Progress via image dump

So it's been a long, slow month since the last update. Since then I've done lots and lots of work on my violin... except it's not as significant a jump as the last time. There's been plenty of rasping, filing, and sanding to trim down and level out the body. Hours upon hours of slow removing wood. Here's a photo dump of some of the progress that's taken place.

First, a quick look at my workshop aka a small bench and chair, with giant piles of sawdust below. Literally inches of shavings.

Next, we have some closeups. Everything's getting smoothed, flattened, shaped and thinned.

I really like the grain at the end here.

And lastly, photographic proof that it's REALLY flat. Even the edges have a nice line to them. Sadly, you can still see the remnants of the biggest gouge I made while using the planer. But it's nearly gone and it will be underneath the tail piece once everything is finished.... so I'm not sure how much more time I'll sink trying to get rid of it.

Things to come: Sanding sanding and more sanding. Drilling holes for the tuners. Drilling out a space for the electronics and audio jack. Fitting the fingerboard and nut. Finishing the wood.

More work on my violin

It has been quite a long time since I've properly worked on my violin. About 9 months actually. Just for reference here is where I left off...



There are very few redeeming qualities of the violin above. You can see in grand generalities that something could be made from this hunk of wood. But the generous amount of time it took to just get it looking like this was disheartening. I will warn anyone, bloodwood is an awful wood to work with. Yet I had gotten this far with it, I feel this needs to be finished.

So over the past week I've spent a lot more time working on it. It's still no where near finished but now it is finally looking attractive. I've spent some time shaping the headstock into it's final form, though it's still too thick to fit the tuners in properly. I've also shaped the lines of the neck and body, however they still aren't quite in line and need to be reduced further. Also the picture below isn't the most recent representation, I took this picture Saturday night and I spent a few more hours on Sunday shaping the bumps to either side. I haven't finished those parts yet but they are looking much more pleasing to the eyes. Still plenty of work to do but it is definitely more enjoyable to work on something when you can see the benefits.



Expect to see more in the near future as I keep working on this.

Pictures posted!

So seemingly I can manage to go three weeks without posting pictures, but I can also remember the other thing I wanted to post.

Leading up to the end of December, Oz had decided her final project for the metal working class she was taking was going to be a hand sculpture of some sort. One aspect she wanted it to have was that it would have LEDs light up when the wearer touched another person. My job was to figure out the circuitry and make it work. First I found a circuit schematic that gave me a good idea of what parts I would need: a power source, a transistor, a resistor and an LED. Then after further research I found that two transistors in a "Darlington Pair" configuration would make the circuit work better. Below is the simplest circuit working off a set of watch batteries.



Then I added a few more LEDs to the circuit and switched to a 9volt battery power source.



Once Oz made the center piece for all the final circuitry I went about installing the circuitry in a manner I assumed would work. This included two transistors in the Darlington Pair setup, 14 total LEDs and several resistors. And all done free hand without a PC board to solder the parts to!



The final piece working! The 9volt battery supplied power to the whole thing, the thumb was the Hot lead and all the other fingers were the cold leads. So if you made contact with the thumb and any finger through skin the LEDs would light up!



Also another note is that I started working on my violin again. Last night I setup a work space and cut the shape of the headstock. Still lots of work to do on it though. It'd be much easier if I had the proper tools for the job but the proper tools are all big machines that are quite expensive. I'll make do with what I have instead.

And Two and a Half Months later...

Turns out I can manage to get things done but then never bother to post the outcome. And as I have a better habit of posting pictures after I write something here's what I've got.

The arcade controller came out very nicely if I do say so myself. After my post in November it took about 2 weeks to put it all together but not without some anguish. The first problem I came across was from the aspen(?) board I chose for the top panel. After deciding on the button and joystick layout, I started drilling and happened to tear out a huge chunk of board between two buttons. Since those two buttons were the FIRST two buttons I drilled, I assumed the wood was too soft and not up to the challenge of being an arcade panel.

The next board was MDF, a glued, compressed saw dust type board. This worked perfectly. All the holes were drilled out, I routed out the underside of the panel, I cut the side boards to size, screwed them all together. Then Ta-Da I had a wooden box with a lot of holes in it.





