# hobnobbing it with the people who made this site possible...



## dvsDave

I am off to New Jersey on Friday from West Virginia (where I go to school) to attend a conference for the developers of the CMS (Content Management System) that this site uses... called PHP-Nuke. 

I'm not sure if we will have internet access or not... so behave and ask a lot of questions while I am gone...
I want a minimum of 40 new posts when I get back on Sunday evening...
So... even if people have to start planning a coup on this site... I want at least forty posts when I get back!!!

<insert strict voice>That's an Order<end strict voice>

from your webmaster,
-dvsDave


----------



## ship

Hand Cleaners: Effective products that clean oil based paint, oil, grease, etc. are many household items. Such things are vegetable or corn oil used for cooking, Lamp Oil and Kerosene, WD-40, and Mineral Oil. Afterwards you have to wash your hands with soap to get off the oil used to cut the oil-based products. (Wood Magazine, Feb. 1999 “Hot off the Internet” p. 12)


----------



## ship

Laminated Glass: said to withstand a burglar’s brick, a ball player’s line drive or hurricane without yielding even a fist-sized hole. “Keep Safe” is marketed for residential windows. Laminated glass sandwiches a polyvinyl butyral (PVB) plastic film between two sheets of glass under heat and pressure. The film not only enables the glass to withstand impace without shattering , but it also blocks 99% of UV rays and reduces sound transmission. It passes ASTM F-588 forced-entry resistance tests, and will stay in the frame for five impacts upon testing. It is available through Simonton Windows out of West Virginia.(American How To, May 1999 “Builder’s Best”. p.64)


----------



## ship

Cleaning Brick and Stone: new brick and stonework should be left untreated for about three months, until it is completely dry. After that you might see some white powdery deposits on the surface (Efflrescence,) this can be removed with a stiff-bristled brush. Water will not take it off. (Home Depot 1999 Calender Sept. 11.) Bleach or fungicide can remove mold which does not come off with a stiff brush. (Home Depot 1999 Calender Sept. 12.)


----------



## ship

To remove rust stains from concrete, scrub the surface with a mixture of wxalic acid powder or thioglycolic acid and water. For best results, use one pound of acid per gallon of water and be sure to add the acid to the water, not the other way around. Apply the mixture liberally with a mop and wait three hours for it to do its job. Rinse the concrete with clean water and scrub it with a stiff brush. If the stains are really tough, repeat the process. (Home Depot 1999 Calender June 30.) Note: for un-treated concrete with a fresh stain, such as oil or diesel fuel, use Portland Cement to soak up the stain overnight. Cure new concrete for 90 days before painting or sealing, and strip off old sealer before applying new sealer. (Home Depot 1999 Calender Nov. 20.)


----------



## ship

Making New Brass Look Old: fume the brass hardware in a sealed jar containing 26° to 30° ammonium hydroxide is the tried and true method. It is however hard to get hazardous material and has become harder to get. It is usually available at a laboratory and chemical supply company, or commercial printer suppliers. Use it only in a well ventilated area. Wear eye protection, rubber gloves and a respirator with cartridges designed specifically for ammonia fumes. First remove any lacquer that may be on the hardware by soaking it in lacquer thinner and rinsing with water. Next, suspend the hardware over a small amount of ammonium hydroxide in a glass jar with a tight fitting lid. Attach string to the underside of the lid with duct tape. After about an hour the brass will turn a beautiful coppery brown color. For a darker color, fume the hardware longer. We tried this process using household ammonia which is approximately one-fifth the strength of ammonium hydroxide and is readily available. The weaker solution turned the brass a greenish yellow color, much different than the full-strength ammonia. We also tried a brass antiquing solution. Immerse the hardware in the antiquing solution (a mild acid) until the desired color is achieved (half an hour in this case). This solution left a shiny, black chrome appearance on the hardware. Not exactly an antique look, to our eyes. For highlights you can burnish the hardware with a little 0000 steel wool after fuming.
(American Woodworker, Aug. 99. “Question & Answer” Ed. By Dave Nunkittrick. p.8)


----------



## ship

The Look of Aged Copper: Although it’s strikingly beautiful when highly polished, the hardware will look even better if it has a mellowed patina. There are two approaches to achieve this: you can patinize the solution. Pour the solution into a glass or plastic container and immerse the piece of hardware in it. The longer you leave the piece immersed, the darker it will become. When the effect you want is reached, put on a pair of rubber gloves and remove the piece from the bath. (Don’t touch the wet surface with your bare fingers - you’ll leave a mark.) Bury the piece in saw dust, press gently to wick away excess solution and set it aside to dry. Use steel wool to highlight the texture or areas that would be polished by use. A coat of paste wax will add luster. If something goes wrong, you can remove the patina entirely with steel wool and start over. It may take several tries to get the look you want. 
The other approach is much easier, and it always works-just let it age naturally. Within a few months, the polished shine will be replaced by a mellow tone that will continue to improve over time. This is the method recommended by Gustav Stickley himself. If you make the hardware before you build the piece it’s meant for, the hardware will have mellowed to the perfect patina by the time the piece is built. (American Woodworker, Aug. 99. “Hammer Your Own Copper Hardware” by David Olson p.72


