Warm at last...

...but for how long?


Nice that the last week has brought in some warm weather, but it might not last long as a cold snap maybe on its way in.


I hope it won't be as cold as it was last month. Cold weather does cause problems in woodwork. As does hot weather. Why? Glue.


There is a working range of temperature for glue. Outside the range and it won't cure correctly, and cause a weak join.


The lower limit for the glue I use is about 8c.  Now, I don't work in a workshop that is that cold, as we have a big industrial heater. But the area where the veneer press is unheated, and during the last cold snap, it was hovering around 8c. No good for veneering then.


Now the project I am working on is a cabinet that has 12 drawers, and will be used for storing jewellery. I was starting the project when the cold snap hit. And yes, the first thing I needed to to was veneering. Damn. I didn't want to risk it as not only does the air temperature needs to be above 8c, but everything involved in the process (materials, glue, veneer press) must also be above this limit.


I started the project and then had to put it on hold till the cold weather passed!


So rather than twiddle my thumbs, I decided to make a few boxes, as all the work for them could be done in the nice warm heated area of the workshop.


Here are some pictures of the three boxes I made. They are similar to ones I have made and sold in the past. These have different handles and little feet.

These boxes are actually for sale on a website called 'Seek & Adore'. Here are my pages on the site where you can see other items I have on sale.

Repeat....repeat....repeat....again

So all that batch work I was talking about in my last post (which was a while back)...


...here is the 'Airfix kit of parts' I first made.  It took a while as there were 416 individual pieces.

Looking at the picture, it is not clear if I was making a Lancaster or a Spitfire. Neither. The answer is trays with little sub divisions....like this finished one.

I was actually making a batch of 30! 

So making a big batch like that does show that some tasks are quicker, for example when wood is machined in bulk. But some tasks take just as long, for example when a tray is glued up (there is a slight speed gain, as after making about five trays, the best order and method is found).


So there you go.


Time and motion studies.


Yawn.

Repeat....repeat....repeat....

Here is an interesting thing. If you make lots of an object in one go, how much quicker overall is it compared to just making one.

Batch work, that is what it is.

I am making thirty identical objects at the moment. They are trays, about 330mm square, and each tray has eight little compartments. So by making a batch, certain ‘set up times’ will be split across the thirty.  Let me give you an example, not connected to what I am currently making, but still a good example.

Suppose I need to shape a piece of wood that will be the back leg of a chair. Look at a dinning chair you have at home.  It will probably be curved somewhere so the back leans from the seat.  You get the idea.  Now I need to make a jig or two that holds the wood while it is being shaped. It might take two hours to make these two jigs, but to actually use them to shape the wood may only take a couple of minutes. If I were making just the one chair, then in total, it has taken two hours four minutes (two hours for the jig, and two legs at 2 minutes each) to shape the two back legs, or 62 minutes each. If I was making a batch of ten chairs, then it would equate to two hours forty minutes (two hours to make the jig, and twenty legs at 2 minutes each), or 8 minutes per leg.  You can see the time saving.

It is not all time savings though. Some tasks don’t save time no matter how many you do, as there is no set up time. For example, when you hand sand the sharp edge off a piece of wood and give it a little curve. This can only be done at a certain speed, no matter how many you do. Maybe if you do loads, you get slower as your arm starts to ache!

Anyway, I am keeping times of each task I perform in making the trays to see where the time savings are.

 It will make interesting analysis.

To some people.

It's Showtime!

Isn't that a quote from a film too?  Am I all filmed out?

No....actually, it is showtime.

I am at the East London Design Show that starts tomorrow 1st December, and runs till Sunday. It is my third years doing it now.

Come along if you happen to be in town and in Shoreditch to be precise.

Here's Jonny..........

......you know he never actually said that in the book.

So I have been told, it was a bit of improvisation during filming.

Doing it backwards

A few years ago when I worked for NatWest (now part of RBS), I was on a project team that was called 'Re-engineering' for about two years.

It was a very unusual sort of project for a Bank to have, as it was an R&D project that was making programming tools that could be used to analyse code, with the aim to re-engineer or reverse engineer it.

Lots of old code has been hacked over the years and is lacking in any serious documentation, causes all sort of problems when changes have to be made. Our tools would be able to help.

Another reason that this project came about was because of the approaching year 2000, and all the problems that were promised would happen when the date flipped from 1999 to 2000. So the media said, aircraft would fall from the sky, computer equipment wouldn't work, video recorders would spit the tapes out, and nuclear power stations would go into meltdown. The media hype was so good, that one of my friends asked me if his washing machine would still work in the year 2000. I did quiz him to see if he knew why the washing machine needed to know what time it was before doing the washing, and he couldn't think of any. So I told him it was safe to assume it would still work.

On the Re-engineering team there were some pretty smart people who had been working in the field of code and language analysis for many years. They had great knowledge of the structure of language, how to analyse code and producing a model onto which various forms of data manipulation could be applied. I was most lucky to work with them.

We had two types of manipulation that could be applied, static and dynamic analysis.

The static analysis was simply looking at the code itself and producing a model from it. You could then for example track how data was moved through the program, passed from field to field.

Dynamic analysis built on top of the static analysis as it added information from an actual run of the program. Then you could see the logical paths of execution in the program. This information added much more depth to the analysis.

They were very interesting tools. They were used in some Bank projects in the UK and in South Africa. Some of the tools were even sold to third party companies. I believe IBM got a pretty neat bit of code that run on the mainframe for next to nothing.

So what has this all to do with woodwork?

Well, about a year and half or so ago I was making some presentation Champagne boxes. Once these were complete, I made another using a different technique.  Now, a year and a half later I am making some more, but I can't remember that different technique I used. I still have the prototype in the workshop, and I have reverse engineered it and produced a set of diagrams, and the new batch has been started.

So there is the connection. No documentation

Note to self

Note to self: "Don't left heavy objects when you have a bad back."


Second note to self: "Should have written the previous note at the beginning of the year."