Viewed from the underside, after a night gluing up.
Well, turns out I needn’t have stressed over this drum not tightening up. It’s tightened up a treat. Very much like the first one. And this despite the cat-damaged goatskin being a ways off-centre (as can be seen in some of the accompanying pics).
All clamps save the one holding the elastic removed.
Next I need to remove the excess goatskin, and then wrap tape and a textile wrap around the drum, before finally securing them all with shortened tacks. I’ll aim to get all that done today. So I should have the drum finished in just a few hours. What fun!
The topside view.
Here, in the above image, one can see how off-centre I had to make the skin, to avoid the kitty-damaged areas winding up on the playing surface. Chester has left his moggy-mark on this one!
All clamping inc. elastic removed… she’s holding!
After a day that quickly filled up with other activities, I finally got back to the drum. Having taken off the last bit of skin tensioning, the elastic, I had to remove the excess goatskin. This left a much messier residue than last time.
After cutting off the extra skin, it’s a bit of a mess; needs tidying!
I left the protective ‘frog tape’ masking in place, so I could clean up the messy residue of goatskin and glue. Using a knife, then a chisel, and finally some sandpaper, I cleaned up the mess as best asI could.
Double-sided carpet tape and fabric binding.
Then I took the protective masking tape off, and put a band of very high-tack carpet tape on, followed by the fabric tape. So, this new drum is pretty much done now. I decided to join the fabric tape edge to edge, rather than as previously, with a fold-over.
I did the join/seam differently this time; no fold over!
The end to end join is nicer looking than the bulkier fold-over. At least I think so! Not sure if I’ll use the tacks this time or not? I’m leaving them off for now. I can always add some late if I feel the need.
Next step is to start playing it, and get a video of that up. So folk can hear how it sounds. I’ll be making a few more. I really want one with a much deeper bass note. So I either need less tension, and/or a bigger drum shell.
The orgy of horror continues! With a classic from 1968, the year my dear Teresa was born; the Summer Of Love, and zombies! This has become a cult classic. And it’s not hard to see why.
Brother and sister, Barbara and Johnny, are visiting the cemetery, to pay their respects to their deceased father. At the graveyard a lumbering figure approaches, and it all turns from dull day out to spooky weirdness. In an instant.
A visit to the cemetery…
What’s notable about this is how it does a lot with very little. Barbara flees from the graveyard assailant, and after crashing her car ends up in a house, empty save for a rotten corpse at the top of some stairs. She’s soon joined by Ben. Barbara, in shock, is mute. Ben sets about securing the house, fighting off a few zombies, setting a couch on fire to keep them off, and hunkering down defensively.
Ben finds and switches on a radio. We hear a voice describing what’s going on. Barbara momentarily comes out of her shell, only to get hysterical over the fate of her brother, Johnny. When Ben goes upstairs, Babs sits silently on the couch, getting freaked out by the newscaster and his reports of zombie cannibalism.
Numbers at the house grow.
Two men then come up from the cellar. So now there are four… no, wait, there’s a family downstairs. Oh, and the girlfriend of the other guy. So it becomes three in the basement and four upstairs. And tensions grow between the two parties. It’s simple enough, but fairly realistic and well done.
The kitchen sink aspect, of everyday life going horribly awry, and the ‘Alamo’ vibe of defending the homestead, combine very effectively. The ‘verité’ aspects are further enhanced by use of the radio and TV reportage interjections. And elements of the direction, from tilted/angled camera work, right down to the movie being shot in stark black and white, add up to a simple but powerful formula.
Will any of the normal folk get out alive?
And it’s a formula that’s been hugely influential. Spawning a franchise and countless rip-offs or homages. The cast are all obscure unknowns, only a few of whom would continue to work in the industry, unlike director George Romero, for whom the movie launched a whole successful career.
Tom (Keith Wayne) and Judy (Judith Ripley) are progenitors of the ‘classic’ young himbos and bimbos that would become future horror movie staples; Harry Cooper (Karl Hardman) is the uptight dad, whilst Helen (Marilyn Eastman), his wife, is, like Judy, very gorgeous. Their immobile injured/ill daughter turns out, surprise surprise, to be infected.
Fighting off the ghoulish hordes.
