals folly.  Consequently, using a crane or enormous track-hoe was out of the question.  Still, it beckoned.  There is something very basic in the nature of man that compels us to dash ourselves against rocks.  History has no shortage of examples.  And so over many years of careful inebriation we finally came to the only possible conclusion:  the rock must become a picnic table.  And to be certain we properly honored our ancestors, it must become a picnic table 30 feet to the right.


We decided to get Egyptian on its ass.

To be continued...

Shootout/Pig Roast

Well, its been a busy summer.  While the economy executed the innocent, those of us still on the chain gang found ourselves redefining  "do more with less".  Consequently, I have not taken the time to enter any updates.  In brief, I have been working on finishing the basement, finishing Yoda (more about those projects later), and most recently, preparing for last weekend's annual Shootout, which was expanded to include a pig roast for the first time this year.

"My uncle has a country place that no one knows about.  He says it used to be a farm, before the Motor Law..."  --Red Barchetta, Rush

There is a little scrap of land in Indiana that my grandfather owned, which his youngest son now owns, that has always been used as a sort of retreat into the country.  My uncle has transformed it, for the better, from my earliest memories, but it retains its purpose.  Annually, the uncles and male cousins get together for a target shooting competition, which also has evolved over the years, most recently to include trap shooting.  This event always takes place the weekend after Labor Day weekend, which coincidentally collides with the anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy, my mother's birthday, my brother's wife's birthday, their anniversary, and my uncle and his wife's anniversary.  Not that any of that matters.  The annual date was based on a weightier matter: the end of the boating season.

This year, I was planning to have Yoda finished so I could return it to my cousin at the shootout, as a matter of convenience and also so we could take turns playing it around the campfire (this  has seldom, if ever, happened over the nearly 20 years we have been doing this).  Still, it was a goal and I did not achieve it.  I got distracted on another project: building a pig roasting grille and a cooler large enough to keep a whole pig on ice overnight.  Neither of these tasks was overly complicated nor challenging, but nonetheless required a requisite amount of time in the undertaking and consequently robbed poor Yoda of the attention he needed.

We bought the pig prepared from our local Amish meat shoppe.  They supplied a fresh 80 pounder, the smallest available.  They butchered her on Tuesday after Labor Day, I guess they take holidays off, too.

Piggy's heart sank as she entered the chamber, her hopes for a fair trial dashed

Redneck Pig cooler and Roaster.  I welded the grilles from scrap and knocked some of the rust off with a belt sander.  The cooler is leftover building materials from a church roof.

Making the "Mojo" marinade for a 12 hour soak.  Too much garlic in the recipe--10 cloves.  No vampire sightings reported

Piggy has soar muscles--nice salt rub.

Special tools for brain surgery.  Big knife and whacker.

"F R E E D O M !!!!"

A little rain calls for a canopy

Kermit didn't take it well

The usual suspects.  Was the pig a patsy? Is the real killer still at large?

Yoda Finishing

Well.  Its been a bit since I posted, but I have been working on Yoda.  I have it assembled except for the fretboard.  I have it stained and its a good match.  I had installed several frets, but have removed them and am starting over.  This time, I will install the fretboard and its binding, then install the frets so that the fret board is totally flat to the neck and the frets can overhang the binding properly.  I have learned that I need to pre-bend the frets and notch them around the binding, so the ones I installed are too short.  I ordered more fret wire and it came within a day--Stew-Mac is very good in this regard.

I removed the frets and sanded the fretboard smooth (again).  I filled some of the divots from the fret removal (again) with a different filler--no better than the first.  I stained it all ebony (again).  The stain did not soak into the filler (again).  I am dis-satisfied (again).

So I switched to sealing the guitar, since this has to be done before I mount the fretboard (the fretboard will have no sealer on it).  Although I think catalyzed lacquer is the right product to use, the elf at the PRO Sherwin Williams store told me that the existing finish looked like polyurethane and convinced me that  water based poly will be just as good if not better than lacquer, and I wont have to worry about compatibility. 

