Week One Of Six (A Shaker Style Wall Cabinet)

I have enrolled in a wood working class at The NCSU Craft Center Woodworking Shop.

The shop has many tools (Here are the ones I used today):

The Joiner

The Planer

The Radial Arm Saw

The Miter Saw

The Table Saw (It has "Saw-Stop" technology - Which will stop/crash the blade within two teeth of movement when it detects flesh)

A built in saw-dust vacuum (with floor vents you can open with your foot and sweep in saw dust that escapes the vacuum system)

I am working on a solid cherry shaker-style wall cabinet with a two panel door and movable interior shelves.

It will be put together with absolutely no bits of iron at all (except for the hinges and the little pins you stick in the holes in the inside to adjust the shelves) --- and I'm working on how to do the hinges without iron.

The cabinet box (sides and top) are joined together with a tongue and groove system. The back is set in a 'rabbit-joint'. The door will be joined together with mortise and tenon joints. The raised panel will be floated in the two areas of the door.

Today we:

[1] Cut the raw board into four pieces, two long and two short using the radial saw and the miter saw that the instructor preset to length.

[2] We then joined and planed the four boards. My boards came out 5/8 of an inch thick. One of the long sides does have a knot in it but it actually looks pretty good (I like it).

[3] Identified the 'good-side'/'good-edge' and joined the 'good-edge'.

[4] We then ripped the four boards to width (plus 1/16 inch) using the table saw to waste the bad-edge.

[5] We then joined the table-saw-cut-edge to get the width's 'just-so'. At this very point we had four absolutely beautiful cherry boards.

[6] We then cut the 'rabbits'. This was done by doing a face-to-the-fence cut on the table saw followed by flipping the board and doing a face-down-cut using the same saw height/width to cut out a very nice 1/4 inch rabbit. This rabbit will receive the back of the cabinet.

[7] We then used the radial arm saw to cut one end of each of the long boards (sides) square then pushed it down to the 'stop' and cut it to length. We repeated the same maneuver with the miter saw on the short boards. The instructor again set the stops for us.

[8] I'll post some pictures when I get them and post another whole item each week giving updates on how it goes.

The Year 2011

I found the following in the comment section of the comic strip referenced below.

This year has at least 4 unusual dates 1/1/11, 1/11/11, 11/1/11 and 11/11/11.
So try this:
Take the LAST 2 digits of the year you were born and add the age you'll be this year.
And the answer you get is ...

How about that?

And when you do a little analysis it takes some of the 'wonder' out of it.

I saw the above computation as a comment to today's comic strip at "http://spikedmath.com/376.html".

My comment about this particular comic is:

Some time ago, I started working through the problems (I'm up to around problem 20, of over 300) at the web site "http://www.projecteuler.net/".

I read each problem as they come out, and every now and again write down a few thoughts. And usually I find that the problems and the Spiked Math comic above are about the same.

So True!

Here is the cartoon: http://xkcd.com/844/ and the best part of the cartoon is reading where the word HURD came from (see alt-text of the cartoon) the see the Wikipedia article on HURD: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Hurd.

Really Good!

Happy New Year? (A Few Minutes or A Day or 12 hours)

Happy New Year?

I was listening to the December 22nd SKU podcast (SKU = Skeptics Guide to the Universe) and afterward found myself wandering around the Internet trying to see just what the difference between a Sidereal Year and a Tropical Year is.

Today's SpikedMath.COM comic: http://spikedmath.com/362.html addresses this difference.

Here is an explanation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year#Sidereal.2C_tropical.2C_and_anomalistic_years.

This explanation not only covers the Solar Year and the Sidereal Year but also the Anomalistic Year (my favorite).

And to get a really nice feel for what time it is visit this site:

http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/sidereal.html

The most satisfying answer is like the comic strip (a few minutes) 4 minutes 41.2324 seconds to be exact :o)