One year ago today: November 22, 2024, took them long enough . . .
Five years ago today: November 22, 2020, weeds love me.
Nine years ago today: November 22, 2016, early floor work.
Random years ago today: November 22, 2006, pot beside pot.
It’s now 72 hours of complete nighttime silence (since Thanksgiving), and I’m rested up, ready to try another dumb idea. The tool boxes, a project with lots of board ends as byproducts. There is plenty of on-line advice that the smaller the box, the thinner the lumber, but I disagree. Some of the best small boxes I have use 3/4" lumber. They make excellent storage boxes for delicate equipment. Last evening I took a second look at the most recent ends. Y’know, I wonder if scaling down the tool boxes would produce a handy or novel tote?
Some comments on the box, by now I must have some of you convinced I’m not resting on my laurels. This is work I pore into like I used to study computers and such. It’s also active work and I suspect that is in far shorter supply than it should be. What’s different here. You can see the thick walls of the sides, that is also y’day’s pallet lumber. It is a bit much but a sturdier handle will make it more photogenic. I was going to use surplus paintbrush handles pinched together, I have lot. That’s a no-go as it takes roughly 30 tries to get any two the same diameter.
The end pieces are also thinner that is visually appealing. It is now routine to have the logos lasered into these pieces, simply because they are easiest to walk into the office, and they fit under the limited cutting area of the Wainlux (laser). We’ve also learned more of the art of laser etching and one component we do know is how to check the moisture content. Turns out this makes a super difference in the depth the laser will cut and the extent of charring.
Shown here is 10%, with 11% being pretty much the ideal for this pallet wood. The Wailux is 10W which is enough to easily bite too deep, yet the beam focal length is too narrow to cut even 1/4' material effectively. For clarity, the distance of the laser to the surface is important. I don’t know the physics here, but the beam seems to converge to a point and the effective “depth” of that is 1/32” at best. This means slicing a piece of wood even 1/4" deep means the beam is increasingly out of focus on subsequent passes. This is born out by several experiment. There is no easy method of adjusting for this foible.
For more advanced features and better finishes, much of this box was “built backwards” and this trend is increasing. My guess is 60% of this box used this technique. For example, all pilot holes, fitting, finishing, and most sanding is done before the box is assembled. This considerably reduces certain operations that, if attended to later become more like time-consuming error corrections.
So there, you are now as current as most anyone on laser etching and small boxes. I did in the past warn anyone who reads all this is going to learn something and the best I can do is make it mostly painless. I’m not so sure this morning’s build was a winner, but I have a backup plan for this design. Make it twice as long.
I watched the news on-line at noon. What a zoo, but I see a fundamental change. For years the Democrats only attacks on Trump were personal, using the façade of “democracy”. That only fooled those who wanted to be. The change is Trump, with growing confidence, is not attacking back. So to me, this looks more like a boxing ring than national governance. The two sides could hardly be less opposite. Trump early on spotted the Democrats had no single unifying theme other than money and power thing—he seems to have let that be.
Sure enough, the Democrat ranks have split, some calling for a change of party leadership, others demanding new levels of unification, still others retiring or stepping out. Any semblance solidarity is gone and that’s spelling trouble. Starting around a week ago, Trump has begun pointing out the personalities and hidden agendas behind news stories. He knows the mainstream media will look the other way on the issues. He would denounce wrong decisions or bad policy. Now he’s outing the Democrats as disorganized rabble.
He’s openly called for tribunals on the six who advocated military disobedience, and driving home that the Epstein list is all Democrats. The turning point was the shutdown. Until then it was given that every issue or personality was a separate issue. Now it a phase where Trump can point out that whenever something is rotten, it is always the entire Democrat apparatus behind it. Kind of how to make personal attacks without making personal attacks. I wonder if he planned this because it would be a new sophistication for which the other side has utterly no defense. Last time they even tried, he had them shamelessly backing illegals over Americans.
2017 Peel 50.
(Yes, it is street-legal.)
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
Here’s one for the books. I dialed a 24-year-old phone number and somebody I have not see in 51 years answered. It was the guy who worked the same place I did for a short while, until I finally had to really drop out of university and head north for work. We talked long enough to establish contact and his first letter, hopefully first of many, leaves here within hours. He still has to answer the skill-testing question, but nobody could possibly spoof this kind of time-line. What’s more, he’s sharp-sounding, active, and has kids in the music field.
Here is the original router table from Tennessee. It has the wooden legs I made from 2x4s that never did stop wobbling just a little bit. If it cools enough, I’m going to tackle clearing a space to store lumber. You can see here how quickly empty space fills with board ends when I don’t have dedicated space. I have the two posts already sunk for the old target range. I quit using it when the neighbor began painting in his shed again just across behind it. As luck would have it, the posts are in an excellent spot for this storage.
The guy called back about the Town & Country, I asked for $500 or about 10% of what I sunk into it. Remember, it acted fine right up till after I put in the new tires, windshield and charged up the A/C. When it worked, it was the finest van I’ve ever owned or even rode in. Then again, I wasn’t a van person until rather recently.
Let’s return momentarily to the dowel rods from this morning. The one the prototype, which I tested to finish, here’s a short video. Other than novelty, it isn’t that much to look at although I did learn that the Golden Ratio stays valid across these differing wood sizes. The biggest obstacle is the dowel price. As shown, I spliced the handle from 7/8ths end pieces and it does look sturdier than this morning.
This quickly led me to look on-line for dowel making apparatus. There’s plenty but they seem to max out at a size just over 3/4” and I’ll presume there is a reason for that. The ones that interest me are a cutting die where you feed a square piece though the blades with an electric drill. The larger pieces, I don’t know except those prices are going to get worse. Meh, history shows if you keep at it, a solution will happen along.
ADDENDUM
Ha, the X policy change to reveal the account location has resulted in some unpleasant consequences. How most of the anti-Trump accounts were all created on the same day and the sites selling Native American victimhood merch are mostly in Bangladesh. Droves of top US influencer accounts are based in Israel. Also, Google has grudgingly admitted they “will begin” reading your e-mail unless you go through the tortuous manual disabling steps. Google has always recorded your e-mail, the change is they will now ID you.
