Backstage

Home Again...

Ok folks, I survived the trip... Stories are to follow... Tonight I sleep...

Signing Off For The Moment...

Well its off to Maine for me... Blogging will not only be light as it has been, it will be non-existent until I get back... The extended forecast shows nothing but good weather, so hopefully this will be the perfect trip... I promise to have enough seafood to cover for all my regular readers, and I'll sample enough beer from the various breweries I'm going to tour as well...
Thanks for stopping by!

(don't mind the date on this... I pre-dated it so it would stay up, lest I have a blank space by the time I get back...)

Is That Your Foot On My Soul?

So for the last couple days, I've been working at another shop. I'm leaving for a week in Maine tomorrow, and a little extra cash couldn't hurt... It's been years since I worked there for a few reasons, the majority of which I am not going to go in to... However, I will tell you this... This place is a meat grinder of life... Working there drains all the energy out of a human being... It is simply one of the un-happiest places I have ever experienced...
Why is it so bad?... Well here's an example... The first day I was there, I had to make crush plates for the welding project they assigned me to... A crush plate is just a thick metal washer essentially that you weld on to a scenic element to keep some idiot with a wrench from simply crushing the tubing with the bolt... Well I need 418 of these things for my project... They had me make 666 of them so there would be some extra for stock... (you get 111 out of each stick of material... 6 stick... no predilection for the 666 number...) Fine, they have a great old Buffalo ironworker to shear and punch these things, so I did them in a couple hours... Once done, I broke down the jigs and cleaned up, then moved to a different aspect... Well the next day I came in, and they decided they needed more... 1200 more roughly... That's 1800 total... Since you put one on each side of a bolt joint, that means 900 bolts... You need at least 2 tubes to bolt together, and drilling tube is like drilling two holes, so that's 3600 holes at the minimum that have to be drilled... If doesn't seem so insane until you are the one drilling that many holes... That's probably 4 days straight of drilling if everything goes well... (it never does)
Now, since I have yet to actually see more than one sheet of the plans, its hard for me to say they're doing something really wrong... However, 900 bolts is an awfully high number... If I put 100 bolts on a single set, that's a lot... Granted, this show is larger than most of what I do in my shop, but there has to be a better way they aren't thinking of... I suspect I'll be back there after I come back from vacation, so perhaps I'll get to see some more plates, and it'll make sense... I am not going to hold out much hope though... They have the ability to make projects much harder than need be over there...

You'd Think...

Ya know, if I were to, say, work with lumber all the time, I imagine I'd get a feel for what the different sizes of stock are, not only by sight, but by feel...
Oh wait... I do... So I must be right... Clearly I live in a different reality than the guys loading the trucks at my lumber yard...
I ordered 5/4 oak for the table I mention in the last post... Now, 5/4 is said as "five quarter" so the nominal thickness of it is 1-1/4"... I say nominal since it actually is between 1-1/8" and 1-3/16" thick...
What I got was 1x oak... That's said as "one by"... Meaning 1 inch thick nominally, and 3/4" thick in reality...
There is a huge difference between oak that's 3/4" and 1-1/8" thick... You can tell when you grab the stick... You can tell by the weight... Hell you can see the damn difference clearly...
And yet, I had to argue with the delivery guy that it was wrong... He kept shoving the paperwork back at me showing me that it clearly said 5/4 on it, so somehow that made the 3/4" thick wood on the truck correct...
Oh well... So much for being productive today... I guess I'll get to start tomorrow...

Foiled Again

Back when we did our last opera for the season, one of the units was a card table... Overall it's like 4' x 6' with cut corners... When we built it, I had it done somewhat nicely, thinking that at the end of the run, I'd take it home rather than let them throw it in the dumpster... So far, everything went according to plan... Just one minor problem... They slathered it up with paint when they didn't quite like the stain color we picked... They actually did a nice job getting it to look like a dark cherry wood on top of the oak stain I did, but they didn't quite wrap the treatment all the way around, so while it worked fine on stage, it wasn't going to be good enough to use as furniture...
Several hours of sanding later, I'm back down to raw oak... I gave it a nice dark walnut stain this time around as I feared there might be a bit of the dark paint here and there in a pore... It looks great again... Next step, is several cotes of clear acrylic on top of the stain, and then I have to build a trestle base for it... (yea, I could slap 4 legs on there in a day and be done, but hell, I'm bored most of the time now, and a project is in order...)
There's something nice about being able to make yourself a nice, custom unit of furniture...

Gotta Love It...

Ahhh... I love the sound of spam getting sucked in to the oblivion we all know and love called Blacklist... I don't even have to put any effort in to it... This is the benifit of not having a popular blog... everyone else here at MuNu has already been hit by these idiots, and they are consequently pre-banned...
Nothing quite like effotless blogkeeping...

Duuuuhhhh...