----------



## ship

Hammer Finish Copper Hardware: use 48-oz. Copper sheet stock (.064 gauge) for hinge straps and back plates, 5/16" copper rod stock (ANSI grade #110) for bails, 1/2" square bar stock for posts and 4 gauge copper grounding rod for post pins. Sheet metal and architectural metal fabricators are often willing to sell the small amounts of sheet stock you’ll need. Rod and bar stock is harder to find. Try salvage yards or mail order. Grounding rod is available anywhere electrical wiring supplies are sold. You’ll also need pickling flux and silver solder, and perhaps a patinizing solution for ageing it. Tools for working the texture into the copper are hammers such as metal working ball - peen hammers and punches, all with their flat edges rounded off into ball faces so they will create a pebble like dimple effect on the copper. Note however all materials must be smooth or they will mar the materials. The ball peen hammer can also be a old normal 16 oz hammer, either way it would have to be ground or sanded into a ball shape. Blemishes on the hammer will be transferred to the copper, sand all tools up to 600 grit. To achieve a crisp texture on the copper you must hammer it on a hard surface. Wood is not hard enough. I used a piece of 1/2" steel plate for the hinge straps and back plates, and a massive steel block for the balls. Use MAPP gas to get the copper hot enough to anneal it. Propane will not do. One way to make this tray is to use a aluminum cake pan and fill it with pumice stones, and use a plastic container for the quenching bath. 
Back plates for pulls and hinge straps are cut from sheet copper, than hammered with modified ball peen hammers and other simple tools to create a textured pattern on the metal. Saw the hardware pieces following paper patterns fixed to the copper sheet with spray adhesive. (Make the patterned parts a little larger as they will shrink some with the texturing.) Copper is soft enough to cut on a band saw using a general purpose, fine tooth blade. Center punch all drill hole marks on the patterns, smooth all burrs and refine the edge with abrasives or files. Remove paper and adhesive residur, then polish the copper faces with 400 grit wet/dry sandpaper. 
Hammer the face with overlapping hole creates a nicely balanced look. Practice hammering on scrap to develop a rhythm. After texturing, drill holes and bail posts. Chamfer the bail post holes and flatten the screw holes on the backside of each plate. Cut out the escutcheon hole in the door back plates last. 
The Annealing process: copper is a malleable metal, soft enough to be worked easily. It can be hammered around forms or into molds, bent, stretched, or textured. However as it is worked, it loses its malleability and becomes “work hardened.” Fortunately, some 6,500 years ago, at the beginning of the Copper Age, our ancestors discovered that heating work-hardened copper to a high temperature restores its malleability. This process is called annealing. It may be necessary to anneal the same piece of hardware several times when forming the strap hinges and when working the rod stroke to make the bails. It’s important to anneal whenever you feel the copper becoming work hardened - you’ll notice spring - back in the metal and see that it doesn’t respond as well to you hammering. Annealing leaves a residue called firescale. Heating the backside of each piece will minimize the amount of firescale that gets on its face. After annealing, all surfaces must be thoroughly cleaned with 400 grit wet/dry paper before they can be textured. Anneal the copper as you work by heating it with a MAPP gas torch until it glows a medium red. Once it loses its color, quench it in water. An aluminum cake pan filled with pumice stones works great as an annealing tray. The pumice stones don’t absorb heat, so it gets concentrated on the copper. 
Shaping Hinge Straps: these straps create the look of a real strap hinge, but they are strictly decorative: the doors are hung on standard butt hinges and the long copper straps are fastened to the door fronts with screws and tacks. They have a raised shape which is created by hammering them into a wooden form. A forming block can be made from a cavity in maple lumber by using a ball mill chucked in a drill. The convex shape of the hinge strap is achieved by hammering it into this cavity. Pound the annealed strap into the forming block to create the raised center. Use the forming hammer. The strap will bend dramatically as it is worked. But you can flatten it by gently tapping its top side with a non-marring mallet. Anneal the copper when it becomes work hardened. Flatten the perimeter of the spoon tip with a polished, flat-faced hammer to create the boarder around the raised center. Hammer texture marks onto the convex profile at the tip of the freshly annealed hinge strap. A ball peen hammer held in a vice serves as a stake - an anvil for texturing a curved object. Make sure each blow of the planishing hammer is centered on the stake hammer below. As you work, move the hinge strap, not the hammer, of each blow. Use the forming block to flatten