Just when I thought I was done sanding the pipes, I realized that they wouldn't fit in the 14 3/4" space that they needed to. Even with pipes #16 and #17 on their backs, they were still about an eighth of an inch over where they should be. That meant sanding down the sides of the pipes in order to get them all into a tolerable cumulative width.
Melvyn's comment a few posts back - about me still having all my fingers - turned out to be slightly prophetic as I worked yesterday on sanding down the sides of the pipes with my inverted beltsander contraption, which I've now nicknamed "Ol' Bitey":
For the following reason:
Anyway, armed today with a thick leather glove, I kept sanding until I got within the desired measurement:
With the holiday vacation over, I'm back at my job, so I'm putting the pipework on hold and looking for other small tasks that I can do with the free moments I have...
While the idea of wooden wheels doesn't particularly bother me, I don't find the look of flat wooden discs particularly appealing.
One of the reasons I opted to cut the wheels out of solid pieces of hardwood - rather than plywood - was that I was thinking it might be nice to have the option of trying to make the wheels look a little more like metal wheels by giving them some depth and shape.
I found this picture on the web, and I liked the old-timey look to the curved spokes:
Then I made a stencil out of it in Photoshop:
I made one each for the idler and spool wheels, plus another idler wheel version to see which I liked best. (I ultimately decided that they'd both have the same curvy spoke pattern):
I then got the spray glue, the FrogTape and applied the stencil to the wheel like I did with the pressure box window, then took it out to the scrollsaw:
I also rounded the spokes a little using a dremel tool with a sanding spool end, and then kept smoothing with 220 sandpaper and some needle files. (I haven't yet drilled out the full 1/4" of the center hole, but I'll do that when I go to mount it on the shaft).:
I think I'll use some "hammered finish" paint on them once they're both sanded and primed. I just can't decide between a black/dark grey hammered paint color, or a gold/brass hammered finish...
Well, I didn't get a lot accomplished today. I broke my only bandsaw blade last night, so I decided to venture out to get a replacement and some other odds and ends - unfortunately I needed to go to Sears in Pasadena for the blades, and I completely forgot about the Rose Bowl/Rose Parade traffic, so the trip took hours longer than it would otherwise. I updated my laundry list of purchased items (the first post of this topic), and I got the languids sanded down.
Here's a picture of squaring up the languids for gluing.
And here they are all sanded down and ready for final cleaning:
Not looking forward to going back to my job tomorrow
Today is spent gluing in the languids and doing a lot of sanding.
---The languids are the little "shelves" in the mouth of the pipe. Air enters a hole in the bottom of the pipe and escapes from the small chamber enclosed by the "foot" and languid through a tiny gap (caused by a partial, thin cardboard gasket) between the languid and the bottom "lip" a.k.a the "cap". This tiny sheet of air is then directed at the top lip where fluctuating air pressure inside the pipe's top section (resonator) causes the sheet of air to oscillate rapidly in front and behind the top lip edge.---
As 2012 draws to a close, I thought it would be fitting to create a little noisemaker to ring in the New Year:
I really felt the need to get one together for testing before I completed the rest of them, particularly as my wood thickness measurements were slightly different than John's or Melvyn's "defaults". I elected to go with pipe #8 - an E♭/D# pipe. I first used a slice of posterboard for the mouth shim, but the pipe was a little weak, so I cut a small piece off a Diet Coke 24-pack box, and it seemed to do much better. For testing I did a temporary push fit of an piece of the brass tubing, and used the black rubber tubing I purchased from Player-Care. Unfortunately, this 1/4" black rubber tubing is slightly over a 1/4" and it makes for a less than snug fit. The other two sizes of tubing I got from Player-Care (larger pipes, reservoir to pressure box) were sized more accurately. At first I thought the brass tubing might be too small, but a measurement done with a caliper showed the brass to be exactly 0.25" OD. (The extra-long piece of brass shown in the photos is only for the initial test, I'll use a much smaller length when I get to the finalizing stages.)
I made a stopper out of a piece of hardwood scrap, a bit of chamois, some 3/16" dowel and a macrame bead from a packet that my wife sacrificed for the cause.
Today I had planned on doing the sealing of all the pipes, the gluing of the fourth side, gluing in the languids and making the lips and stoppers. Too ambitious of a list as it turns out. I'm just a little anxious to get a sound out of one of these pipes, I guess.
I did manage to get all the pipes sealed and started work on the pipe caps/lips woodwork.
I originally thought of using shellac for sealing the pipes, since I've got a whole quart of it, and I mainly got it to seal the inside of the trackerbar (honeycomb). Then I got to thinking that maybe the wood glue wouldn't stick to a shellac surface which would make the attachment of the fourth pipe wall problematic. I certainly didn't want to try to seal the pipes after all four walls were glued on.
So I made a sealer out of 1 parts glue to 2 parts water and sealed the inside surfaces, then glued on the fourth wall.
The one major problem I ran into was when I had brushed a pipe with the sealer mixture then got interrupted for about 20 minutes. When I returned to the pipe, the sealer had dried and warped itself out of square:
After getting over the initial panic, I got it damp again with another coat of sealer then subjected it to severe torturing punishment as I glued the fourth wall on (he looks like he's on his back screaming):
Other than that, the sealing and gluing went on without a hitch.
Taking a break from the repetitive work, I decided I'd get started on prepping my cherry sheet for use as the front lips and caps of the pipes. I wanted the bevels on each of the lips to be uniform in angle, so I figured I'd try to bevel the entire board before I cut it into individual pipe pieces. This meant that the grain would be running across the mouth, but I figured that if the air running across the grain was necessary for the languid, it certainly couldn't hurt with the lips.
Since my bandsaw wouldn't go to such a narrow angle, I built up a jig for the cut:
And here's an anticlimactic clip of the actual cutting:
Here are a couple of views of the cherry board after it's been beveled and sanded, ready for crosscutting into pieces for the individual pipes...
Hopefully I can get all the pipe pieces done tomorrow...
This morning I looked over the plans and tried to decide what to tackle next. The fun thing about this project is that there is such a variety of different types of work to be done, so I just needed to figure out what I was in the mood for. Sometimes repetitive work is strangely soothing, so I decided on starting the assembly of the pipes.
I won't bother to go into too much detail, since Melvyn Wright's book lays it all out in such a straightforward manner.
I started the morning off by trimming and chamfering the front pieces, then sanding everything down in preparation for gluing.
I opted to go for Titebond wood glue rather than plain ol' Elmer's or PVA glue. Typically, I consider "wood glue" to be nothing more than overpriced Elmer's glue with a little pigment added, but this particular brand seems to have a higher initial tack, and I thought it would help in keeping things in place without sliding around too much.
Front and back in place, now setting the foot...
Four down, sixteen to go...
I started with the smallest and worked my way up to the largest. I figured that the smallest would be the most difficult and that I would also be overly careful at the outset. However, for me at least, it seems like all of the pipes were fairly equal in their level of difficulty, which was quite minimal, actually. The smallest were a little awkward to work with, but the larger pipes seemed to be more difficult when it came to rubber-banding. These were the only ones that seemed to be close to collapsing as I handled them, but even without the optional "packing piece" (which I opted not to use), I didn't really have any trouble, and none of the pipes collapsed while I carefully handled them.
Seventeen down, three to go...
All done with this stage, and ready for more work tomorrow.
Looks like I'll be sealing, doing the languids and doing some more gluing tomorrow!
