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Friday, November 29, 2013

Building a Panel Gauge Part II - Beam Me Up! - SLIDESHOW

While all you fine Americans were busy watching football, eating turkey, and enjoying a holiday, I got to spend the whole day in my shop. While both my wife and I are employees of the federal government, we are not employed by the same government. She had to go to work.

This was good for my project, because getting the beam set up on this panel gauge was something I wasn't sure how to do before I started. After having messed up the beam insert once (documented in the first post of the series), I was running out of scrap ebony and didn't want to goof up again. It had to be right this time.

I made the insert a bit longer than the original because the blade I am using on this project requires a wedge to secure it. Check out the video to see what I did.



Give Me Lots Of Sugar (Bliss Blood & Al Street) / CC BY-NC-ND 3.0

Geek alert:

I finally found a slideshow creator for linux that I am happy with. It took a little to get used to, but it seems to work. It is called Imagination and is even in the Linux Mint repositories, so there is nothing weird involved to install it. At one point I was downloading pictures from my camera to my Linux machine, editing them on my Mac, and using Windows to do the slideshow thingie. This is way better.

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8 comments:

  1. Ralph BoumenotNovember 29, 2013 at 9:35 PM

    Good looking slide presentation. Why did you make your beam mortise different?

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    Replies
    1. Brian EveNovember 29, 2013 at 10:04 PM

      Thanks, Ralph. Do you mean the mortise for the cutter? It needs the mortise because it is a flat knife-edge blade. I couldn't pound it through like the original scratcher. It needs a wedge to hold it secure. The other mortise you may mean is the one in the stock to hold the beam. This mortise is exactly like the original, oval shaped. Indeed, I used the original's beam to test the mortise's size before I shaped the new beam. That way, it was just the same size as the original, which I quite liked.

      Delete
  2. AnonymousNovember 30, 2013 at 1:48 AM

    Nice job Brian. It took me a minute to figure out your plan for wedging the blade! Looks like it worked out well. Will the beam also be wedged, or secured with a thumbscrew?

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    Replies
    1. Brian EveNovember 30, 2013 at 8:34 AM

      Hi Jonathan, Thanks for the kind words. I didn't exactly know how to do that wedge until I started cutting it. I'm sure there probably is a "proper" way to do it, but this works just fine. The main weakness with this arrangement is the beam is intended to roll a little bit, meaning that the wedge can not stick out too far, resulting in no way to capture it. Long term, the wedge could get lost, especially since it is so small. Probably the day after I run out of ebony.

      The beam will indeed be wedged. Here I get to copy the original again with a wedge that is captured.

      Cheers!

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  3. LonnieNovember 30, 2013 at 7:07 AM

    Sure do enjoy the music link!

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    1. Brian EveNovember 30, 2013 at 8:35 AM

      Thanks, Mom! freemusicarchive.org is a fun place to surf around and get free music.

      Delete
  4. SnakeyeNovember 30, 2013 at 10:18 AM

    Ahh... unrelated to woodworking: I have 2 linux machines... am 8TB server that is the hub of everything in the house, and a home-built XBMC machine for the home theatre system. I love them both!

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    Replies
    1. Brian EveNovember 30, 2013 at 10:42 AM

      I love that I can use older equipment without spending a bunch of money on upgrades. Also, if I need a piece of software, generally there is something out there that is open source.

      Delete