Having learned from the radio that a civic response is getting underway, and rescue centres are opening up, an attempt is made to escape. Only Ben survives to return to the ‘ranch’, where the zombie siege gradually intensifies. A short scene of cannibalism at the burnt-out escape truck ensues, and is, whilst risibly primitive by todays standards, special-effects wise, nonetheless pretty disturbing.
Interestingly there is no mention of the z for zombie word. Instead the walking cadavers are referred to as ‘ghouls’. How ironic then, that Night Of The Living Dead should spawn, usher in, or re-animate a veritable zombie invasion!
The Cardille segment…
The segment with ‘chief McLellan’ is great, with TV personality Bill Cardille as himself, interviewing the head of a posse of ghoul-hunters. History has, with incredible irony, seen the rise in the US of zombie legions who, instead of being hunted by such vigilante posses, are instead those self same gun-toting rednecks; it was these ‘ghouls’ that besieged the US Capitol after Trump’s defeat in the 2020 presidential election. As Partridge might say, at this point, you couldn’t make this stuff up!
… where he interviews ‘chief McClellan’ is great.
As the siege reaches its climax, young miss Cooper finally arises from her sickbed… to butcher and feast upon her parents! As primitively done as it is, it’s still a potent shocking scene. And it makes this movie, along with Hitchcock’s Psycho, an antecedent to the whole slasher genre, as well as zombie movies galore.
The end of the movie is an absolute classic. I won’t spoil it for those who don’t know it. Dark as pitch! And perfect Halloween viewing.
Today I made a knob for the Handyman plane I’ve been working on, to go with the handle I recently made. Both are made from quite soft construction pine.
I had to set up the bandsaw to cut a blank.
Cutting blanks from a big block of pine, I quickly realised my bandsaw was all out of whack. So I had to take a break to sort that out. Took a while! I needed to adjust pretty much everything! I even had to drill new holes in the fence clamp to help get the fence properly aligned.
I drove a screw into the blank, cut off the head…
The angle-grinder took the head off a long thin screw, so I could put it in the chuck of a drill. This then meant I could ‘turn’ the block, kind of primitive lathe-style, into a large tubular rod.
… and used this hand drill as a mini lathe.
After this initial rounding stage, I took a lead out of Paul Seller’s book, and used a hand saw, followed by chisels/rasps, to narrow the circumference of the lower basal part of the blank. After that it was just a case of rasping, filing and so on, until I attained the desired curves.
Fully shaped, I used the vice to extract the screw.
Once I’d got a shape I was pleased with, I put the screw/shank in the vice and rotated the shaped knob off. Then the drill-press did the holes for the threaded-rod and fixing doodad.
In these pics my rather slapdash work looks ok. And I’ve learned lots. But one thing I’ve learned is I need to remake these in harder wood, and be more accurate and neat in doing so.
Much varnishing and sanding… as ever.And done, for now.
The day after making the front knob, I put this plane back together. Turns out it’s the scrub plane. I felt the handles I’d made weren’t seating quite right, so I made a pair of cork ‘gaskets’, using the footprint of each piece. I also had to add a bit of dowel back into the top hole of the ‘knob’. But all told, with the final bit of fettling, I’m actually quite pleased.
The new look, in front of an unmodified plastic one.
I made a wooden handle for one of my Stanley Handyman planes some few years back. Don’t recall now if that was ‘cause the plastic one broke, or simply because I just prefer the aesthetics of wood.
The old broken DIY handle (dark!), new one, and a ‘blank’.Masked it off in situ’… why not?
Anyway, I made the original replacement from some very, very hard wood. Very hard, but also very dry and brittle. So, not like oak. Don’t know what type of wood that previous handle was. It lasted longer than I expected, but finally broke, just a day or two ago.
Varnish, coat #1.
My planes all need cleaning, setting up and sharpening. And I really ought to sell a few. As I have more than I need. I’d like all the planes I keep/use sporting wooden handles and knobs.
Varnish, coat #2.
Making the handles is relatively easy, with gear I already own. And it’s really pleasurable, shaping all the curves. But the near spherical knobs would be a lot easier to do on a lathe, a tool I don’t as yet have.