You often have to wonder why you just don't think of some things sooner... Today's example goes like this...
I was over at Two Nervous Dogs reading about another addition to Topdawg's caffeine addiction equipment... In this case, a roaster... Well hell, I've had a roaster for a couple years, and have yet to use it for one minor reason... So I post a comment over there, and as my finger is coming down on the mouse button, I have this conversation with myself...
"WAIT!! YOU ARE ABOUT TO POST AN IDIOTIC QUESTION YOU KNOW THE ANSWER TO!!! YOU'RE ALREADY ONLINE... THERE IS A GOOGLE FIELD RIGHT ON YOUR BROWSER... ONE MUST BE ABLE TO BUY RAW COFFEE BEANS ONLINE SOMEPLACE!!!!!"
It was naturally far to late as one must only press a mouse button all of about 1/32 of an inch... So now, I'm going to have to order some raw coffee and see if this bloody coffee roaster that has been in my closet for years, actually works... I suspect I'll use it for one, and only one real purpose... To make the apartment smell like roasting coffee... I can't really conceive of using this thing to roast the beans for my morning coffee every day when I wake up... Does any one actually get up half an hour earlier than they need to with the idea of trying to carefully roast coffee beans to perfection, prior to having that first cup of caffeine coffee?
My real quandary here though is why has it taken me multiple years to consider looking for raw coffee online... Sheesh...

Life Interupts

Yea... yea... I know... There is an extreme lack of content here these days... I'll be back... I've just got some more pressing things on my mind...

Olympic Bonus

While reading the news on CNN this morning, I ran across this article. Apparently, the folks who work in the hotels around Greece, feel they should be paid more during the Olympics... Now, I'm a union guy myself, even if I'm not a good one, and I'm a business owner, so I can see both sides of the issue... Here's my take on this... This is the union trying to take advantage of the situation... Yes, the hotels stand to make a good buck during the Olympics, but, the employees aren't going to be hurting either... There will be overtime galore most likely, there should be plenty of tips to be made too...
The article mentions that transit workers are talking about the same type of striking. Both of them are saying it is because the government has decided to give the government security people a bonus during that time... I suppose letting them know that the government does not own the hotels wouldn't help... I also suspect that the security folks will be taking a higher risk themselves during that time, so call it hazard pay if you like...
Now, if the hotel workers were going to use the Olympics as a leverage point to get better pay across the board, I would be a bit more forgiving... At that point, I'd think, hey, perhaps these people are getting the shaft, and now they have something they can use to fix that... Instead, all I am seeing is people trying to cash in on the Olympics...
'Course, I could just be in a bad mood today too... Whatever...

Dinner Any One?

Ok... I was out buying some things for dinner tonight when I walked through the seafood section... As with most large stores, they had a tank of lobsters, and the other tank that rotates based on what is in season... Today they had huge dungeness crabs...

Well one of them managed to get a foot hold out the open top of the tank... This naturally got my attention, as this crab was easily 6" across the body... No small thing to be running around pissed off... Slowly and quite surely, leg after leg came up through the opening, until the body started getting pulled out... I decided at this point to move along before the people in the back noticed someone... I figured I'd let the crab get itself out, and have a bit of fun before it became someone's tasty dinner...

Markups...

Since its slow right now (read that as dead thankfully), we decided to finally get the shop wired correctly... I had an upgraded power service put in a couple months ago, but didn't have the time or money for the wireing beyond that, so we're still running on what was here when we moved in the door almost 3 years ago... At any rate, the first quote I got was almost 16 grand... It was at that point I laughed at the electrician and told him to try again... The next number came back at around $7600... Now, he's getting in the right range... I did not however want to spend quite that much at the moment, so I had the guy stop over again, and we chatted about the cost...

Me: I'd like to get this down to the 5 grand range, so let's figure out what needs to change.

Him: hmmm... 5 grand huh... well can you go for $5500?...

Me: That's funny, I'm pretty sure I just said 5 grand...

Him: Well yes, but I think I can do the entire job for $5500 without haveing to change anything...

Me: But you were going to charge me $7600 not 5 minutes ago if I signed that paper...

Him: Well yes, but this is all just guesswork anyway when it comes to labor...

Me: Well I can understand that... $5500 it is... Write it up, and send it over...

Here's the lesson folks... Electricians must have an insane mark-up factor... I'm down to about a third of the first price he gave me, and I know damn well he's still going to make money on this job... The scarey thing is that this guy does good work... I shudder to think about the profit margin of the guys that just do slap-dash work...

and 45 Minutes Later...

45 Minutes... That is how long it took to fix the cold saw I just got for nothing... Naturally I'm not counting the time to re-assemble it... Just the amount of time to free up the rusted solid parts that condemed the saw in the first place... Such a shame that they had to waste a pile of money buying a new saw... Somehow, I still don't feel guilty...

The Secret Life of Tools - 1.2

That's right, its back... For all those insomniacs that didn't get enough on the first go around, here's some more blather on blades...
Today in the extended entry, I'll be droning on about the types of blades, and what makes them different from one another... Now, I have warned you... This is going to be terribly dry stuff...

