woodworking tools tips

WCAX burlington recently featured will in their made in vermont last monday on the six oclock news.
heres a link to the tape. it was great!. check it out if you have a minute. they filmed and talked for about an hour and boiled it all down to about 3 minutes. a lot of work goes into this stuff.

hes currently working on banjo #13 and ill post more photos tomorrow ..

cool inlays .. should have the finish on it soon ...

Selasa, 14 Juni 2016

more piccolo banjos

short concert here

will put up a website back in may and boom, boom, boom .. three piccolo banjo orders. hes working on all of them sort of at the same time and finishing up the first one, which has to be in california for a festival next week. i havent been paying 100% attention and i only caught the highlights, but watching him figure out efficiencies to produce multiple editions of similar designs has been really interesting. click the photos to enlarge them ...

first, he cut all the pot ring parts at the same time. it was quite a stack ...

then, based on some stuff he found on the internet, he designed and built a machine tool type setup for the wood lathe to rapidly and accurately turned the pots.

eventually, hell have a steel plate made to more firmly hold the reversible tool post, but the wood plate worked surprisingly well.

three necks ... cut on his refined swing jig ...

he then added the inlaid and slotted fretboards

and refined the final shapes

he finished the wood parts with tru oil, a hard oil product made primarily for gunstocks, but it works great for banjos and other small things too.
a new challenge was installing the natural skin head, which the first client requested for a traditional sound. this ones goat skin which has an interesting, natural look.

you soak it in warm water, and then lay it over the rim and install the brass flesh hoop, which Will and Sam rolled from brass and brazed in the metal shop.

then you place the tension hoop over that

and pull the excess up through a little at a time.

last step is to install the tightening hardware, snug it up and trim the excess. after drying for 24 hours, the skin will shrink and tighten itself ... pretty slick ... i was fascinated watching the stretching process. i had my camera nearby and took the really short video here as will was finishing up ... about all you can see there is how quickly you need to work, but its still a pretty cool process shot.

Jumat, 01 April 2016

the new pool table is finished

12/31/12 we received this onsite photo of the pool table yesterday ... looks like a good spot ..

well, after some serious setbacks along the choice, all of them inconvenient, but none of them fatal, we finally wrapped up this pool table earlier in the week. but, due to the hurricane, and the fact that my shipper is based on long island, it is still set up in my shop, waiting to get on its choice to chicago. hopefully early next week. click the photos to enlarge them.

it features curly claro walnut rails with figured mother of pearl inlays and black leather pockets, a welded steel frame base, (about 450 pounds of it), with a rainbow finish and low shine lacquer.

it started out as a cad drawing with two different designs. there was some indecision, which offered us a perfect chance to make a scale model to study the two choices.

one design on one side, one on the other.

not one, but the first TWO sets of slates from our supplier in florida arrived broken due to poor packing and poor trucking. in the end we were able to secure a high quality (and more expensive) italian slate set from a supplier in (sort of nearby) albany, a short hour and a half achoice. setbacks numbers 1 and 2.

we made some jigs on the cnc and sam cut, fit and welded the frame pieces.

Will made the curly claro rails and did the inlay, cushions and felting

here Will drill the rail ends to receive the pocket ears.

we made some support jigs so we could move the sides, with the legs attached, into place to bolt things together.

and then we set it up in the shop to test everything before finishing the base, and covering the blinds and the slate frame edges in 1/8th" steel too. it was at this point that we discovered the long side angle iron, that we thought would be stiff enough, wasnt so we had to seek approval to add the center supports to the long sides. (small) setback #3.

due partly to the jigs we made on the cnc and mostly to sams care and fitting and welding ability, it was level pretty much wherever we looked. lets hope the clients floor is as good as ours.

then it was back to the metal shop for finishing. we ran out of the patina chemical on the last side section and had to wait 5 days for it to ship cross country, hazardous, ground. setback #4.

and, while sam and jim were doing the patina on the last long side assembly, it fell and smashed jims finger to the tune of five stitches when he tried to catch it ... too heavy ... setback#5.

while we were waiting, another part of the commission was to make this custom cue rack, also in steel and claro walnut.

and a jig to locate the hidden screws to hang it.

and now were tapping our foot for hurricane sandy and setback #6. fortunately, our clients have been ENORMOUSLY patient and understanding as we navigated the process. i am most certainly looking forward to seeing some photos of the room once our chicago mechanic does the final onsite set up. it will be in the same room as this 12 claro walnut table we shipped back in july. must be some room .. all for now.

other pool table posts are linked below:
other pool tables we have built
build your own pool table
a custom pool table
felting the rails; rack em up!

woodworking tools tips

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Rabu, 16 November 2016

wills banjos hit the tv news

Selasa, 14 Juni 2016

more piccolo banjos

Jumat, 01 April 2016

the new pool table is finished

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