the tip if it distorts. Use a steel rod or punch with one end shaped and polished into a shallow dome or ball to texture the transition from the rounded center of the spoon to the flat edges or boarder. The planishing hammer is too big to work in this small radius, and less accurate. Use the forming hammer to add border texture around the edge of the spear gead to match the back plates. Texture the rounded shaft of the hinge strap with the forming hammer. Use a 1" wide of 1/4" steel with rounded edges as a stake and orient the texturing along the length of the shaft. You can add the distinctive edge texture to the shaft using this stake. Finish the flat end of the strap with backplate-style texturing and edging. Drill 1/8" screw holes after texturing is complete. Hammer penny sized polished copper discs into spherical cavities in the forming block with the ball peen hammer. Center a steel tack in the concave backside and silver-solder it in place. 
Making Door and Drawer Bails: Bails are made from lengths of copper rod. These pieces are lengthened and tapered by hammering, with frequent annealing to keep them soft. When finished, they fit into small posts, which are riveted to the back plates. The 5/16" copper rod should be cut into about 3" lengths for the door bails and 3.1/2" lengths for the drawer bails. Anneal it, lengthen it, and taper it. When finished, each rod has been lengthened by 1", to either 4 or 4.1/2" pins are filed into the ends then the rods are bent, first at their ends, then in the middle. Pound around the annealed rod with the forming hammer to lengthen and taper it. Work from the center out, and rotate the rod with each blow. It will take four to five courses of pounding and annealing to achieve the final length and desired taper. File a 3/16" dia. Pin on each end of the lengthened and tapered rod. Tape all but the last 1/4" of each end to locate the position of the pin and to protect the rod from being marred when clamped between the vise jaws. If a smooth surface is desired on the bails, make it now by sanding. Pound the freshly annealed rod over the rounded corners of angle iron vise jaw pads with a forging hammer. The bending point is determined by aligning a mark 7/16" from each end of the rod with the upper face of the angle iron pad. Strike the rod at a point some distance away to start and work toward the bend as it is made. The corners of the angle iron have been rounded to define the inside corner of the final bend. Start the bend of the door’s V-shaped bail by pounding it, freshly annealed, over a 1"x 1/4" steel bar clamped so its edge is slightly below the bail’s centerline. Anneal the bail when you sense work hardening. Frequent annealing assures that bends occur where you want them. Repeat the process of annealing and bending until the final V-shape is attained. Make sure the pins align. Slightly flatten the face of each bail with emphasis at its center. Hard lines can be softened with the flat-faced hammer. Bend the final shape with a maple bending form. It can be done by hand, align the center lines, and bend it by hand to the proper shape. Anneal often.
Posts- drill holes in copper bar stock that has been divided into 1/4" sections, leaving room for saw kerfs between them. After drilling, carefully saw between each post from the pin end, stopping two thirds of the way through. This establishes the individual posts, but keeps them connected and easy to handle. Make post pins by rounding the end of clean 4 gauge copper grounding wire with a disc or belt sander before cutting off a 1/4" length. Make at least 14 pins each with a rounded end. Solder the pins in place. First coat all pieces with flux and hammer the pins in place. Place a sliver of solder at the junction of each pin and post. Then heat the bar, holding the torch on the side opposite the solder, until the solder flows into the joints. Heat the metal, not the copper, and don’t over heat. After soldering, sand the pins so they’re slightly longer than the thickness of the back plates. Then drill shallow 5/32" holes in the end of each one to facilitate riveting. Round the tops of the connected posts with a belt sander let the bar ride in the un-supported area between the front roller and platen. While still in bar form, finish all exposed surfaces up to 400 grit then cut them apart. The finished post has a 15/64" hole drilled through its center for the bail. All surfaces are sanded with 40 grit sandpaper. 
Rivet posts to the backplate. First position posts on the pins at the ends of a bail. If the bail pins are properly bent, the posts will align parallel to one another. Make necessary adjustments before positioning them on the backplate. Work on a soft wood back so the bail holes in the posts are not distorted. If you don’t have three hands, get help. The post pin fits through the hole in the back plate and stands slightly above it. When hammered with a punch, its hollowed tip mushrooms out and fills the chamfered cavity of the hole, securely riveting the post to the back plate.
(American Woodworker, Aug. 99. “Hammer Your Own Copper Hardware” by David Olson p.67-73)