After that came painting, I sprayed two layers of gray primer then 3 layers of black glossy. The black didn't come out the way I wanted it to, so I hand painted a heavy layer of clear coat. That result was far more appealing!



The next to last step was adding all the buttons and joysticks. One or two joysticks needed a few spacers for leveling but that was real easy. (This is the prettiest picture)



And LASTLY, I hard soldered all the wires to the buttons and connected them to the control board. I didn't get good results with the quick disconnects I had used on the earlier test model.



Also, at some point during a clean up day, I threw out the wire that connected the control board to the computer. It was a very weird male PS/2 plug(that mice and keyboards are connected with) to a male USB wire. So since I didn't have the time to have a new wire shipped to me I had to make my own. After a good deal of research and stripping wires down, I ended up with the wire below. Thankfully it worked!



And that's everything for the arcade controller. I had friends over and it works great!

November is time to do things...

So, as per the past few months I have been quite slow to update and quite lazy to produce things. But I'm going to try to switch that up for November. Just by writing this giant post I'm off to a good start. (Halloween costume pictures at the bottom)

One of the things I want to do includes actually finally making the arcade controller. I've invited friends over on the 20th specifically to play games on this thing, so it will be done. As a matter of fact, about a week ago I bought wood and material to put it together and tonight I finally decided on the button layout. I wanted to drill holes as well but I need a second opinion on spacing before I commit to drilling. So that's set aside for tomorrow instead.

Another thing I'll be doing this month is writing (what will hopefully become) my next Christmas book. But right now I'm aiming for one long novel, rather than itty bitty short stories. And to motivate myself I've joined the ranks of NaNoWriMo. An effort to get wannabe writers to take the month of November to write a 50,000 word novel. Seeing as how my last Christmas book was only 6500 words of new content(though only written in about 4 or 5 days), I'm not holding myself to 50K but we'll see how far it goes.

Also I showed my untouched violin project to a musician friend of mine over the weekend and he seemed to feel like it wasn't the worst thing ever. At least for what I had. A few months ago I was extremely disheartened when I attempted to put the chin rest on it and the very heavy weight of it kept making the chin rest come off. His not completely negative comments about the violin have renewed my interest so I'm going to start working on this again after the controller is done.

As proof that I should be able to get these things done, with a little help and some significant deadlines the whole week leading up to Halloween I spent working on my costume. During the process, I sewed a green cape, a brown satchel, and a pair of sword holsters.

With a bit of help to make a mask, I crumpled tinfoil, plastered, glued tissue paper, and painted.

And I grommeted and laced a shirt. I think it all came together very nicely.

Time to do more things!

I've got two pictures to share.

First, I got my shipment of joysticks and buttons! This is to round out the rest of my 4player arcade controller. Red and Blue will be first and second players with six buttons each. Green and Yellow will be 3rd and 4th players with four buttons each. Then each player gets a #player button and a coin button. The things on the right side of the picture are switches and fasteners.

Just need to swing down to home depot to get wood and screws and this thing should go together pretty quickly!

Second, is the pair of Thai fisherman pants that I mentioned in my last post. I swear they are comfy and look much better while worn.

Not very punctual at all

So then a month and a half passed without a single post. I've been quite unproductive but that isn't to say I've done nothing.

About three weeks ago I saw some interesting looking pants called Thai fisherman pants. They looked pretty comfy and relatively easy to make. So I looked online to find some patterns, went down to the fabric store and got to work.

Pair of pants #1 was a failure. The idea behind the fisherman pants is that they are one size fits all. So my small girlfriend Oz and I each planned to make a pair. She finished her pants the day after we started and they fit her great. That should have been my first impression something was wrong with mine. After an hour or so my pants were nearly done and they didn't come anywhere close to fitting properly. I abandoned them to Oz and she finished up the hems and waist tie. It also fit her quite well.

A day later with more fabric and armed with a new pattern, I started work on another pair of pants. Made the pattern, cut the fabric, sewed it together and rejoiced! It fit much nicer. Hemmed the pants all the way up to the knee and my fisherman pants became fisherman shorts.

(pictures of both to be posted later today)

Hopefully this weekend I'll get back to work on that violin...