Author: Ben

Categories
Woodworking

Measure Twice, Cut Once

Leg mortise drilled out

Angles are hard. Especially if you don’t have a protractor.

Tonight, I realized I’d made my First Major Blunder on the bench build. From Chris Schwarz plan for the Nicholson bench, I’m using legs that sit at a twenty degree angle off vertical, seventy to the floor. Well, I thought I was. I don’t currently have a protractor, even a dumb cheap one, so when I need an angle, I lay it out on my bench. I still remember my trig from high school and I’ve got a pretty good square, so it’s pretty easy to just lay out the line off my current bench side and then set up a bevel gauge to match.

Leg mortise cleaned up

A seventy degree angle happens to be really close to a 4 in 11 run. That is, measure over 4 units, then up 11 units, and you’ve got the seventy / twenty pairing. I set my bevel gauge, locked it down tight, and saved the line on my bench just in case. I cut the ends of the legs and the apron support using the bevel gauge and all was happy with the world.

Except, somehow, I measured over 5 and up 11. So all my angles are closer to the 65 / 25 pairing. So my legs lean a little more than five degrees more than they should, and they end up being about 3/4 of an inch short, relative to the floor. Happily, when I marked the width of the apron rabbet on the leg, I used the actual apron, not a measurement, so that all still fits.

After playing with it for a bit, I’ve decided to just live with the slightly shorter bench. If it really bugs me, I figure shimming up 3/4 of an inch shouldn’t be too rough. It does mean that I’ve got to refigure how long the vise chop is going to need to be in square wood, but I’ve got 7′ of 8/4 Ash. I’m sure I can find a chop in there somewhere.

So after deciding to live with it, I trimmed up the saw marks and a “squared” up the bottom of the legs to get everything happy at 25 / 65.

Lessons learned:

  1. When measuring angles out by hand, triple check your work. Ideally walk away and come back.
  2. Get a damn protractor
  3. Trimming end grain sliced at 20 degrees is a lot like trimming pure end grain. It’s tough on a blade. Make sure it’s sharp sharp sharp sharp and take it slow.
Categories
Woodworking

Paper Joints

So I’m reading in Wearing’s Essential Woodworker and happen across a mention of attaching a scrap block to a board with a paper joint to prevent spelching when planing end grain. I’d never heard of this joint, but found a good explanation. You just stick a piece of porus paper into the joint, allowing it to be split back apart when dry. A neat trick.

Categories
Woodworking

Starting a new bench

A trunkful of poplar

I’ve been uphappy with my laminated plywood bench for a while now, so I’ve decided to build a new bench. It’s based on a Nicholson design, featured by Chris Schwarz in his original tome on benches, with an angled leg vise and wide apron sides. Unlike his depiction, I’m going with a soft hardwood, poplar, for the bench material and I’m going with 12/4 stock (~2.75″) for the top. I’m also going to add a split in the top, closer to the back of the bench, for planing stops and such. I’m hoping to get away without installing a tail vise of any sort, but we’ll see.

Categories
Computers

Google Chrome CR-48 Bugs

Somehow, I lucked into one of the CR-48 Chrome netbooks that Google is giving away. In the interest of sharing what I’ve learned, I thought I’d put together a list of what I’ve run into and how to fix it or work around it.

Wireless Intermittently Drops Connection

I’ve had this thing for… a month? now and it has one major problem that makes it nearly worthless to me. For some reason, if you do something that takes a little time, like writing up a blog post, the next network operation tends to fail. The wireless indicator goes from having bars, to just a plain x, and then it’ll reacquire an IP and be ok again for a bit.

I put in a call to a Chrome Ninja, which was promptly returned with some suggestions. There’s apparently a known bug with wireless networks that use WPA-PSK-TKIP, an older standard for securing a wireless network. On their advice, I’m now forcing wireless clients to use WPA2-PSK-AES, where as before, the algorithm was decided on by the client. It seems to have helped; I’ve only had one dropout since switching over to the new security protocol last night. Previously I was seeing drops every five minutes or so.

Categories
Etc

Google TV

Lucky me. I entered a drawing back when the Google TV was announced and found out last week that I’d won! This afternoon, a shiny new Logitech Revue (with Google TV) arrived on my doorstep. After the ChromeOS netbook that showed up last week, I’m suddenly on Google’s good side.

Impressions so far on the Revue:

  • Unboxing, my initial thought was “chincy.” The keyboard is neat, but looks a bit like a kid’s toy to me. However, it’s pretty nice to type on, sturdy in use, and I’m really growing to like it.
  • I don’t have home TV service, at all. No cable, no OTA HDTV. Everything I’m watching is off Netflix, so no real review of how it handles your cable box.
  • Setup was pretty easy, if a bit … complicated. With my Apple TV, I plugged it in, gave it a wireless password and I was done. With this I plugged it in, gave it a wireless password, told it the model number of my TV, which I had to pull off the wall to find (ugh), waited for it to install an update, rebooted twice, went through a crazy screen tuning exercise, and then got a nice intro movie telling me how awesome the device is.
  • Vs either my Apple TV or my XBOX 360, having a keyboard is super freaking awesome. I’m typing a blog post on my TV. Yes I could do this by hooking up a laptop to my TV via HDMI. It’s still awesome.
  • The Netflix app is pretty sweet. Much better display than the 360 app, if less pretty. Having a keyboard for search is phenomenal.
  • The thing has a fan, which roars to life during bootup. So far, the fan hasn’t come on in use, but if it does, yikes. So far, so good.

More later as I play with this thing some more. So far, it’s pretty cool. The web browser alone makes it pretty awesome.