Varnish, coat #3.
I tried to make two handles today, using soft construction pine. So, if they fail – and the first attempt did split on the thin forward ‘foot’ of the base – it’s all good practice for when I finally get around to making some in a more durable (perhaps prettier?) wood. Not sure what might be best: oak, cherry, yew? I really don’t know! Something to look into.
Varnish, coat #4.
And… whaddya know!? As I’m sitting working on this, Steve Ramsey gives way to Paul Seller’s on YouTube, and – with no input from me – after videos on saw horses and other stuff, up pops his plane handle tutorial! Serendiplodocus or what!? It turns out he uses yew. So I’ll try and get me some o’that.
Varnish, coat #5.
And now, the following day, a sand with 255 grit, and a sixth (and I hope final?) coat of varnish. I’ll give it an hour or so to dry. And if it’s still tacky – the previous coats were still a bit sticky after 24 hours! – I might speed things up with a hair dryer.
Sanded and lacquered.
Then I’ll remove the masking tape, clean and polish the rest of the rest of the plane, and sharpen the blade, reassemble, etc.
Hmmm!? Can’t stop fettling it! Wasn’t quite happy with the previous ‘final’ gloss varnish coat. There were some odd full spots. So I’ve sanded with 255 grit again, and will do one last ‘final’ coat later today. And that really will be the last, however it comes out. As I need to move on to the front end k-nob!
Lightly sanded with 255 grit paper.
Well, I think that’s seven coats of gloss varnish in total? And three or four bouts of light sanding. I finally threw in the towel, finish wise. It’s far from perfect – but then the handle is pretty rough ‘n’ rustic anyway – but one has to stop fiddling and move on at some point!
The block of timber beneath the de-frogged plane, as pictured below, is going to furnish me with a number of knobs, I hope. How long will such softwood replacements last, I wonder? What I need is to find some yew.
My sister’s back from Spain with her family. Which is terrific. Her birthday is actually tomorrow. But we got together today, with Dad, Claire, Sam, Hannah, Antonio, Ali and Sofi, for lunch at Coton Orchard garden-centre.
Post meal family portrait.
I had ham, eggs and chips, Teresa had fish ‘n’ chips, and we shared a raspberry and white chocolate roulade for pudding. Lovely!
We got Hannah a couple of rosins, for her violin bows, and Ry Cooder’s debut album on CD. She was pleased with the gifts, which was gratifying. Pictured below the writing inside Hannah’s b’day card.
The above was written with a fun set of coloured felt tip pens, of the dual-tip variety (one fine, one larger and more brush like), that we recently got via Amazon Vine.
It was nice to see folks, and eat, drink, chat, etc. Many happy returns Hannah, my beautiful sister! Love from Teresa and I!
Sunday, and I’m keen to finish the caddy project ASAP. But with lots else to do, all I managed was these handles. Cut on the table saw, with my primitive but effective sled. And then sanded/rasped into the curved shapes seen above.
And on they go.
The handles are glued and screwed, belt ‘n’ braces style. Making and fitting these was hard; the shaping of the innermost curves took much time and effort. Slow sanding gave way to more rapid rasping! The fixing to the caddy took less energy.
In the lounge.
I brought the caddy inside to photograph it with less clutter around it. And I’m pleased with how it’s turned out.
Left handle and tape measure.
The last things are: a clip for the tape measure (which is just perched on the handle in the above pic), and somewhere for a hammer to reside.
Right handle.
The right hand handle needed a tiny curved smidgeon knocking off with the rasp, and sanding smooth, in order to get the ‘lectric sharpener back into its cubby hole. That was both easy to do and very satisfying!
Do I paint this thing? Or stain/varnish it? Hmmm!? Anyway, just the clip for the tape measure left to do. Oh, and somewhere for a hammer!
I’m into the final furlong with the tool caddy now. The third tier is coming along nicely.
Plugging bottoms (titter!).
I had to cut some holes all the way through the block, for a few of the larger items. That then required that the resulting holes be plugged, to stop things dropping through.
Bottoming out again…
Initially I wasn’t sure exactly what was going in to this section, as almost everything already had a home in the other two tiers. But there’s actually plenty: small files, a small compass, various interchangeable hex shanked drill bits, AA and AAA batteries, a couple of knives, and sundry other oddments.