----------



## ship

Cleaning Furniture Hardware, use an ultrasonic cleaner. It provides heat and agitation to clean hardware while you work on other things. Use a solution of 1 part ammonia to 2-3 parts warm water. He soaks larger pieces in the same solution, brushing them with a soft bristle brush to loosen the soil. Finally he rinses the hardware with clean water and towel dries it to prevent it from spotting. (Wood Magazine, Aug.99 “Antique Mystique” By Dave Campbell p.49 & 50)


----------



## ship

Cleaning Gilded or Gold leaf: if grimy, use a soft cloth dipped in warm turpentine or mineral spirits. (Home Depot 1999 Calender Oct. 21.)


----------



## ship

De-Scaling Chrome: to remove scale from chrome bathroom taps rub the chrome with half a lemon until the residue disappears. Rinse the surface thoroughly with warm water and buff it dry. (Home Depot 1999 Calender Aug. 15.)


----------



## ship

Removing Stains from Marble: mix a tablespoon of cornstarch with a teaspoon of hydrogen peroxide. Then mix with water to form a thick paste to spread on the stain. Cover with plastic wrap and let dry for 72 hours. Remove the paste with water, wash the marble with mild detergent, rinse well, and dry. (Home Depot 1999 Calender Aug. 17.)


----------



## ship

Pencil Layout Mark Cleanup: when a line is too dark for use of an eraser, or it has sunk into the wood grain, if this does not work try using shellac. The denatured alcohol in shellac is a solvent for pencil lead (graphite.) To remove your pencil marks without abrasives, use a white rag and denatured alcohol. The alcohol loosens the bond of the carbon-based pencil marks allowing the rag to pick up the suspension. Note: work in a ventilated area, wear rubber gloves and a respirator. Wet the rag with alcohol or, if there are a lot of pencil marks to erase, pour it right on the piece itself. Add a little elbow grease where needed. 
(American Woodworker, Dec. 1999, “Q&A” P. 13)


----------



## ship

Preventing Veneered-Plywood Tear-Out: when using Stacked Dado Head Saw Blades. Assuming your dado set is sharp and your fence is exactly parallel to yor saw blade, the best device for making clean cuts is a zero-clearance throat plate. You can buy ready-made ones, or make your own. To make your own use MDO plywood or similar MDF type non-grained and smooth plywood type material. Cut it on the band saw after tracing the shape of the current throat-plate insert for the saw. Sand as needed to refine the fit. If the new insert is too tall, it can be sanded flush. If it is too tall, add small setscrews to the bottom of the board, and adjust it up accordingly. Bring the pre-set dado blade up into the new plate to cut a zero clearance hole for the blade which will prevent the ripping action the blade makes when its plate or opening is too wide and not supporting the lumber as it cuts. Another trick to prevent tear-out is to moisten the surface to be cut with a rag. It does not have to be wet, it simply needs to be damp enough to soften the wood fibers enough to help prevent tear-out.
(American Woodworker, Dec. 1999, “Q&A” P. 8)


