Replies

1. 
   Napie | Jun 05, 2007 04:33am | #1

   I really have to ask, why are you into woodworking?  None of what you have been writing about seems even remotely related to a material that will grow and shrink in fractions of an inch, much less in the thousands just based on the local change in humidity.  I’d pay money to watch you and a Windsor chair maker in the same room!

1. 
   red2erni | Jun 05, 2007 08:06am | #4

   Napie, I have been acused of going on a little, But you are the first to acuse me of not working wood. I just love to make beautiful and interesting things, particularly out of wood. And I'm converting some older and a couple new tools so I can do some high quality positioning, drilling, parting and assembly on a bunch of things that come to mind from time to time. Also, I thought it might be interesting to have some novel or new points of view on this blog. I have a wide variety of projects. But one, for example, right now is to cut and assemble some air tight audio-speaker cabinets that are as strong as possible and anti-resonant for their weight. I was frustrated working with the old tools I had, making the first half dozen designs. What a friend and I found both by measurment and by listening, was the stiffness and tightness of the enclosure had a dramatic impact on the quality of the sound we could get. So I'm working with some new wood materials some hard woods and some non-wood materials. For instance I want to make internal braces that are low aspect but fit perfectly, with very thin glue kirfs. No sawdust should dance on a horizontal outer surface as it does on the front of a guitar when the speaker is played at high volume. But once I built a small soprano bowed psaltry. In that case we did want the sawdust to dance. After several rebuilds to lighten the sounding board by hand, it did danced highest in the middle of the front panel. That is the lowest harmonic of the wooden structure, what instrument makers call the TM (0,0)mode (Transverse Mode without the over tones), the lowest resonance of the wooden structure which, without the od harmonics which gave it the deepest and richest tone. I can send you pictures of sets of bird's eye maple chests I designed and made, some years ago now. They have no metal fasteners and no glue. They do have some diamond cut ebony pitons, but only in the drawers. The frames are double tenon and we pulled the whole thing together with clamps and wax. We left the inside of the drawers unfinished and I get to smell the maple every time I put on socks and under ware (good thing to). My wife and I each have a stackable set of highboys and use them every day. Years ago, I had access to professional wood working tools. Now I'm trying to get set up to do similar quality parts in a home shop using consumer tools and low cost shop made tooling. And I have several new projects in mind. If I sound different, it is because I am different. You also, thank goodness. And thanks for your fellowship. redlooking for fun in some of the 'write' places...

1. 
   philip | Jun 05, 2007 08:36am | #5

   Red,
   "I can send you pictures of sets of bird's eye maple chests I designed and made, some years ago now."----- Please post pictures.
   "If I sound different, it is because I am different."- Excellent. There are all kinds of folk here-things can get interesting.Philip Marcou

1. 
   red2erni | Jun 05, 2007 11:44am | #6

   OK Philip, here are a couple of pictures. One is of a birds-eye storage chest clamped up without fasteners. It has a separate base which can be removed so it can stack on another. These were made with the awsome help of Gene Agrees at Berkeley Mills when his shop was in the back down on 4th Street across from Betty's Ocean View Cafe, before he became famous. He is now in the old Airco-Temescal building where, strangely enough, I worked at the time. You can see the building on his present day web site.http://www.berkeleymills.com/index.cfmIt was my first job out of graduate school in 1979 and I was driving a junker and dating my future wife on the cheap, so you can see where my priorities were. I could have put a down payment for the cost of those chests. But the design was burning a hole in my imagination, and when I discovered Gene's shop wandering around one day at lunch, we hit it off and he had the tools and one of his guys went to work helping me. The birds eye pieces have been such a pleasure ever since, watching the lights dance around and smelling the wood. Apparently the young lady also liked my priorities.

