Marking the Bellows Cloth

I've been working on the bellows cloth today and taking care of some odd little things as well.


The bellows cloth I'm using is Roc-Lon blackout fabric - I got a yard of it for about $3.50. It's white on one side and ecru on the other, so I opted to put the stiffeners on the white side, in order to keep the more pleasant color on the visible side (I realize that it won't likely be seen by anyone but me). Also, I didn't want to risk gluing the cards to the colored, rubberized side.

Since the fabric had been stored folded, I thought it would be good to iron out the creases and wrinkles a little. I set the iron on medium to low heat, not wanting to melt or compromise the rubberized backing on the colored side.

I then set to work with the steel ruler, marking off guidelines for the stiffeners and for cutting the cloth to size:

Then I put the stiffeners in place just to make sure all of the measurements were correct:

I'm doing a glue test (spray glue vs. wood glue/PVA) to see which holds up better, so I'll check and test the samples tomorrow.

In the meantime, I thought I'd try out some hammered finish paint on my wooden spoked wheels:

14 and 3/4

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:

Spokes

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...

Happy New Year!

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