Todays Project - What did you do today?

[rleete]

I'm catching up on pens that I promised people last year.  Not much to show that hasn't been shown before.

I did get a new tool/toy.  I'll be posting about that in the woodworking section later on.

[Mayhem]

Most of my time has been spent working, digging out soil/rock for a retaining wall, trying to train my dog to crap in my neighbour's driveway, sorting fasteners and making a new gate for my Mum. Nothing much worth posting on here.

[aRM]

(12-31-2016, 04:02 PM)krv3000 Wrote: oooo brill my I ask wher did you by it from

Hello TOM
Ditto !!!
aRM

[Vinny]

aRM, the link to it was in his post.

[f350ca]

Didn't want to be up the creek without a paddle so thought we'd try making some.
Ash core in the shaft for strength and flex, cherry for the rest, nice and light.

[EdK]

Not much to brag about but since it's so dead around here lately I thought I'd risk it.  

I finally used my HF ultrasonic cleaner today. The Teco clamping kit I got had some protective coating on the threaded studs, the nuts and the t-nuts. It was thicker than oil but not quite grease. More of a waxy oil like a thinned down cosmoline of some sort. I used 1 part of Simple Green degreaser to about 10 parts of water and it did the job nicely.

Oh, and yesterday I got the the clamping kit hung up on the end of the stock shelf. Much handier than having it sitting on the floor to trip over.

Ed

[Roadracer_Al]

@ Greg - very nice work, and timely.

I've been suggesting at my rowing club that we undertake learning how to build oars for our sliding-seat Whitehall boats. They're almost all antique, and I work on the crew that maintains & restores them. New custom-made wood oars are approaching $1000 a pair (for the size boats we have, the oars are about 11' long), and I think we can make good, sturdy oars for a lot less than that.

Would you care to give a blow-by-blow account?

[f350ca]

I need to get into the oar business.
I may make one more, if I do I'll take some photos Al (ADD kicked in again and we moved on to wooden tool chests)
The shaft has a 1/2 inch thick Ash core, (quite flexible wood with reasonable strength) then laminated 1/4 inch thick cherry on the outside. Not just for looks, the cherry is quite a bit lighter so it cuts down on the weight and lets the shaft flex as you paddle, not sure you want that in an oar? maybe.
The blade is laminated on the sides of the shaft, I added the ash strips for vanity purposes only. Used cherry for the blade to reduce weight. A lot are made of solid ash but they are heavy. Same for the handle.
A friend lent me his patterns, simply trace out the shape then cut off what doesn't look like a paddle on the bandsaw.
I cleaned up the shape on the disk and drum sander at this point. Then traced lines along the edge of the blade to give a 1/4 inch thickness in the middle, the blade and handle are 1 inch thick at this point. Then a V on each face from the bottom centre to slightly wider than the shaft. I then cut from the v to the edge line on the bandsaw. A tricky cut till you get used to it, following two lines at the same time, one on the edge and one on the face. With those parts sawed away I used a hand held power planer to finish rough shaping the blade, then a spoke shave to contour the final shape. The shaft is rounded over with a router bit then the spoke shave cleans it up. The handle is a pain. To get a nice curved finger grip I use carving gouges to form the concave shape following the top of the handle then scoop out the faces with the bandsaw and a lot of sanding.
Your oars would be a lot more stressed, not sure what they should be made of to keep weight down and still stand up.

[TomG]

Got tired of making stuff for everyone else and decided to make something for myself.

I came across a NOS reel of Ampex recording tape the other day and since its not used much these days, decided it would make a novel clock. The reel is anodized aluminum with the colorful Ampex logo and since its 1" tape, there was plenty of room for a battery powered quartz clock movement. The only machining required was a turned acetal plug press fitted into the reel to hold the movement. Now I just need to find some empty wall space in the shop to hang it up.

Tom

[awemawson]

Neat Tom.

Oh boy those reels take me back. I used to support quite a few Ampex TM7 and TM9 digital tape decks in the early part of my career. They were beautifully made, and used vacuum columns to provide fast acceleration of the 1" tape in response to rapid capstan movements. Multiple  interdependent servo systems, great to set up !

I'd love to have one now to show the grandchildren what computers really are