Gye Greene's Thoughts

Gye Greene's Thoughts (w/ apologies to The Smithereens and their similarly-titled album!)

Friday, December 23, 2005

Woodworking workbench thought

Continuing to work on the baby gate for the top of my parents' stairs. Short-term, I've clamped a sheet of chipboard across the top. Un-elegant, but it seems to work. Comes up to the kidlets' armpits.

The biggest danger of baby gates is that the adult get lazy and step over them, rather than opening them. Thus, the adults trip and fall on their face, and/or down the stairs. Thus, I've designed the baby gate that my brother and I are building to be as easy to open and shut as possible.

Building it from available wood scraps, and with limited tools, to there are a **lot** of small and medium-sized pieces getting connected. Worked on it for part of this evening: have the bottom, and one side, done. Need to make the other side, and the gate itself (which will just be a single piece of plywood, I think). Brother went home to Seattle, so today's progress was just by me.

At my brother's suggestion, dry-assembling as I go with screws. Will do the final sanding and glueing once I'm sure the entire project fits. Fitting the pieces to the whole (and to the stairway), as the house isn't quite square or true.

I'm doing most of the actual working on the baby gate downstairs in the garage, with a number of overturned cardboard boxes to serve as tool- and parts-resting surfaces. More ergonomic than reaching down to the floor (i.e. keeping everything on the floor), and resting things on the bottoms of the boxes keeps things more ''clustered'', thus organized.

Been ''hanging'' the screwdrivers, the awl (for starting drill holes), and the eggbeater drill along the long slot along the center of Dad's folding sawhorse. The groove/slot along the length of that sawhorse keeps them from rolling onto the floor, and they're at a good working height for grabbing.

Some woodworking workbenches have a ''tool tray'' along the back -- usually about 4'' deep, 8'' wide, and the length of the workbench. Don't think i'll build one in (some people think they get messy, and just collect sawdust and shavings), but I **do** think I'll make some sort of ''tool groove'' that runs the length: something deep enough for a screwdriver or chisel handle, such that if I'm sliding around a piece, it'll pass over the handles of the tools I'm keeping in the groove. Would keep the desired size of tools for the project close by (as opposed to back in the rack, confusingly among the others), and keep them from rolling onto the floor. But not so big as to invite clutter.


--GG

2 Comments:

At January 05, 2006 12:14 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

This relates to your comment elsewhere about Paul Tutmark in Seattle. He had a little 5 man Hawaiian combo. I played in his band This is a write up I am doing for Northwest Rock and Roll. Sort of a place for the history of local music.
Paul Tutmark had a music studio at 806 Pine above a tavern, He also maufactured the electric guitar. He invented the electric guitar
This I can not confirm. We played a fewplaces but never really got started because when we started getting gigs the Musician Union forced us to join for $50 each. None of us except Paul had the $50 dollars. He helped us financancially to the our suit jackets we wore. But $50.00 was a little steep for him to fianance.
why no one suggested he pay for us and we then pay him back later out of our earnings I don't know but this didn't happen.

One time back stage at the Olympic hotel Paul almost got into a fist fight with long time Secretary of State Johnny Cherberg who was also a musician because
Cherberg owend him one dollar. Things were tight in those days.

In the alley below the studio Paul had a parking space. Being close to the tavern clients tended to ignore the warning sign not to park there, One time after practice we came down and some one had parked in his space. This made Paul fly into a rage and he picked up a good size rock and started beating it on the hood of the car. About this time the owner of the car came out terrified about the damage being done to his car. Paul stopped long enough to let the guy take off without further incident.

When I was overseas in WW2 Paul divorced his wife and married a musician Wee Bonnie Baker. She played and sang Western and Hill Billy music I lost contact with Paul after the war but he reamained in music for a few years before he died

 
At January 05, 2006 1:33 PM, Blogger Gye Greene said...

re: The guy who invented the elctric bass, right?

Good info! Thx! :)

--GG

 

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