Progress and a Visit

I completed the conversion of my printer's tablesaw to inches. The last step was to trim and drill an off-the-shelf ruler to fit where the old one was. Since I didn't want to cut any aluminum in the house, I clamped the ruler between a couple blocks of wood and trimmed it out in the lane using a sawzall, followed by an end mill in a router to clean it up. Worked very well.

Next, a psuedo-success.  I got all the insulation installed in my dust cyclone baffle. I used acoustic tiles, along with some eggcrate foam. Unexpectedly, or more properly due to lack of foresight on my part, the acoustic tile made the thing too heavy for me to manage. Luckily my son was home from school one weekend and I recruited him to help me maneuver it into place. Here is a shot of it before I sealed it up and put it in place.

The square hole at the top left is where the cyclone exhausts into the baffle. I was disappointed that noise level was not significantly reduced with the addition of the insulating material. I am pretty sure that I  made an error with my previous measurement which showed the baffle without any insulation causing a 20 dB drop from the unmuffled noise level. I found that adding the insulated baffle only yielded a 5 dB drop from the unmuffled! So I'm scratching my head on that one, but really, there isn't much more I can do, other than maybe seal up a few cracks.

Also made some decent progress on the long delayed Japanese style lamp. I got the base pieces cut out and did a first test fitting on it. Still a bit of tweaking to go to close up the cracks, then onto the posts. Hard to envision the finished piece from this I know! It will be about 3' high and a foot square, shoji style.

Also managed to get out and mill up some cherry. You can see the full report here, but this is what we cut by the end of the day. Not huge logs, but it was very nice material, I have high hopes for it.

Finally, I managed a trip to Los Angeles for the first time in many years. The highlight for me was the Gamble House in Pasadena. What a stunning monument to the Craftsman style. And what a shame that Vancouver cannot find the willpower to preserve its heritage houses.