----------



## ship

Tambour: Designing them is a trick, you cannot simply design them and see them work because that cannot account for the intricate movement of the sheet as it bends and turns. A full sized mockup must be tried and adjusted to get the kinks out. To start the design you must choose the shape and size of the door slats. This will determine the diameter of the curves the slats will turn verses the amount of area the slats can span. Draw out the curves the tambour will make first, than design the contents of the cabinet it covers. A tambour door has three parts - the slats, a canvas (or rubberized vinyl) backing and a thicker rail or stile at the bottom to move the whole assembly in its slot and stiffen it. A tambour can run up and down or side to side, and pass through either an S-curve or a simple-radius C-curve. 
An S-Curve gives strength: A roll top desk with sides curved in the shape of a lazy S is a familiar icon in furniture. The tambour runs down behind the pigeon holes and false back into a essential part of all tambour design. Without it, you’d see the canvas backing of the tambour. Moreover, without the return slot, the materials stored in the desk might block the tambour from opening all the way. The pleasing curve has two practical benefits: bending the tambour into a reverse curve actually stiffens it, which prevents the slats from drooping in the center of a wide desk. Also the slats in an S-curve tambour can be thinner and lighter in weight than those needed to stiffen a tambour that isn’t curved. Yet another feature of an S-curved tambour is that it’s less likely to come crashing down when you close it due to the extra track length and curves and added friction from it. A tambour has to flex both forward and backward to pass through an S-curve. Half-round and Bevel-edged slats are traditional designs that can accomplish this. Both types are just as effective in curving 
Sizing S-curve Slats: Design your roll top tambour on a full-scale drawing. Use a piece of paper as large as the end of the desk to work out the shape of the S-curve, the size of the pigeon hole section and the placement of the false back. Draw the groove parallel to the curved side. It’s easiest to make its width the same size as a router bit. Then make the slats a little bit thinner than the groove so they can move freely along it. The thickness of the slats depends on the distance they have to span. Slats range from a bit less than 3/4" thick for a 60" opening down to 5/16" thick for a 24" opening. How wide should the slats be? Their width is limited by the sharpest turn the tambour has to make. In a roll top, that turn is hidden. It’s at the back of the desk, behind the pigeon holes. On convex curves, make the slot a little wider than the track, this is needed for the slats to follow the curve. In this way a wider slat can be allowed to make the curve without pinching, and the bottom rail can also fit through the S-curve. In the rear curve, this wider slot is important because of the 90° slot. It allows the arc of the curve to be as small as possible so it does not waste space inside the cabinet, yet allows for larger slats to make the corner. If however the slot is too wide, the tambour will bind in the curve. This is why it is hard to design the track layout without much testing to find the best mix between sharpness of curve and width of slat. 
Build a Model: Sizing the width and thickness of the slats can’t be done on paper alone, however. You have to test the real thing. Rout a groove into a piece of plywood, following a template to prevent the router from freehand wiggles. Make a few short tambour slats and glue them to a piece of canvass. Try running the mock tambour through the groove. If it’s too loose, your tambour will make an unpleasant rattling sound. If it’s even a shade too tight, the tambour may not move in humid weather. The right fit can be elusive, but the only way to find it is to build a model. As for the slats themselves, beveled slats with at least a 10° bevel work as well as half-round ones. On the backing, leave some space between each slat to allow them to bend inward or concave. This will have to be tested, narrow slats will allow for a tighter concave curve, but in the case of a need for wider slats, given they can round the convex corners designed, a steeper angle on the beveled slats will allow for tighter turns, or making the half rounds a little less round on the edges will also do the trick. Also a little more space between the slats will add a little more flexibility to the bending radius and smooth in turning. No more than 1/16" however should be between slats or they will bind when pushed to open the door. 
The Lift Rail: A large roll top tambour needs a heavy duty, multi-purpose lift rail. The lift rail absorbs the shock of the tambour closing on the desktop. Its extra width and thickness help the tambour glide through the grooves without buckling, give you enough room to install a mortised lock and provide a surface large enough to hold a comfortable handle. Design the handle and buy the lock before choosing the size of your lift rail. They’re generally 2 to 3 inches wide. Cut a tongue on the ends of the rail so it can slide through the grooves. The tongue is thinner and wider than the slats. Try running a mock lift rail through the S-curve. It doesn’t have to negotiate the tight turn behind the pigeon holes because you can install the completed tambour from the front of the desk. If it does not negotiate the turns well enough, instead of making the rail smaller, it can be shaved down more into an hourglass shape to make the curves or made into two pegs on each end of the rail which will correspond with the size of the slats in distance but with middle ones removed. For example: given a rail with tongue four slats wide, the pins would need to be the size and approximate shape of slats one and four and slats two and three would be missing. This space between pins is especially needed to be the same as the slats because if the slats work well in a curve than these pins given proper and proportional spacing will also make the curve. 
Turning Tight C-curves: Lets turn to the Federal desk, where the tambour moves across the face of a cabinet to make two C-shaped turns at each end. This tambour disappears like magic into a cavity between the outer cabinet and the inner box that contains pigeon holes or shelves. Because it only bends in one direction, the tambour can have flat faces. It does not need to have bevels because it will not be making a any concave turns. It can even have slight tongue and groove shaped edges if wished with the tambour only linked at the top and bottom. When closed, square edged slats it will look like a flat panel, unlike the ribbed surface of the roll top desk tambour. Often the trick here is to design a tambour that can make a very tight turn. A wide turn would require large awkward-looking stiles at the sides of the cabinet. The secret is to put small, invisible tongues on all the slats. The smaller the tongue, the tighter the radius the tambour can turn. Unequal shoulders to the tongues are important for the tambour to glide smoothly through its horizontal grooves. The back shoulder should be very narrow or eliminated altogether to bring the canvas backing in line with the curve. This back shoulder could cause the slats to bind as they go around a curve because they are out of axis with the curve of the track. The tambour rides on the end of its tongues, not on the shoulders so that the opening and closing the tambour won’t wear down the finish on the cabinet. Cut the tongues just a bit longer than the groove is deep. You may dispense with the lift rail, because you’re not fighting gravity. However, if you want the door to lock or need more room for a handle, you can make a lead strip that’s larger than the slats. It doesn’t have to negotiate the tight C-curves. Insert the finished tambour from the rear of the cabinet and attach a two-part lead strip to the tambour after it has passed through the turns. The smaller the space between the slats, the better on this type of Tambour, as it will cause the strips to bind less and form a tighter joint when closed. On this horizontal sliding type cabinet however there is a disadvantage in that there must be an inner cabinet all around the sides and back of the space to prevent the contents from blocking the tambour groove. While the top is now able to be touched by the pigeon holes, the sides are lost for things like mail slots and more effective storage across the width. The inner cabinet and the groove around it can be masked by a deeper shouldered lead strip as it will be all by itself and thus can make corners without binding. This lead strip which is installed after the tambour is pushed in from the rear, is attached by an extra flap of fabric backing being left on the front edge of the tambour which can later be attached to the lead strip when in place. 
Rolling Garage Doors: a final type of Tambour track layout is the most efficient use of space in the cabinet as it does not require false backs or sides, but still has all of the advantages of the C-curve design featuring the square edges or beveled edge slats. It might however require an even stiffer backing yet if not a rolling mechanism as per window shades to help the tambour roll up out of the way. Given a small enough door, and enough room, the smaller slats can simply roll into a scroll form of track without any need for winding mechanisms. But for larger doors it is best if the tambour has a tensioning mechanism to keep it rolling and tight into a spiral instead of flowing out into the cabinet when it leaves the track, or binding because it is too loosely wound. This tight rolling mechanism will also help to keep the amount of space needed to store the tambour as small as possible. These mechanisms are commercially available with the doors, but can otherwise be as simple to some extent as a shade mechanism’s spring or counter-weighted to draw the tambour in. It can also be engineered to the extent of a roll drop given the want for such complexity, however the essential part of this concept is the idea that the roll is put either at the back or front of the cabinet either instead of the first turn or behind it and to the back of the cabinet behind the top/uppermost row of pigeon holes. Both places out of the way for storage and structural strength on the vertically traveling door, or in the same relative position and space savings. The vertical traveling door can even make the S-curve if desired, given the added friction and track length is accounted for in the rolling spiral or winding mechanism. 
(B.Ship. With idea the idea from American Woodworker, Dec. 1999. “Tambour Doors” by Tom Caspar p86-92)


