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Secret Santa gift for a whiskey group.

The milling machine has been busy today. Width is same (to the last decimal) as Kevin’s original DIY T2 board but only half the length. Transformers for 4 direct heated triodes (each). Need a hair cut.

Organic chemistry FTMFW!

Obviously.

Looks good. Deadly, but good.

Ended up throwing the scrap together for glue up last night and then ran it through the planer this morning. Going to be a 30lb cheese tray I think.

Just six years later than Colin, I have now made this cheese buldak recipe twice and love it.

Best ep of the season! Lots of language to mull over...some great lines in there...I should re-watch too.

I have to admit, while I have had lincoln logs in the past, I have no fucking idea how to make the blocks back into a log.

Spent most of the day going through scraps trying to find something flat enough to make into a cutting board. Ended up with a Wenge/Teak plan but not sure if I need something brighter in there for pop. Also gave up on the cast iron looking paint technique and put together the cabinet under the saw. Need to buff out the wax but as about as close to cast iron as I could figure out. The leveling feet ended up being boring so when I have access to a welder in Texas I am going to weld some bolts onto some blade wrenches and throw those on there.

How about that season finale? Just watched a second time in 24 hours.

Electric Light Orchestra – Face the Music I heard some hints of where Goldfrapp got their sound...

got the second batch of transformers from SumR. Now the filament voltages are 14% too high, but transformers run cool. 7.3448 volts on the 6.3v line (zoom in) in other news the 300v regulated power supply with the appropriate fixes works great.

Today's fun was working on the next two retirement plaques for our two longest-tenured employees who are both retiring at the end of the month, one of whom just happens to be my boss (John). They have 86 years of federal service between them. Anyway, I'd been working on a concept for him for a while, wanting to make the plaque something that would be unlike anything else that someone would receive. When Jackie, our Community Planning Liaison Officer, I seized an opportunity to talk to a friend who is the Director at the Naval History and Heritage Command in Boston, MA. For those that don't know, that's the group that is responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of the USS Constitution. So last week I took a few hours off one morning and drove down to Charlestown to pick up some raw materials that they were kind enough to give me. The hardest part of the day was spent machining copper that was taken off of the hull of Constitution during her overhaul in 2015. I decided to use a sheet that had significant patina and try to preserve that by engraving off a small portion to reveal the name of the person that the plaque will be for. I used a diamond tipped drag bit, I'm pretty happy with the results. My mill is unexpectedly struggling when trying to plunge into soft metal, I don't know if I've got the plunge set too fast or if it's an issue with my tooling, regardless it was way more of a hassle than it should be. Next up was using a piece of ash that was taken off of the ship recently. The maintenance detachment actually is pretty much working on the ship year round removing rotten wood and replacing it with new. Most of the ship is white oak, still grown in a specific forest in Indiana, but this piece of ash was pretty cool in that it had finish on two surfaces and had pegs that had been used to join it to other, adjacent pieces. Overall w/ one coat of finish Edge detail, w/ original finish. The top recess will get a command coin in it and the bottom pedestal will support the name tag. I've made two matching plaques which is appropriate since they are holding the retirement party together on Thursday and I figured it'd be weird if I made one substantially different than the other. There's not much left to do on these aside from apply a bunch of coats of finish. The end grain in particular is obscenely thirsty. I'll try to post finished pictures but I tend to be terrible about taking pictures of projects when they are done.

Business side of the cutting board. Figure it will have a long life serving charcuterie to Marin’s finest.

Steve and I got the miter station cabinets mostly built today. Essentially the entire back wall will be work space and storage in addition to the miter station. We still have to add a ¾ plywood top, two shelves on the right hand side for wood storage, and I am still deciding about the cabinet space to the left side of the saw. And the Kapex is actually on a temporary shelf because I didn't have enough ¾ ply and we wanted a photo op. When complete, we are going to do a face frame and drawer fronts in maple, I think. We have decided that the only miter fence needed is the Kapex fence, which maximizes the work surfaces on either side of the saw. I have ordered a Woodpeckers Stealth track system that will be inset flush into the top on both sides of the saw with flip up stops and track to mount clamps and such. It should make for happy chop sawing.

The 45 of “The Last Train to Clarksville” was a 10-year-old me’s first physical recording. 😪

I was dumbfounded to see this photo from RMAF, showing off the $15K combo of Woo 234 monoblocks, which is able to use 2A3, 45, or 300B with both speaker and headphone outputs. The Abyss planar 'phones at $5500 costs a little more than Stax SR009 even. Anybody tried either product? woo234 by drjlo2, on Flickr

lovely stuff...

RIP Anne Rice....read some of her earlier books and enjoyed. Couldn't get into as much later, but she basically kicked off a major genre of Romance-Horror. She was also a fan of one of my favorite musicians, Mary Fahl, and chose a song of Mary's to use in one of her Audiobooks. Also RIP to Al Unser....used to watch racing more in the 70's and he (and his whole family) were among the best!