Cut a groove out the back…
Only just visible in these pics, you might note that I staggered the battery holes; there’s a row of five AA, and a row of four AAA. I tried to space these out so they’d be simple to pull out. And the depths are also set to make that easy as well.
… for a mini spirit-level.
In the image below you can see the drill bits, in their little rubber pluggy things. I drilled a line of holes with, I think(?), a 15mm dia’ bit, taped for depth, and then chiselled out the remaining ‘waste’. Perhaps I should’ve set them a bit further back? Or forward? There’s room for more in that section.
Cut another little groove for these screw-dads.
It was hard to resist the temptation to go out this evening, and take off the clamps. But I was strong in resolve! So… this third and final section is now gluing to the others overnight.
Tomorrow we’re meeting Hannah and co, inc dad and Claire, for a walk along ‘The Backs’, and then lunch at The Copper Kettle. It’s Hannah’s pre-birthday meal.
I’m hoping I’ll find the time either before, or more likely after, to add two handles and a clip for the tape measure.
Today I glued tiers one and two together. Took a lot of clamps! I should’ve waited, perhaps, until I’d cleaned up the top faces. But I forgot to do so!
Clamping/gluing tiers one and two.The plywood drill bit support blocks are visible here.Some slot bottoms are ‘capped’.*
I did some work on tier three of my tool caddy today. I drilled and chiselled out holes for two knives, on the right hand end. Down the other end I drilled ten or twelve identical holes for various files.
But the thing that gave me most pleasure and satisfaction was drilling and chiselling out a pretty sizeable hole in the right side of the caddy to take this chunky electric pencil sharpener. I got the latter off Amazon recently. And I love how easily it allows me to get nice sharp pencils.
Drilling and chiselling the hole for this…
I used my largest Forstner bit (35mm), mounted in my corded Hitachi drill; the caddy is too long to drill on end using either of my pillar type drills. I started the holes using the Bosch cordless drill, but it just wasn’t powerful enough. These holes – three, one in each ‘corner’ of the triangular shape – needed to be about two inches deep, or thereabouts.
Once the three holes were drilled, I chiselled out the remainder of the wood that I needed to remove. It took a fair bit of tweaking to get the right shape for the sharpener to fit snugly.
… was hard, but fun. Bingo!
I love how the sharpener sits here, just sufficiently proud of the wood to allow easy removal for emptying as and when required. I also love the various wood grains on view.
I love wood!
*The rather messy holes from my first attempts are visible during clamping. But as these are on the base, they’ll not show when the caddy is in use.
The base of my bench, loaded with toolboxes and timber.
Wasn’t sure if I’d shared a picture of the laden workbench base. Four or five toolboxes (one is out/in use) and a bunch of timber add stabilising weight to the beast!
Also pictured in today’s post… footwear! A pair of Adidas retro-ish ‘80s basketball type sneakers, that I wore whilst working, and some much older shoes I can’t bring myself to throw away.
Picking up where I left off yesterday, I wanted to finish the second tier. This meant adding holes for pens, pencils, screwdrivers, the dovetail square, and various other odds n sods.
The pen and pencil area.
The pens and pencils are the first instance of possible overcrowding, as they get in the way of easy immediate access to some of the drill bits behind them. One solution might be to make the holes deeper. But. Think I’ll leave them for now, as that runs the risk of shorter pencils disappearing into the holes altogether.
Added a hole for an x-acto knife, by the glue.
I’m happy with how three of the machinist’s squares are stored. Only the largest one presents an issue. I made little strips to fill parts of the slots that the smaller ones go in. But the larger one is too tall to sit plumb with the others. What ought I do?
Camera went a bit misty!?
This slightly misty view shows tier two fully loaded. And, in front of the whole shebang, a few of the remaining tools I want to incorporate somewhere, poss’ some in a third tier. Certainly I want to incorporate the pencil sharpener. And the little glue bottle would be handy as well. And some AA and AAA batteries…
I think I’ve mostly avoided overcrowding. But one notable exception is the area in the front middle of tier two, where screwdrivers and pens/pencils block access to the drill bit set immediately behind. Time will tell if this is a problem or not. For now I’m going to leave things as they are.