----------



## ship

Restoring Veneer: for bubbles, cut the bubble at the center, slip some glue into it, cover the surface with cloth, and steam iron it back into shape. Keep weight on it until dry. (Home Depot 1999 Calender June 25.)
Sometimes, after tapping the veneer to find that which sounds hollow, the wood can be heated with an iron to re-activate the glue. Wet a peace of cheese cloth to about 8 layers. Place the iron there for about 5 to 10 seconds. The steam softens the glue, rub the veneer with a veneer hammer or rubber roller until the wood cools. (Wood Magazine, Aug.99 “Antique Mystique” By Dave Campbell p.51 )


----------



## ship

Laminates: Flat, Dark Laminates show more scratches than textured light laminates. (Home Depot 1999 Calender July 21.)


----------



## ship

Scuff Marks on Vinyl Floors: to remove scuff marks on vinyl flooring, use a soft cloth soaked with turpentine or a pencil eraser. (Home Depot 1999 Calender Nov. 9.)


----------



## ship

Cleaning Fiberglass: do not use abrasives, they will scratch and dull the surface. Use 600 grit sandpaper to touch up rough spots. Use a sponge or stiff nylon brush with liquid detergent or household spray cleaner for normal cleaning. For stains and soap residue, use a paste of baking soda and water, or vinegar and water. Apply car wax twice a year to maintain the original luster and prevent stains from setting in.


----------



## ship

Stopping plastic from degrading due to the sun: use car wax with a UV inhibitor, wash it yearly or when dirty and re-apply the wax. Once it degrades or caulks, it cannot be stopped


----------



## ship

Plywood Grade: Grade A is premium grade, it has no more than 18 repairs on the face, grade B can have more repairs, Grade C can have more still. (Home Depot 1999 Calender Jan.29.)


----------



## ship

Used Caulking Tubes: pull them apart before they are used by cutting the plunger end off, thus cutting the tube short. Get rid of the product in side, and remove the old tube from the plunger. It might seem silicone would work best with this as its remaining product is the most friction resistant and thus will allow the plunger to slide well once re-inserted. It otherwise might be useful to use a water-soluble product inside the tube so it can be washed out after removal, and the tube does not have to be used right away before the old product dries out and makes the tube useless. With this now empty caulking tube, it is now possible to fill it and use it with almost any type of product wished for ease of application. Some uses are in sand thickened two part epoxy for adding between holes in floor boards. It can also be used for tuck pointing. More to the stage however it can be used for scenic dope application, Epoxy, or almost any other product which does not come pre-mixed. Note however it might be difficult to re-install the plunger, try putting it on the gun’s push rod to ease in leverage and alignment. Note also however that the product inside the tube cannot have a long shelf life due to a other than factory conditions re-installation of the plunger, and probably will not be re-useable once used unless the plunger is replaced with something like a rubber cork with a eye-bolt removal ring on it. This is complex however for such a tube. It might also be possible to glue the original plunger to a dedicated caulk gun and thus be able to remove the plunger when finished. (American How To, May 1999 “Tip Trader”. p.86)


----------



## ship

Custom - Made Contour Sander: put a piece of waxed paper over your cove or contour. Smash a gob of “Bondo” over the waxed paper. Then either spray adhesive, or hold the sand paper on the “Bondo” to sand the contour. (Wood Magazine, Feb. 1999 “Hot of the Internet” p. 12) A better solution might be to use the same trick but to add sand or like materials into the “Bondo” mixture, or to lay them out on the waxed paper before the Bondo is added. In this way, the sanding surface would be impregnated within the “Bondo” itself and not need work to keep the sand paper attached to the contours. Another way might be to soften the sandpaper in some way so it conforms to the contours of the molding, and apply the Bondo directly to it. It should stick or if necessary adhesive on the back should help this bond. If necessary velcro backed sandpaper should easily hold the Bondo. In addition to “Bondo”, spray foam adhesive, epoxy, and many other materials can be used to conform to the contour easily, and spray foam if installed under pressure will not only stick to the sand paper, but make it conform to all curves and angles of the molding by its pressure when forming. This might be the best sander of all. (B.Ship.)


