The Apprentice's Toolbox

On Apr 13, 9:08 pm, "dublin_o" wrote:
I am going to gather up the tools and the list and show my grandson how to
build the box, my grandfather did this for me and I still have the box, but
now it has misc parts in it for my router.
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Good for you!

As a project, it's pretty easy. The secret is that you only have to
lay-out three rows of holes. Once drilled, the three parts are then
used as drill-guides for all of the other holes except for the
handles, hinges & fittings. Once the builder understands the
principle, the work goes very quickly.

The foundation for the tray may be self-bent using a table edge,
clamps and a rubber mallet but the tray is usually used as a means of
introducing the student to the brake. If you use T-zero stock the
partitions you can fudge the bends a bit, eliminating the need for
high precision.

My twin grandsons are to young to build anything yet but I'm going to
save the info on this project for when they get to be about 12 years old
so we can do this together.

Tony

wrote:
On Apr 13, 9:08 pm, "dublin_o" wrote:
I am going to gather up the tools and the list and show my grandson how to
build the box, my grandfather did this for me and I still have the box, but
now it has misc parts in it for my router.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Good for you!

As a project, it's pretty easy. The secret is that you only have to
lay-out three rows of holes. Once drilled, the three parts are then
used as drill-guides for all of the other holes except for the
handles, hinges & fittings. Once the builder understands the
principle, the work goes very quickly.

The foundation for the tray may be self-bent using a table edge,
clamps and a rubber mallet but the tray is usually used as a means of
introducing the student to the brake. If you use T-zero stock the
partitions you can fudge the bends a bit, eliminating the need for
high precision.

On Sun, 13 Apr 2008 23:32:51 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Apr 13, 9:08 pm, "dublin_o" wrote:
I am going to gather up the tools and the list and show my grandson how to
build the box, my grandfather did this for me and I still have the box, but
now it has misc parts in it for my router.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Good for you!

As a project, it's pretty easy. The secret is that you only have to
lay-out three rows of holes. Once drilled, the three parts are then
used as drill-guides for all of the other holes except for the
handles, hinges & fittings.

Once the builder understands the principle, the work goes very
quickly.

veedubber that is the key part.
the kids these days dont seem to have been taught the way we were.
we got taught the core principles and how they were applied.

the kids now seem to be taught an endless passage of superficial
details with little structure and none of the core issues explained.

when we were kids the old man built a duck boat with us. it is a free
plan somewhere on a web site these days. it is a slab sided ply thing
that looks 1950's but is actually a magic little boat to use. it is a
really good design. I conjured up a single seat 80% size version of it
out of one sheet of plywood, calculated the bouyancy as workable, and
built it. the kids saw it almost complete and the nipper (about to
become an airforce pilot) admitted that he had no idea how you would
go about designing the little boat.

the thing that you do masterfully veedubber is write in a manner that
is entertaining and interesting. you need to keep doing this.

what the rest of us need to do is enthrall the kids with what we do,
get them involved hands on, gradually reveal to them how things work
and how people go about designing them. above all we need to instill
in the kids that everything complex is made up of little individual
components that are build one after the other and then assembled into
the more complex thing.

we old farts who understand these things have an important legacy to
pass on to the kids. we have to do this because they arent going to
get the skills any other way.

Stealth Pilot

(for the life of me I couldnt remember the boat's name. google is my
saviour! the design is called Pintail and is available free from
http://www.svensons.com/boat/?p=RowBoats/Pintail
for anyone wanting to build woodworking skills with a view to aircraft
building it would be a good safe start. It's where I started.)

warning: this is a long post and has little to do with airplanes

I lost my Dad on March 20, 2006, rather suddenly after a long illness.
He had worked as an A & P for Petroleum Helicopters for 35 years, most
of them bending wrenches. And of course that meant that if it had an
engine and 4 wheels, we were under it or up to our armpits in it at
least once a month. I can't even count the number of times he was
waiting for me at the bus stop with his usual "Good, ur home... I need
ur help" which I cursed repeatedly since I hadn't even made it to the
door of the house before being pressed into service as a lamp post.
"Shine ur light down in here... and quit wiggling dammit." My Old Man
was something of an S.O.B. It always amazed me how he kept his job,
considering the things that came out of his mouth when we worked on
cars. And it seemed that the older I got, the worse things got between
us. I was never really sure why. But I went off to college and got my
B.A. etc. Big deal to my Old Man.

But then I started to make things. First a small wooden boat about the
size of a kayak... in the living room of my apartment. And then flying
machines cobbled together from bamboo and "viz-queen" and duct tape.
And then they started to fly. My Old Man showed a little interest. And
two years later, I tore apart an overworked minivan and replaced a
rear main oil seal... on a front-wheel-drive. We'd done that one once
before, when I was 14, but that was on a RWD car. The Old Man was
almost impressed. Then I started building the Wright machine. I had
planned to unveil it to my folks in Kitty Hawk and fly it. But that
dream was bigger than I was, and we never made it there. Two months
after that failure, the Old Man, who had had diabetes for years and
still smoked a pack a day was forced onto dyalisis every other day. I
knew what that meant, even then.

But a few weeks after that, I got a call from the folks at the CAF
about thier Houston show. Houston was only about 4 hours from my
folks' house so I asked for comp-passes for them. Pop made it in for
the Saturday show. We spent about 2 hours inspecting the flying
machine and discussing the various parts and systems. I could see that
the kidney failure was really taking a toll on him, but he stayed
through the entire show. In the middle of the afternoon, a man stopped
by and asked if Pop had built the glider. Pop looked up and said
"no... my son built it." The man said, "Wow, its really nice" and Pop
said, "yea, it really is." And to me, that one moment made all the
difference.

A few days after Pop passed, we got the coriner's report. The results
set me back. The official cause of death was listed as accute
congestive heart failure, as a result of kidney failure, as a result
of diabetes, as a result of agent orange poisioning. Pop had be
drafted in 1967. He went to Vietnam, served in the 2nd Bat., 94th
Artillery at Camp JJ Carroll, came home, and said almost nothing about
it. Except once or twice that he'd shelled Khe Sanh or Hue or Cong
Thien. He had worked steadily as an A & P for 35 years without saying
much about it.

After Pop passed, I learned why he didn't talk about the war, and how
he'd kept his job. Pop was at Camp Carroll during the worst of the Tet
offensive, and his battle record read like a list of newspaper
headlines. Pop was also one of the most respected (maybe not well-
liked, but respected) mechanics in his company, as I learned from
stories told about him. And when we burried him, I sent him off the
way he had lived: with a pack of smokes, my Zippo, and his 9/16" box-
end wrench, without saying much about it. I kept his other tools...
and his toolboxes, for myself. Like he wanted it. And now, two years
later, what I have left are a few memories, a halfa' life's worth of
skills and experience, and that toolbox.

Scott David Frey
"some people call me Harry"
Wright Brothers Enterprises