The squares end includes glue and an exacto knife.
The third and final tier, as yet unbuilt, will house the few remaining tools. Hopefully!? This said. I might leave a third tier/block, as there’s not that many bits and bobs left over. And one or two of those that are still without a place might be best in tiers one or two (the hammer is quite big/tall, and should go at the back).
On the other hand, an argument for going ahead with tier three is that it’ll create space for batteries (AA and AAA), the small glue dispenser, and the electric pencil sharpener (which I adore!). Hmmm? These are tomorrow’s decisions/projects!
* One solution might be to swap out the current screwdrivers for shorter/smaller handled ones.
Today I wanted to continue work on my tool caddy. But I slept in late. This is a bit of a problem at present; often unable to sleep at night, I’m then exhausted and in need of sleep during the day!
This hat arrived today. Was supposed to be blue!
Once I was up and about, I went to Wright’s Tools, for the missing bits for the HSS metal-drilling set I have, with a view to incorporating that into the caddy. Once I’d got those (and a set of tapered countersink bits), I had a long overdue haircut.
On finally getting home and getting started on the caddy, it was time to begin work on tier two. I needed to find a bit of wood that was suitable. Fortunately I have plenty of scavenged timber lying around, and very soon had what I wanted.
The second tier at close of play today.
One other thing I ought to perhaps note, is that the lumber I’m using for the big blocks, or tiers, is very rough. It has required planing flat. For which I have had to set up and sharpen my main plane. That has been going better than in the past.
The primary plan for today was to incorporate the multi-part HSS drill bit set into this part of the caddy. This involved working out how to accommodate the three mini-caddies. Here I diverged from the way Patrick Sullivan did his ‘instant access tool centre’.
I also committed the cardinal sin of not planning so much as busking it! But so far that’s not proved disastrous. Still… time will tell!
Disassembling the drill set.
I finally knocked off working on this at about 9.45 pm. And now I’m typing this. I could easily have carried on all night, or until this phase was complete.
As relayed above, I decided to buy the missing and/or broken drill bits from the HSS set of metal drilling bits I already have, rather than buy an entirely new set. And then disassemble that unit, retaining the individual drill holders.
Some tabs needed removing or bending.All done, ready to go in situ’.
To make the recesses into which these drill bit holders would go I cut a load of passes on the table saw, snapped off any residual ‘fins’, and chiselled, rasped and sanded the resulting recesses relatively flat. This went ok-ish. But I could’ve been a lot neater and more accurate.
Gluing support blocks into the recesses.
I then glued blocks of varied sizes into the bottoms of the recesses, on top of which each of the three drill holders would sit, with enough of each little red caddy showing to allow easy reading of the bit sizes, that are handily printed there.
‘Mock-up view’, testing fit during glue-up.Lots of stuff given a new home; but plenty of space for more.
Here’s another near identical photo to the one up top, showing the stuff I’ve made homes for in tier two: the HSS drill set (1-13 mm, in 0.5 mm increments); five tapered drills with countersink attachments; an allen key for the former; a countersink bit, and drill-chuck key; two awls (round and square); four (new!) engineers squares, two glue-sticks, etc.
I didn’t cut the slot for the dovetail ‘square’, visible in these pics, as Teresa was on the warpath about me stopping for the night! But I did add a rasp/file, to one of the rear ‘tall-boy’ slots. I also added a small round hole to the top tier, at far right, for the scissors I recently got off Amazon Vine.
They’re actually hairdressing scissors, but they’re great for the workshop as well (oh, and as previously mentioned, I had a haircut, at one of our several local Turkish barbers*).
Amy, Misty and Dan, chez Ellis.
Earlier in the day I collected Teresa from town, after she got off work. And we dropped in on Dan and Amy, for a cuppa and a catch up. Dan has his fourth chemo’ session tomorrow. Apparently, at his most recent meeting with his specialist, they reported that treatment so far has been going exceedingly well. With a better than expected response. That’s great news!
* Daniel, my barber, was (and doubtless still is) Bulgarian. The post haircut massage – scalp, neck, shoulders, arms, etc. – was the best I’ve ever had!