----------



## ship

What you want more tips? That's about 5% of the tips I have on one file. But wait for some time later when such a thing can be presented right.

I was just going after the extra points to catch up with JoJo. Just another 82 to go.


----------



## MissD

rotfl!!!!

Well, that is certainly one weay of filling Dave's directive, and of becoming a Junior 
Technician (you, techie, you :wink: )


----------



## ship

Actually, it was a good distraction for a joke.

I just finished spending the last 11 hours making up a conversion table of every lamp Sanyo uses in their LCD projectors by going thru every manual on-line both at work than home, one by one going to like page 45 to find the lamp type and part number than skipping to another page to find the only other listed data about the lamp - the wattage. When available at least. You would think that such a quick refrence chart would have already been thought of but even the Sanyo rep had to get out a manual to figure out what lamp I was looking for. The have 80 projectors and I have a need to know for work. There was a problem with a $1.5K order I placed yesterday Fed EX Priority One Overnight, AM Delivery which was costly enough by itself - someone on the West coast since both the East and Central coast were already closed down for the night when I got the lamp request, sent me the wrong lamps and it seems that the proper lamp for the projector will not be available in the US for another 3 weeks. Out of like 10 suppliers including Sanyo and Ushio, nobody had this lamp. Almost had 4 more for tomarow but in the time it took another supplier to write up the order the lamps had already sold to someone else. Try telling that to an already irate customer - the lamp business is kind of like the stock market, when there is run on lamps, there is nothing you can do about it.
Than, I added a new Osram lamp's specs to my chart as I just bought 20 of today, and updated my price quotes with 3 pages of "special" lamp prices from Ushio. Than I did a little research into the lamp for the new HES Color Command. We just bought somewhere between 30 and 40 of the fixtures and I'm working on getting the price down to below $24.00 per lamp. One supplier this morning quoted me an amazingly bad price but for a Osram lamp to the fixture. Problem was that the lamp is at this time from what I can find is only made by Philips, and Osram doesn't even make one that's similar. The GE/Thorn GLD. hmm, someone had a brain fart.

In other words, such a joke was good to get my eyes off lamp specs for a while.


----------



## MissD

It's making my head spin just reading about it. 8O What a headache. :x I hope you find what you're looking for soon.


----------



## MissD

I wonder who coined the phrase "brain fart"? Very usseful phrase, I'll have to remember it 8)


----------



## SbhstechieImlah

*Re: hobnobbing it with the people who made this site possibl*

haha that's one way of getting the 40 posts


----------



## SbhstechieImlah

*Re: hobnobbing it with the people who made this site possibl*

oh yeah and david good luck!!!


----------



## TechDirector

*Re: hobnobbing it with the people who made this site possibl*

Why does dave always think we are going to start a coup on the forums? anyway i think this post is number 49.


----------



## MagliteL13

I'll make it number 50 then-- at 4:52 Central Time.

Jeremy Lyon
Technician at The McAnich Arts Center


----------



## SbhstechieImlah

*Re: hobnobbing it with the people who made this site possibl*

yep we got the 50!


----------



## ship

"haha that's one way of getting the 40 posts" I'm kind of surprised that Dave didn't take those 40 posts away from me which by accident got me up to the next level. I thought I had to be at the 300 range. It certainly was not earned. Just click and copy. Guess I'm at Jo Jo's level for posts anyway so it's not a big point. Kudos on Jo Jo for sticking with it this long and being first however.

Seriously, what I copied and posted in posting something at least somewhat useful is available to anyone that wants to send me a E-Mail address for it. I was actively working on an improved notes section of a Backstage Handbook before I got distracted and seriously sidetracked into lamp specs. If you can read Word Perfect, my notes and tips on stuff are yours. Eventually, I expect Dave will add a backstage handbook/tips section of the forum that all my pre-typed notes as well as yours will be added to - given we can ease the hardness in adding them one by one on line. Something like a key word search I would think to a large text that's easy to post. What's the difference between a laminate saw blade and a rip one? Such things are not yet in the Backstage Handbook, much less proper drilling speeds for hole saws.

