I took my wife to Kamakura this morning. I also went to
see my partner in the business, but she was not in.
She was supposed to be at home, though?
Anyway, intervening times were spent on thinking,
the most optimal intial thickness. My conclusion was that
I had to make a jig. Take a look at the following.
This is simply an alminium piece, the cross section of which is
like "L", and you get a better iea from the illustration bellow.
Commercially available pieces are standardised and because
I press one of these against the edge of my work the lines
you can draw are quantised. Sometimes, you want lines somewere
in between. If you glue a flat piece of alminium, as in B,
you may get closer to your own spec, that is the theory, anyway, but,
distances shown by the arrows are still quantised,
simply because flats are also quantised in thickness.
In C and D the red areas indicate the eventual line positions.
There are reference lines and you can use them in any way you like.
For instance, D is the distance of my hole from one end.
Before I talk any further, have a look at above illustration.
You have two workpieces, top and bottom of your container, and
there is an assumption here that they are of the same width.
A is indicating the position of a hole, but how on the planet
can you mark it? B is my idea, you draw two line so that the
spacing between them is as narrow as possible.
If these two lines are dead on top of each other, you have a
perfect hole position, but if the spacing is narrow enough
you are OK.
I want to leave this illustration, but C is today's idea.
It is a gap, or space, or cut, at one end of a lid. It helps
when separating the lids
Now, take a look at the following illustration.
If you fail to make holes, positionwise, hole to hole, you then
have a problem like in C!
Your workpieces are not exactly dead on top of each other,
and there are protrusions on either side. Naturally, you
want to remove these.
Here, the problem is compounded. A 1 mm protrusion is in fact
amplified, when both sides are sanded. Beside, if these protrusions
are irregular, for various reasons, yoyu will easily get something
like C!!!
So, I hope you can see exact positions of these holes are
of paramount importance to the integrity of the final products.
Up until now, I have been using my bench drill, but from now,
I will have to use my milling machine for boring the holes.
What I came up with today is shown bellow.
One in the middle is the one, left from yesterday, and on the
right you see an earlier bulky version. I am still unhappy about
today's. Still, too bulky...
Now, take a look at the following image. This is today's
slightly opend ajar and you can see a gap between them.
I think there are two points here. What is wrong with these
spaces? They look nice? Do they? I am in two minds!
Why today's looking still bulky? Because, I wanted to
contain my chopstics wholey in the slots. For the max
dimenstion of thesticks, the slot depth is as deep as
10 mm! No wonder, this thing looks still bulky!
However, if I can have a free space between the lids
I no longer need to go deep!
In which case, additional problem is one of the lid tilting,
as shown in B of the last illustration. Solution?
One possibility might to have have an elongated hole as in E,
and insert of piece of wood in there for stability of
the sytem. Fine tuning of the height etc should not be a problem,
as I can always sand the protrusion.
Instability shown in B is inherent in my system, simply
because the bamboo protrusion is made as small as
possible so that you can open up the container with ease.
If you have longer bamboo protrutions, then you will not have
this posture instability at all. I am still in a very deep thinking mode.
What else for today? Please, see bellow.
Two pronged things are now ready for coating. By the way,
I mail-ordered an 8 mm diameter U shaped trench cutter.
That might improve the stuatiion a lot...
see my partner in the business, but she was not in.
She was supposed to be at home, though?
Anyway, intervening times were spent on thinking,
the most optimal intial thickness. My conclusion was that
I had to make a jig. Take a look at the following.
This is simply an alminium piece, the cross section of which is
like "L", and you get a better iea from the illustration bellow.
Commercially available pieces are standardised and because
I press one of these against the edge of my work the lines
you can draw are quantised. Sometimes, you want lines somewere
in between. If you glue a flat piece of alminium, as in B,
you may get closer to your own spec, that is the theory, anyway, but,
distances shown by the arrows are still quantised,
simply because flats are also quantised in thickness.
In C and D the red areas indicate the eventual line positions.
There are reference lines and you can use them in any way you like.
For instance, D is the distance of my hole from one end.
Before I talk any further, have a look at above illustration.
You have two workpieces, top and bottom of your container, and
there is an assumption here that they are of the same width.
A is indicating the position of a hole, but how on the planet
can you mark it? B is my idea, you draw two line so that the
spacing between them is as narrow as possible.
If these two lines are dead on top of each other, you have a
perfect hole position, but if the spacing is narrow enough
you are OK.
I want to leave this illustration, but C is today's idea.
It is a gap, or space, or cut, at one end of a lid. It helps
when separating the lids
Now, take a look at the following illustration.
If you fail to make holes, positionwise, hole to hole, you then
have a problem like in C!
Your workpieces are not exactly dead on top of each other,
and there are protrusions on either side. Naturally, you
want to remove these.
Here, the problem is compounded. A 1 mm protrusion is in fact
amplified, when both sides are sanded. Beside, if these protrusions
are irregular, for various reasons, yoyu will easily get something
like C!!!
So, I hope you can see exact positions of these holes are
of paramount importance to the integrity of the final products.
Up until now, I have been using my bench drill, but from now,
I will have to use my milling machine for boring the holes.
What I came up with today is shown bellow.
One in the middle is the one, left from yesterday, and on the
right you see an earlier bulky version. I am still unhappy about
today's. Still, too bulky...
Now, take a look at the following image. This is today's
slightly opend ajar and you can see a gap between them.
I think there are two points here. What is wrong with these
spaces? They look nice? Do they? I am in two minds!
Why today's looking still bulky? Because, I wanted to
contain my chopstics wholey in the slots. For the max
dimenstion of thesticks, the slot depth is as deep as
10 mm! No wonder, this thing looks still bulky!
However, if I can have a free space between the lids
I no longer need to go deep!
In which case, additional problem is one of the lid tilting,
as shown in B of the last illustration. Solution?
One possibility might to have have an elongated hole as in E,
and insert of piece of wood in there for stability of
the sytem. Fine tuning of the height etc should not be a problem,
as I can always sand the protrusion.
Instability shown in B is inherent in my system, simply
because the bamboo protrusion is made as small as
possible so that you can open up the container with ease.
If you have longer bamboo protrutions, then you will not have
this posture instability at all. I am still in a very deep thinking mode.
What else for today? Please, see bellow.
Two pronged things are now ready for coating. By the way,
I mail-ordered an 8 mm diameter U shaped trench cutter.
That might improve the stuatiion a lot...