So last time I talked a bit about keeping blades sharp, and when to change them... This time let me talk about the finer points of the things physically...
The vast majority of blades have what is called a "set" the set is how much the teeth are wider than the body of the saw. By having a set, you end up with less binding as well as being able to cut curves when you need to. (curves should only be done with tools designed to do so, do not cut curves with tools using circular blades! Think jig saw, or saw-z-all, or band saw) Tied in to the set is the shape of the teeth on the blade... There are three basic tooth shapes, and they get mixed up to create blades that perform differently... The types are: Beveled, Raker, and Centered. (ok, I can't find a proper name for the centered tooth, I'll describe it below)
The Beveled tooth has a point ground to one side of the blade or the other... These teeth are used in opposite pairs on blades. They cut first one side of the kerf, and then the other side, leaving a small inverted V of material at the bottom of the cut. These teeth cut smooth sides, and rough bottoms.
Raker teeth are flat topped teeth, made the width of the kerf. They cut with a flat bottom but tend to leave a very messy edge.
The Centered tooth is sharpened from both sides so that it only cuts a flat bottomed V in to the stock. They are never used as the only type of tooth as they do not clear any material outside the blade body.
If you go out to buy a blade, you will be hit with quite a selection to choose from. You need to think about what kind of cutting you do naturally before selecting one. However, there is a pretty safe option available to put on almost any saw for almost any material... Look for a "combination" blade. The tooth pattern will be ATR or Alternate Tooth Raker. That translates to two opposite beveled teeth followed by a raker. These blade cut nicely through just about anything, and leave a reasonably nice edge. I run ATR's on both my table saw, and the radial arm saw as we deal with lots of plywood, so grain direction is an unknown... These blades are usually 24 teeth on a 10" blade. I run a Triple Chip Grind blade for plastics and laminates, which is a raker, followed by a centered tooth... Its up in the 80 tooth range so it cuts smoothly, and doesn't shatter the plastics... I have a couple other specialty blades, but they almost never see use.
The next trick I pull with my blades is that I use what are called "thin kerf" blades. A typical 10" blade will cut an 1/8" kerf. A Thin Kerf will cut 3/32". 1/32" doesn't seem like much does it?... Think of it this way, you are only cutting 3/4 of what the regular blades cut. I can tell you that adds up... These blades are not the secret of the universe however. They have a much higher tendency to heat warp under heavy use, and if you manage to hit something like an imbedded stone, or nail, they with shatter their teeth in short order. They seem to hold up pretty well for us here as the crew is sharp enough to look for screws/staples/nails... All our blades are generally coated with Teflon too, so the pitch and sap from the pine doesn't build up to heavily... Every now and again, check your blades for that buildup, you'll be amazed how much of it sticks to the blades...
When you get in to a band saw or other straight type blades, there are some other options. Most notable is the "wavey set" blade. Rather than grinding alternate teeth one way or another, these blades teeth meander back and forth through the work. It has always been most noticeable to me on hack saw blades... I could do a whole post just on band saw tooth styles, but I'm not going to... We don't use band saws nearly enough here that I would consider myself an expert in the minor differences you get from the different teeth...

Dumpster Diving

I was sitting home yesterday, not really planning on going out, when my phone rang. Noting that it was a friend of mine, I answered it. (as opposed to a client who would just go to voice mail) Me asked me if I wanted a cold saw... Not really being fully awake even though it was late in the morning, it took me a moment to figure out what he meant. Eventually the cobwebs cleared, and I answered yes as any good tool junkie would. So it was off to pick it up, from a shop that was throwing it out. Yea, you read that right, throwing out a tool...
Now, as you're most likely not a tool nut, let me explain what I'm talking about here... A cold saw is a lovely unit designed to cut metal of just about any type. It does so quite quietly compared to just about any other option, and keeps the stock and blade cool with an oil/lube that gets pumped over the blade. In short, it is the saw to have if you are going to be cutting the types of materials we deal with in the theatre... Why didn't I have one already?... Well the damn things cost $5000 when you try to buy them new, and they end up in the $3000 range for used ones... That's a tad out of my typical bottom feeding price range... I've been on the hunt for one for years at auctions in PA where you can sometimes stumble across something the rest of the people know nothing about...
At any rate, They were tossing this unit... Why you may ask?... Well the vice on the unit has ceased up... They tried for a couple days to break it loose, but in the end, they need a working saw, and didn't want to mess with it any longer... Replacing the vice apparently would cost $3000, so I understand their desire to just buy new... (I still don't accept that the vice costs that much...) At any rate, I am a firm believer that there is no piece of industrial equipment that can not be brought back from the dead... To this end, I am going to take the vice out to Pennsylvania this weekend, drop it in a tub, and soak it in kerosene... I'm going to leave it in there for a month... I have to believe that the glop that is causing the problem will dissolve in there...
The machine runs on a 3 phase motor... Unfortunately, I don't have 3 phase power in my shop... However, for a couple hundred bucks I can get or make a 3 phase converter... That plus the 10 gallons of kerosene will put be some place around the $210-225 mark for a $5000 saw... I think I can live with that...