"Brain Fart" is a Marine term from my first memory of it. Before that, who knows - good question. Ask R. Lee Irmie on his very cool show - that's History Channel "Mail Call" fodder. Since it is a Marine term - as I learned it at least, I'm sure he could abuse you worse than I could - you civilian pig, and tell you the answer - in his own drill instructor way. I love the show, it takes me back a few years. The first half of "Full Metal Jacket was in many ways very much similar to my own experiences on boot camp - including the guy that went crazy, but short one rifle and insert one "born again Cristian" in the washroom while I was on guard, instead.

As for the lamps, the customer is pissed that inspite of his own strikeing out with many of the same sources I called, he still could not get lamps for his projectors at the last minute. As R.Lee or any Marine would say, Waah! To say the least. Prior planning prevents evan civilian pig piss poor preformance. You need spares for your LCD projectors, perhaps you should have bought some before you needed them at the last minute. - Spare lamps, what a concept! It's not exactually as if I was using the fixtures. "Prior planning prevents piss poor preformance." While I only contacted like 10 of about 30 sources for the lamp, It's pritty well assured that the lamp he needed is only now being made in Japan, and it's going to take about three weeks to get. Sorry but he should have been around when another projector company Barco decided to improve upon and discontinue their R9840300 lamp without any lamp to replace it. Same story with Altman discontinuing their studio Fresnel line 2K and 5K of lamp bases. What, you big companies discontinue a product before you have something to replace it with? It's now a year and a half since Altman stopped selling replacement lamp bases to their 5,000 Watt Fresnel. Just got a reply from the vendor rep today with a status report from them. "The engineers are meeting tomarow on this problem" and in a few more months hopefully they will have a replacement lamp base completed in development.

What any person with say 20 something 5K Fresnels that have lamp base problems in need of at least replacement if not upgrade is supposted to do until than, is besides the point that Altman like Barco decided one day just to stop buying the standard lamp base replacements a few years back, but did not have anything else to replace it. Hello!!!

You guys really want to get out of highschool and into the real world? So Barco that makes some of the big time video projectors one day decided to discontinue their primary lamp for the DLC 6400 projector. Replacement lamps start going fast for it and at an increcingly higher price until they are all gone - much like the above Sanyo lamp and at a much similar in $400 to $500.00 each price each for only 750 hours. Gee it's only going to be a few months until they stock the replacement be it shipped in from Japan or a new type of lamp as replacement - all those clubs and places that don't stock spares should just make do or buy the video version of the lamp that is not as high as resolution but will still work. Want my job? Okay, we have an order for Hard Rock Cafe - Chicago for more lamps like tomarrow. How can we swing with Barco to get us some lamps for this as opposed to the commen client? Perhaps a threat that all restraunts since it's Hard Rock Cafe and well known, will take their Barco Projectors out immediately and replace them with another brand unless the company puts some lamps into them? Not realistic, since it was only one of the clubs, but it worked just fine. That in addition to their already worsening bad name for themselves for the specifiers of the fixture in the industry. Yep, that worked. Funny how fast that company got some of the not available lamps out to me even if discontinued.

Than there was the time about three years ago that GE/Corning that makes all the PAR lamp reflector and lens for any brand of PAR fixture Osram or Philips or GE/Thorn besides those coming from Japan - Ushio, decided to take a little three month vacation. Can you say a run on PAR - especially PAR 64 lamps all across the lighting industry and prices rising by the day? Now there was a tricky time for the industry because S-4 PAR fixtures just were not on the market in any numbers yet. Rock shows were stuck with no spare PAR 64 Lamps at best, or changing their designs.

So it's probably going to be about 3 weeks to get this projector lamp. No big deal from me. This customer is only one of our larger clients but is at least not screaming yet. I'll wait and even stock a spare one for him once it's out - even id stocking a lamp that's not used counts against my profit sharing. So we lost $1,500.00 in sales due to some corporate mishap. No big deal, the customer still knows who to call for his repairs much less more expert help or effort in getting lamps beyond the companies that just told him no and did not spend 4 hours in finding another source - hopefully. At leasat next time a fixture for Sanyo needs a lamp, I'll just check the chart I made and know what type it is. You make lemonaid out of lemons where you can. 

So no, there was no solution to this problem. On the other hand, the Color Command lamps keep getting cheaper and more reasonable.


----------



## derekleffew

Necropost/thread bump/whatever. 

I've heard dvsDave often refer to this "incident," but had never seen this thread before. By my calculations, ship only did 26 posts, not 40. What a slacker!
.


----------



## dvsDave

Wow, I haven't seen this thread in YEARS! I remember that event I referred to, it was ....interesting...

This does remind me that ControlBooth will be celebrating it's 10th Anniversary in January!


----------



## gafftaper

AWESOME I've never seen this one. 

I notice that you are no longer afraid of a coup. In fact, at times you seem to be encouraging a coup!


----------



## ruinexplorer

dvsDave said:


> This does remind me that ControlBooth will be celebrating it's 10th Anniversary in January!



Cue the press release! Are we giving away door prizes? I want a party hat.


----------

