Loen.Design

A really great podcast: Off Hours

05.03.2018 by rich // Leave a Comment

A good friend of mine, Chris Manning, creates an excellent podcast called Off Hours.

Chris and his podcast partner Jon Edwards, release new episodes regularly, covering watch making, design, 3D printing, jewelry design and creation, along with interesting stories of their world travels. They can even make 10 minutes of talking about erasers interesting!

The show is slickly produced and edited, and is a delight to listen to.

I particularly like the extensive show notes, which make it easy to follow up on all the things they talk about in each episode.

Highly recommended.

On the way to Makers Central in Birmingham!

05.03.2018 by rich // 1 Comment

The bags are packed, and we’re ready to go! Chris Manning and I are heading to Birmingham for Makers Central with the puck carving machine. Our thanks to Vectric who have been a fantastic help to us, even buying 250 pucks for us to carve at the show! I use Vectric’s Aspire software on just about every project in the shop.

It has been interesting figuring out how to pack an entire CNC machine into a suitcase or two! No room left for things like clothes.

I also had to contend with the 240V power in England. Luckily, all the power supplies that I used in the mill are 110/240V. I tested by making a batch of pucks here, with the machine plugged into a 240V outlet – and I found the ONE switch that I need to flip on one of the power supplies to make it work at the higher voltage. Luckily, just a fuse blew, and it was an easy fix.

Our flight leaves late tonight, getting into London at 5:30am. Then we make our way to Birmingham by train. We are scheduled set up our booth at 5pm Friday. We probably should have scheduled an earlier departure…

It’s going to be a long day on Friday, and a long weekend!

But, it will be great to meet some cool people like Jimmy Diresta, April Wilkerson, Bob from I Like To Make Stufff, and Laura Kampf. I’ve made pucks for most of the big Youtube stars that will be at the show.

We’ll be posting lots of photos on my shiny new Instagram while we are at the show.

A Walnut Slab table – with 20 legs!

05.03.2018 by rich // Leave a Comment

My company has a cool tradition where every employee gets a pair of red Converse All-Stars when they start. We also give a pair to every customer!

And, we needed a coffee table for a small meeting room at our office.

This was the result!

I made two videos about the construction of this table. The first shows the whole process of building the table. The second shows how I used Vectric Aspire to make 20 soles to hold the shoes on the legs of the table.

The walnut slab started out like this – roughly finished at the KJP Select Hardwoods shop. I had to sand it to a nice smooth 320 grit finish, and remove all the debris and loose bits from the unfinished edges of the slab.

I used Vectric Aspire to drill the holes for the legs. The dowels were all slightly different in size, so I had to make 5 different hole sizes to accommodate the differences.

I finished the top with Rubio Monocoat, which is a two-part oil finish. It’s very easy to use – you mix the two parts, then apply the finish, and wipe it off after 5 minutes. There is no point in doing more coats, or letting the finish sit longer. The finish drys in 24 hours, and is completely sealed after a week. The finish is designed for use on floors as well, so it holds up well on a table.

Here are some more views of the process and the finished table.

See me at Makers Central!