Something on the Side

I was tidying up the shop the other day and Sarah came in to ask a favor. Usually that means I will be fixing a shoe or shortening a belt, but this day it was a different project. She had gotten a hold of some furniture and wanted to alter it to make it useful. The whole project is a little ambitious for a beginner, but I think it is a great opportunity. I love to teach, and in my experience, the excitement a beginner brings makes the project better. So, we got started.

Sarah learning how to take apart old furniture without destroying it.

Sarah cutting dowels to fill holes where the legs used to be.

Taking down the surface of the feet to make the parts fit.

A design decision between two options.

The lovely Sarah on the first stage of her new bench with her teacher behind. She's smiling cause she did most of the work and it is turning out really well. 

What I do 4

So, I was working on a new project for a friend of mine, and in the camera were some pictures that were taken before I took the model home. Thought I would share them and let you know that I am working on the test part of this experiment. Making a place to accurately measure weight and balance and displacement will be it's own design problem, so you can look forward to that. In the interim, I will be travelling and such, so you will have to wait a couple of weeks.

For now:

For Good Measure

I don't want to brag, but I took a model home (again with the jokes).

Ever hear the story of a guy who builds a boat in his basement and then realizes he can't get it out? I'm a guy who built a boat in his basement, and it worked just fine. Before I look too smart, let me tell you that I built a model and it didn't fit in my tub.

Now I have to build a way to test and measure it.
Crap.

It also may make you wonder how a guy my size (and I am pretty big) fits in that tub.

Something to think about.

On a personal note, I am battling the ghosts of holidays past and future. The present is oddly empty at the moment, but this is my least favorite time of year. I won't get into the specifics since it would take a long time and diverge too much from the theme, but I will send along my greetings to all of you. As I type, my audience in Canada is reading what I have to say, and in some ways that is nice. I spend so much time alone I forget sometimes I am not talking into the void. I am also not trying to sound depressing. I think the book I am reading by Noteboom (excellent, though vague for travel writing) has put me in an odd frame of mind. Too much on the recent past, and so much emphasis on legacy.... not holiday reading.

I am not sure how much I will write before I leave, so it is possible that I will be out until the new year.
If that is the case, let me take this opportunity to wish you all happy holidays. Christmas, Chanukah, or whatever other people celebrate (I could list them all, but it would take too long).  In the true spirit of the season, I would pass along my sincere hopes that you all- regardless of who or where- find time to appreciate what you hold dear. Thank you for following along, and I will continue to be as entertaining and insightful as I have been. The target remains.


Sincerely,

Andrew

What I do 3

Here is the next few levels of finish. I tinted a two-part clear to emulate the graphite finish, and establish a nice line along the fasteners. Then I coated the entire outer hull in snap-dry clear-coat. It turned out pretty well.

Since this boat is sort of a hybrid- the plans are originally for a kayak and I am converting it into a canoe- I decided to add a little of the kayak. So, I have placed bulkheads in both the bow and stern which will be covered with a deck. In addition I added a central compartment which will be decked. 

At the very end you can see that I have added the out-wales which are only roughed. I will trim them to the hull and then fit the decking. I will have to decide what the hatch will look like and how I want to place the seats. 

Hopefully, I will be done this weekend and testing on Monday. I am out to Canada on the weekend, so there isn't much left for me to do this year. It would be nice to have this buttoned up so that I can do a new boat in January. I could, of course, test with the hull as it is. The trim and details are not required for me to learn what I need to learn, but... it's just too close to not take it to the end. Too much fun to be resisted.

What I Do 2

Pretty rare for my to post so much in such a short time, but I am trying to keep on top of this process.

So, the thickened epoxy dried overnight (I only had slow hardener since I built Fenrir Mark 1 in a heat wave) and the hull is pretty good.  I cut the wire and sanded the seams smooth. Then I looked good an hard at it and realized that my math was wrong. That didn't shock me since my math is usually wrong the first few times I do it. Here's what I didn't account for.

A boat floats by volume displaced. I scaled the boat to a quarter and figured that I would be able to scale the weight by a quarter and it would work out. Nope. I forgot water as a volume would be cubed. So, I wouldn't divide by four, I would divide by four cubed (sixty-four according to my calculator). That still may not be right, but it's closer.

What to do? Well, there is a better way and I am going to take it.

I have a model. It will float. I will put weight into it until it rides the way I want it to. Now, the volume I displace is measurable (I could use a graduated container that I make, or capture and weigh the overflow, or use my digital modelling system to tell me the volume at a given distance, etc.) so from there, I can simply multiply by four, and I would have the carrying capacity for the water line I want.

At least that makes sense right now.

Anyway, here are the images. The last one is the hull with it's first coat of epoxy drying in the shop.

Thickened epoxy is that brown stuff.

Stitches are about to come out.

Stitches removed and the edges sanded smooth.

Ben came up to see my work and we worked on some math to figure out the displacement.
This is his work, I just stood there and followed along like a good student.

The hull coated and beginning to dry on the bench.

What I do

As promised, I have begun modelling (I love corny jokes).

Did most of this last night and am continuing this evening. The goal is to have a quarter scale hull done by Monday so I can share it. Also, I will be in school for a week at ID (Institute of Design) for some work on design thinking, so I will have little time before I take off for the holidays. Heading into the Great White North this year, which I am looking forward to. 

The quarter scale is cool because I was able to scale everything, including the materials. If I am correct, this little guy ought to hold about 125 lbs. We will see.  

Enjoy.

Refined Machine

As promised, I have been working on refining the mechanisms that I developed last year.

At best, what I made last year was a proof of concept. If you will recall the Primary Run, I managed to get the thing to work, and that is in many ways an accomplishment. But the mechanism itself lacked any elegance. At it's core was a good concept, but I never got it refined to it's base: a working model with everything removed to it's essential part. That may be tough to grasp, but let's look at an example.

Remember this guy? This is the core of the mechanism- which I termed my gear box- and it is pretty much four gears, a freewheel, some bearings and a flywheel (at this point I hadn't added that). It worked, but it is too big, weighs too much, and is a pain to work with (the chains need to be perfectly aligned and I ended up adding tension gears with springs to keep the chains from skipping). I can eliminate most of the mass, while adding function, precision, and adjustability (eliminating the tension gears altogether) by using this:

What we're looking at is an internally geared hub from Shimano. One one side is a freewheel gear. The other is a disk brake flange fixed to the hub. Essentially the same thing I built except the hub in this case is not one-to-one with the gear. If, instead of a disk brake, I installed a gear and placed my flywheel around the hub's body, I would have the same mechanical effect that I made preciously while gaining the ability to shift gears and cutting it's size by more than half. The frame in this instance wouldn't be wood, but rather a tubular steel... very much like a bike frame, you might say.

It's good to have clarity of mind back.
There are eight months (give or take) before the next race.
The target remains.