Week Ending 29 July 2018

Where oh where has the week gone?  I could swear it was just Monday.  This happens far too often when you're an independent woodworker with a day job and a variety of other personal duties.  We try our best and we find times to still make a bit of dust.  And I managed to get some quality time in the shop regardless.

I have two of the new cipher wheels with the constellations on them oiled and drying.  The main work here was to carve the second one, get it painted and then cleaned up.  Then came time to make the dials that let you turn the inner disc.  These are just two discs made from 5/8" walnut.  I went simple and these and just drew them with a compass, cut them on a jig saw and sanded to my lines. 

Where I added some challenge was to make a hole in the center to hold a threaded insert.  I wanted a flat bottomed hole down to 1/8" from the bottom.  Regular brad point drill bits would have their points go through that last 1/8".  So, I mounted them in the CNC and made a quick program to cut them.  I had to put in a v-bit so I could align it's point with the center of the disc (from the compass), clamp it down then switch to a 1/8" spiral and make the cut.  Sure, it was probably overkill, but it worked great.

I installed the threaded inserts back at the drill press.  It's helpful to have another set of hands or clamps here (I had a wife!).  I cut the head off a 1/4 20 bolt so I could put it in the drill chuck them put the insert on it with a few nuts to hold it in place.  From here, lower the quill and turn the chuck by hand.  I repeat, turn this by hand!  Pressure on the quill while turning sets the inserts totally straight.  It's a great way to get the job done.

Last was a bit of sanding, glue on the dials and then put a few coats of danish oil on all the parts.  Wipe them dry a bit later and now I'll let them cure a few days before top coating with some wipe on poly.  They oughta look great then as I get them posted to Etsy.  Oh yeah, after doing some photography.  Making some new videos would be cool too.

I'm also looking for other alternatives for laser work to finish off the engagement box commission.  The shop I wanted to use is closed while they move and it appears they are taking longer than expected.  Made some calls and have a new person to see this week.  We'll see.  I had hoped to use the Fab Lab maker space so I got the experience of using the laser.

That about did it for the week.  Not a lot happening, but really good to see some projects move along.  Progress is progress, always good to look at it that way.  Each day brings new challenges, new failures but new successes as well.  It's the successes we have to keep our eyes on.  Failures are just there as guides on what not to do.

Until next week, stay dusty!

Week Ending 22 July 2018

This week was mostly about drawing, but fortunately drawing for use in woodworking.  I recently purchased as Wacom Intuos drawing pad because I had wanted to get better at drawing and found I can use it for woodworking drawings too.  I have wanted to make new symbols for use on the cipher wheels and after a bit of looking and searching I decided to make a set of constellations.  These are similar to what you'd see watching the old Stargate show (love that show, hope it comes back sometime!).

Using the pad and another tool, Autodesk Sketchbook (currently free for hobby/student use) to draw all the constellation symbols.  I used some pictures found around the web as a guide.  The trickiest part is getting the thickness of the lines right as these will turn into v-carve paths for the CNC.  Sketchbook has tools for drawing straight lines or circles plus all the freehand methods.  It was a combination of both, some guided drawing then a bit of free hand to fine tune.

Once I had them drawn, I could save this as a .TIFF file and moved over to V-Carve (I use desktop 8.5, I should upgrade at some point).  Here I can import the tiff file and then trace it.  Since I drew the constellations as solid black shapes they traced well and I didn't need any editing.  All that was left was to group the right lines to make the full constellation and then arrange them around the ring, create the toolpath, export and carve away. 

I used the Oramask again and got some very nice cutting.  I found if I slowed down the CNC a bit I had less of a chance of lifting the mask.  It does add some time, but I'd rather wait a few more minutes than fix issues.  All the usual followed - paint, wait, peel off all mask and marvel at the new piece.  It came out looking great!  Painting did take a while, lots of little bits to fill in.  I tried a sample with spray paint but that has a tendency to bleed (maybe due to the alcohols in it).  Maybe I can get around that by first sealing with some spray shellac first.

I also carved a second center but didn't have time to paint it.  I had a few chip out spots I'll need to fix first (cut and stick little pieces of the stencil mask) before painting anyway.  I did mill up some new edging and wrapped the cipher wheel body.  Soon I'll have two new cipher wheels with the constellations as one of the cipher languages!

The other shop work was a bit of maintenance - coating the cast iron surfaces with some Boshield T9.  I've used that for several years now with pretty good success.  Spray on, wipe off and then I find after I wait a few hours I have to buff it down as it dries a tad sticky.  After a light buffing it gets nice and slick again.

Bit light this week, I know.  I'm hoping the Fab Lab is open again so I can get there and do the laser work for the engagement box and wrap that project up.

Until next week, stay dusty.

Week Ending 13 May 2018 Update

This week was marked by finishing, fitting and finishing some more.  The 6 new cipher wheels are nearly wrapped up, the last coat of finish is drying.  Fitting them took a bit of work.  Getting one circular disc to run perfectly from a center pivot in a circular opening takes a bit of work.  Even tiny error mean it won't run totally true and need some sanding and adjusting.  I err towards the side of easier turning so that nothing can bind up over time.  

Finish strategy for the cipher wheels is to spray the carved wheels with shellac, let it dry then coat with a dark stain and wipe off.  I used General Finishes Nutmeg on these.  The shellac fills the carved areas and the shellac keeps it from penetrating the surfaces much.  Let them dry a good 4 hours.  The edging was pre-finished with Danish oil then cut to size, mitered and attached.  After everything was good and dry I top coated with 3 coats of Minwax wipe on poly.  Finally, I could wax the movements and assemble, using a bit of blue Loctite to keep the wheels in place but still turning.

While the finishing supplies were out I also top coated the puzzle box I am making as part of a commission.  It went on well and looks great.   Just two coats were needed for this.  This leaves me with just the top to make and that needs some laser burning on it.  I'm still working on how I want it's lock to work.  I'd like to do something with magnets, but I'm also thinking something spring loaded.

I also had a meeting of a new CNC club that should be fun going forward.  Knowledgeable group of people and fun too.  We spent some time discussing the types of problems we've run into and how to solve them.  Operating a CNC is the kind of thing that has a seemingly endless series of things that can go wrong.  My last problem was while making some cipher wheels - I had the router off with the pencil tip carving bit when I when I told it to start. The gantry moved that bit even though it wasn't spinning and there went $30.  Such is life.

Lastly was recording a new video for using the latest cipher wheels.  This one is about numeric shift ciphers.  Only took 3 tries to record a good one.  I still need to edit and upload it.  I certainly want to do more, using the symbols, numeric keyword shifts, symbol rotation, etc.  Lots of fun stuff to come.  I also want to add pages to the website to categorize and explain different encoding techniques.

Until next week!