Teaching
I recently got to teach a class on Router basics. Other than it having to be rushed due to the time constraints, it went well. I’ll be converting the documentation for this class into a post on this website, much like I did with my Dado Information class.
I was also working on a beginning woodworking class for Skillshare but life got in the way and I wasn’t able to finish it before the deadline. While making the class, I realized that the subject matter was much too broad for the amount of time I had to put it together. I’m still going to put together some Skillshare classes but I’m going to have them be more focused and less broad.
Filming
I’m working on a video that will walk through how I am making a small 8″ snare drum using stave construction. I filmed Day 1, which ended up covering everything up to the glue-up. As the glue was curing, I started editing the video. That’s where I discovered a pretty big problem.
Lets see if I can explain this…
My snare drum is going to consist of 16 staves. A circle, as you are aware, has 360 degrees. which divided by 16 is 22.5. This amount gets divided by two, since the staves will each have two sides, so each edge needs to have an 11.25 degree bevel.
Still with me?
Now, I use a digital angle gauge. I first square it to the table, then attach it magnetically to the blade. When I do that, it changes from 0-degrees to 90-degrees. This means that when I angle the blade, I need to set it to 90-degrees minus 11.25 degrees. This comes to 78.75 degrees. I knew this, but for some stupid reason (probably because I was distracted with trying to get this on video) I accidentally set it to 79.75 degrees. This makes each edge of each stave one-degree off, which multiplied by 32 edges comes to a total of a 32 degree gap for the drum shell.
Of course, being an idiot I just assumed that the glue was making things too tight so I clamped it down and didn’t think much of how off my measurements were. I didn’t notice the actual problem and its cause until I was editing the video. By this point, the glue had pretty much cured so there wasn’t anything I could do about it.
It’s time to start from scratch, being a little more careful this time.
As a present for you, since you’ve been so patient with me sharing this story, I’ve decided to upload the edit of the video I shot. Keep in mind that it’s a very early update. I was leaving room for a voice-over in parts so some of the shots are too long since I was going to edit in the voice-over then cut as the video to work with the audio.
Turning
I’ve been doing a good amount of woodturning lately and I’ve been getting into bowl-making, which although I’ve been turning for years, I never really got into. Below are some examples of my turning experiments.
One downside to bowl-turning is that I really don’t have anything to do with these. I don’t have a desire to place decorative wooden bowls around my house and most of these don’t have a food-safe finish so they’re not really functional. This is why I wasn’t really interested in bowl-turning in the first place. I like that I’m learning some new techniques but I suspect that I won’t be making a whole lot more bowls.