So I bought the product he recommended.  I got a new gravity feed spray gun from the China Depot and set about the process.  I was very careful to read everything I could about the product.  I found nothing specific about its spray-ability, but the SW elf assured me it is spray-able.  I set up a test board and spent a considerable amount of time adjusting to get what I imagined was the best spray pattern.  I had read several articles about spraying, but never actually did it, so I wasn't sure what I was looking for.  I talked to some people who had what they considered to be great success with far less fussiness than I was investing, so I expected stellar results.  Finally, though with some trepidation, I hung the guitar from my garage door track with a piece of ought copper ground wire through one of the tuner peg holes.  And I sprayed.

It did not go well.  There was a lot of orange peel.  A lot.  I hoped it would flow out, but it wasn't flowing.  I didn't know what to do.  Using gambler's logic, I sprayed more, hoping that more material would increase the flow.  It did.  I now had very substantial runs.  And orange peel.  I stopped and waited about 2 hours for it to dry.  While I was waiting, I went to Lowes and bought some 220 and 400 grit sandpaper.  And I then sanded the entire thing by hand.  This removed a lot of the urethane, and some stain.  It was getting ugly.

Note:  I, like many others, have always assumed that sandpaper, like metal files, lasted far longer than it actually does.  The 3M sandpaper I bought surprised the Hell out of me.  Even at 220 grit, I found it too aggressive for this stage.  My experience with sandpaper in the past has not yielded this type of cutting power.  I don't know if its the 3M brand or what, but it is impressive.

I re-stained the bare spots and got what I thought was a decent blend, but not as good as the original job.  After waiting for it to dry (it was about 88 degrees in the shop, but the humidity was only about 55%) and reading some more, I set up to spray the urethane again.  Based on an article in Fine Woodworking, I cut the urethane first 10%, then 20% to get it to thin so it would atomize better.  I had already tried upping the pressure to nearly 50PSI to get atomization, which by all accounts is the outer limits for a gravity feed gun.   I fussed with everything I could think of for about a half hour, then decided to spray it laying down this time (the guitar, not me).  It was horrible.  With more faulty logic, I decided to try to "save" it by brushing out the orange peel and adding urethane by hand.  I now had brush strokes you could loose a jeep in.  The stuff would not flow.

At this point, I don't know what the problem is.  It could be the cheap spray gun, though I doubt it--there is not a lot that could malfunction and it does actually spray.  It could be the product just being inappropriate for this application--I was not enthusiastic about it in the first place.  It could be my inexperience with the application and the product, though all indications are that inexperience leads to extra work, not total failure.  I'm not yet sure what I'm going to do, but one thing is clear--I will have to sand the entire thing down to bare wood and start over again at this point.  Dammit.

Push Me Pull You

When I was cleaning out my shop to make room for the lathe, which involved new tool chests, rearranging tools in the tool chests, and reorganizing all the drawers in the garage shop, I purged a lot of hardware that has been traveling with me for a decade or more.  I actually had a box of cobbler tacks, among various other small lots of stray nails, screws, and old cabinet hinges, etc.

I threw away the old iron that didn't work but I was going to fix someday in order to wax my skis--the same skis that are now the bottom half of a sled for my kids and probably won't need wax.  Gone is my collection of circular saw blades that came off the saw because they were dull, but are resharpen-able (for about twice the cost of a new blade).  No more is my galvanized steel bucket full of pole barn nails, salvaged from a chicken-coop/shed in the back yard of a house I lived in 15 years ago.  My buddies and I had a grand time burning down that shed along with the original outhouse one thirsty autumn afternoon.  The knee pads with a broken strap that I paid $5 for at the China Depot--gone.  The glue-encrusted rubber gloves, grimy dust mask, welding goggles, dog leash, and cut-off ends of several baseball bats--mere memories.  I could not bring myself to discard the winter gloves that I have had since 1984, though; they are still reasonably intact and fit, so I put them under the seat of my truck for emergency use.

When I came across the Quick grip hold down clamps, I had a dilemma: I never have enough clamps, and here were two that I have been moving around for many years, never having been used because they are meant to be installed in the top of a workbench and have only one side--the other end being the work top surface.  They require a hole to be drilled the your work bench top and are fairly immovable once installed.  Just never found a good home for them.  But how could I throw out a pair of clamps?  The solution:  I welded them together.  Already they have proven to be useful in a variety of situations that I could not have envisioned.  I wonder what other stuff I threw out that I could have found a use for eventually?  Dammit.