   Another picture is of MDF panels cut on my table saw last winter in Portola Valley, CA. before I put the Biesemier fence on my old Rigid saw. They are on the Newport table ready for glue-up. These and other panels were satisfactory for quick mockups of several different speaker designs which I tested with a cross section of single wide range drivers. But the fit was not acceptable for the final speakers which need to fit much better and will be made of much stiffer materials, including some tropical hardwood and perhaps even Zodiac, the DuPont quartz based counter top material I mentioned in one email. I am designing a heavy drop leaf table base for the Newport with pivots on the long neutral axis, so the heavy honeycomb stainless work table can be rotated to the vertical in a safe, effortless fashion to roll away to be stored vertically. I want the base to integrate both horizontal and vertical wood panel clamp up and some other stuff I thought some of you guys might suggest. There is a picture of a few of the speakers in my front room, which assembly has a low SAR (spousal approval rating). The little ones are Swiftys which are less than $150 in parts from Madisound and improved a bunch after I clad the MDF with oak and phenolic coated plywood. The floor standing are two of the MDF 8" wide range driver mules. These have the PAudio drivers. I also have Nirvana, Fostex and may even pop for some Lowthers which are a grand each before the end if I can get the enclosures right. The picture is a Jack Freeman original of diamond heights, San Francisco. The D'Apillito's are Olsen designed Ariel reference speakers with huge cross overs on the back using top end Vifa drivers, very fast and clean. But unless you have witnessed the full range class of speaker with a first rate tube amp, you might be amazed how much more information there is in the sound stage image to be discovered. Your CDs will sound like new recordings. The process of discovering the differences in the design and constructio of the wooden enclosures is a little like building violins, ...I said 'a little'.. now guys. Then there are a couple of pictures of a drill press table I put together last weekend using some phenolic coated birch, which I laminated using liquid nails and quick drying wood glue with miter and t-track. Note the unwetting of the Type II wood glue on the green phenole. This worried me, but the assembly and some test parts are rock solid. Also a picture of me. You can never have enough clamps!! You can see the Biese and the PC router with the lift mocked up on the left. I need to turn that puppy 2-pie so the crank isn't under the fence all the time.If you want more information where I have used many things, including large G-10 parts, go to <http://www.Symmorphix.com>a silicon valley company I started in 1998. You can find some of the equipment I have invented and developed that we sell and a discussion of some of the processes as well. That is my day job.Now can we talk about low cost fixtures and can I claim I could, if motivated AND if necessary, probably fly cut a 1 ft2 phenolic part? or not.Thanks for the request for the pixs.redlooking for fun in some of the 'write' places.

   
2. 
   Routerman | Jun 05, 2007 05:28am | #2

   Have some experience with the phenolic laminates, (jeans, paper etc).

   My experience has shown flatness and thickness specs are so wild as to render the material for rough work only. It can be flattened with heroics but I would like to know about your strategy to manage this hi-modulus stuff. And very specifically how do you intend to manage, cup, twist and thickness tolerances of + or - 1/16" or more on a single sheet. Garolite, in my view, is one of the worst offenders.

    

1. 
   red2erni | Jun 05, 2007 07:18am | #3

   Routerman,Well, good questions. First we'll see how flat and true this little low cost, foot square plate comes in. But I've used quite alot of engineering grade phenolic mateiral, up through the carbon reinforced material, but mostly G-10 in production machine equipment. Those parts are up to several meters square and go through large temperature variations and high electric fields at high temperatures. The good thing is that the reinforced versions are very stable and don't change dimensions, particularly the glass reinforced material. The glass and carbon fiber reinforced sheet stock is also used for electrostatic chucks which hold silicon wafers at high voltage and manage back side gas cooling during production of micro-chip circuits. In that case, the wafers which are around half to one mm thick can be held flat to about 20 microns by the phenolic based plate assemblies. The glass reinforced material has a C.T.E. that is very low, around three parts per million per inch deg. C. So once it is made to print, it doesn't ever change much. I made a pointi8ng scale thermometer out of two long strips, one of G-10 and the other aluminum for my son's grade school class. As you know, aluminum is around 24 in the same units. If I need to fly cut this little plate flat, I can do that on my drill press with a slide table and some double sided sticky tape. On the production equipment, if you have an interest, I can give you a web site where you can look over some of my large tools, or I can post some jpegs. After looking at the specs on McMaster and other vendor sites, the one thing I didn't get with the lower grade is moisture permiability. The higher cost material can be fully dense and has very low water uptake. I've done outgas puming speed measurements and some, and it is as good as polycarbonate and fit for high vacuum chamber parts. But even though this 'Garolite' has some open surface and probably some through porosity, but the water doesn't change ist's dimensions and phenol is very hydrophobic stuff. But I bet what I get from McMaster is as good as any email or off the shelf pre-cut 3/8" thick router insert and at about half the price. Many of the zero-tolerance saw blade inserts are one or another of the cloth or fiber reinforced phenolic grades. I'll let you know how flat it is when it comes in. What I'm looking for is it will be easier for me to machine and prep for the jig saw and also more lubricous than an equivalent anodized blank aluminum insert, which is what I expect almost all the other blank and pre-cut router plates are made of. But really, for 18 bucks, how bad can it be?red