[Noisebridge-discuss] Shop Class (was We got that goddamned mill to work)

John Magolske listmail at b79.net
Thu Oct 8 18:47:44 UTC 2009


* Christie Dudley <longobord at gmail.com> [091008 09:54]:
> Are we doing wood shop? I know there was some discussion on this
> a while back. People were not terribly thrilled about having wood
> shop projects because of the mess/fire hazard of sawdust and how it
> doesn't fit in terribly well with our electronic-y theme. Most of
> our tools are geared towards small metal projects, although those
> brought in for the build are otherwise.

Personally, I'd encourage thinking in terms of a broad palette of
materials to choose from -- metal, polymer, wood, glass, sapphire,
cork, what-have-you. With lots of materials to choose from, it's
easier to find something that has the appropriate physical properties
for a given project and appeals to the maker's sense of aesthetics. I
find thin-ply maple or birch to be a very handy "rapid prototyping"
material: easy to cut & shape, anisotropic, and warm to the touch. A
chassis made of thin-ply maple & hard-anodized bead-blasted 6061-T6
aluminum could be fun. The pulpit/lectern thingies Zedd suggested
could be wood, metal &/or _____?

Also, I find it fun to explore the crossovers between wood-working
and metal-working tools & techniques. It would be fun as a group to
invent and build new hand-tools through this sort of cross-pollination
-- tools most likely made of metal (CNC mill = a big plus here). I'm
thinking of small, portable tool-kits that enable individuals and
small groups to fabricate maximally awesome material objects and
assemblies. Two inspirations around this that come to mind are the
masons who built the European cathedrals with (so I've heard) small
portable tool-kits, and Japanese wood-workers who have done some
of the most amazing small & large-scale wood works ever with small
satchels of hand tools.

Anyhow, these were some of my thoughts when I titled that wiki page
"The Material Fabrication Sessions".

I do agree about being mindful of not generating large quantities of
sawdust. I'm actually not in favor of getting a table-saw for this
reason. In addition to creating lots of sawdust, table-saws also tend
to be noisy, quite dangerous if you don't know what you're doing,
and require larger amounts of space (small table-saws are even more
dangerous). For wood-work I'm thinking hand-saws (Japanese pull-saws
are awesome, can bring in mine & do a demo if there's interest),
band-saws, and sabre-saws. By clamping a straight-edge to a sheet of
wood and guiding a sabre-saw along side it, one can do a reasonably
good job of making long straight cuts. These techniques generate
relatively small amounts of localized sawdust that can easily be
vacuumed or swept up with a hand-broom & dust-bin. For larger volume
/ production work a table saw is preferable, but I don't imagine
we'll be doing volume woodworking in our shop, more prototyping and
small-scale stuff.

John


-- 
John Magolske
http://B79.net/contact



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