tools

Boring bar

How to fail at webcomics: Alienate your readers with boring CNC jokes.

Also, just so you know, I agonized a little over how to orient the tools to look like they were “facing” forward.

Handcrafted violin maker by day, CNC operator by night

So this week, I began evening classes at Symbol Training to learn how to operate CNC machines. Quite the opposite end of the spectrum from violin making school, where I am not even allowed to touch the bandsaw. I don’t specifically know what I intend to do with all this training in architecture/design, fine woodworking, and CNC, but it sounds like a good combo for making something really awesome one day. Maybe. But pshh, do I really have to pick a side anyway?? I didn’t think so.

And now, some photographic proof to corroborate the claims made in above illustrations:

This is my spruce plate after it was attacked by a fleet of little round-bottom finger planes. It is about .2mm away from final dimensions here, and I will scrape it to achieve the final thickness.

It’s unsettling at first, but quite a bit of light passes through that piece of spruce as it approaches final thickness. Take that, Alice Tully Hall!

This coin, which I cut off from a cylindrical stock of aluminum spinning in the lathe (Manual Direct Input! T02 S1500 M03! Insert! Hand jog, .001, x-axis!), is my token of inauguration into the world of CNC machining. What in the world have I gotten myself into??

Diamonds are a girl’s best friend

Note: This would probably work on me.

Planing lesson

I shall open with some Plain ol’ Taichi moves:

BUT WAIT! That looks familiar!
Compare with Plane ol’ Taichi moves:

When you plane, you’ve got to MOVE YO’ BODY!!! … and not forget to breathe and concentrate and stuff, etc etc.

But really, planing taichi-style puts the strength of your legs and the weight of your torso behind the plane, which will slow down arm fatigue and let your arms focus on controlling the plane. So, today’s lesson in review:

You don’t even need the check mark and X to tell you which is the right way – obviously you’d choose Shaolin Planing because it makes you look way cooler. But make sure you’ve got good footing, or else:

purfling pick

Those double black lines on your violin are not drawn in decorations. They come from this:

That purfling strip gets bent with an iron and stuffed into a channel, which we cut out with knives and pick out with this:

And in the process, we smash our left thumbs with the hard tempered metal of the purfling pick.

We knife two lines, 2mm deep, but there’s no real way of knowing how deep we’ve cut other than guessing by eyeballing how far down the tip of your knife has gone. Also, keeping that channel perpendicular to the surface is no easy task!