To Drive the Chill Away... II

My first attempt, Sweep 1.0 is chronicled here. One of the things you'll notice, if you read that article is the section about "things I'd do differently, if I were doing this again."   We call that 'learning.'

Sweeping

This time I've put more effort into preparing my supports, and have included an overhead piece that will support a curved segment of fiberglass/vinyl board. Having ceiling tiles ruin my "looking up the gun barrel" stock has really annoyed me. It'll take a bit of extra paint and a lot of extra work but it'll be worth it.

(larger)

Here you can see the overhead panel(s) installed. Rather than use  4x8 sheet of 1/2" plywood for the overhead, I used 3 4x4 sheets - when you're doing something like this all by yourself, holding a huge sheet of plywood overhead while driving screws into it: not fun. As it was, I had to sit down and do some thinking before I figured out how to mount them. What I did was clamped a U-channel of aluminum in the correct spot to define the edge of where the panels lined up. Then I slid one edge of the panel into the U-channel and supported it while I screwed it into place. When I was done, I removed the U-channel and not only did I not bust my own ass, everything lined up perfectly.

As I grow older, I learn that I solve problems by thinking more and charging into them a bit more slowly. When I was 20 I'd have balanced a 4x8 foot sheet of 1/2" plywood on my fingertips and just blasted it up there. But not only can I no longer do that kind of thing, I find I no longer want to.

(larger)


When I laid out the subfloor for the top-boards, I cut a few of the 4x8s lengthwise so I could arrange them where the edges of the upper boards won't align with the subfloor. That way I can put lots of foaming urethane glue in the cracks and there won't be anywhere for it to leak to except to foam up and seal the gaps. I also put a couple of tubes of silicone caulk on the floor under the subfloor to help level the boards and to stabilize them so that a model jumping around won't make the subfloor flex and cause cracks in the top-boards.

Installing the upright 4x8 sheets of 1/2" plywood is something you'd expect to be hard, but it was actually very very easy. All I did was clamp my U-channel along the bottom, level it with a bubble level and lots of measuring, and then stood each piece of plywood up in the channel then screwed them down to the 2x4s (which are bolted into the concrete wall with expansion screws). It took 20 minutes to set that up, and 4 minutes to do it.

One of the things I always find fascinating about projects is the relationship between execution and preparation. For example, making a leather hat: 95% preparation, patterning, cutting, finishing, dyeing - and 5% sewing and it's done. Or making a knife: 5% preparation ("where did I put my ebony?") and 95% shaping and polishing and shaping and finishing the handle. Making the sweep is about 50% preparation and 50% slogging through smearing glue and aligning things.

And Goodbye PelicanH

I got an email from Michael Helms the other night, sounding disgusted and frustrated with Deviantart. I'm generally sympathetic but I'm also suspicious when I see what appears to be a "generation gap" forming between myself and "kids these days" -- it seems like the inevitable endgame there is to be a crotchety old coot waving my cane at kids and screaming "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

The general level of cluelessness on Deviantart seems to match that of other social media sites: in other words, it's full of a wide mix of random people that are pretty typical of their time and place. The difference, if you will, on the internet, is that anonymity encourages some people to say things that they'd never say to another person's face for fear of retaliation. I know Michael was constantly seething at the idiotic and insulting comments that complete strangers make about models - and it bothers me, too - but I figure that handing out the occasional copyright-related spanking or lesson in courtesy is part of the cost of growing older and helping maintain some of society's customs. For example, I remember when I was a kid, there wasn't any WAY that you could insult or be rude to another kid by email. You had to walk over, look them in the face, and call them "fatso" or "skinny" and I learned an important lesson about how that can work out from Andre Locke who gave me a really impressive black eye (he was as surprised as I was!) because of a disagreement about how language should be used. Thank you, Andre, wherever you are - I hope life has been great to you! I also remember Phil, one of the kids who was part of our small gamer-group, who was - awfully big. One day one of the other kids called Phil "fasto" and discovered that you have to have really really strong legs to carry around 300lbs of self, when Phil kicked him halfway across the study hall. "Unsolicited critique" meant "face to face" critique in those days and I am sure that attitudes like Michael's and mine will die out in another generation or so, to be replaced by rude little twerps grown up into rude sociopathic adults who hide behind "aspergers'" attitudes. I hope you all enjoy that world - I'm glad I won't be around to live in it. In fact, as I get older and more curmudgeonly I wish we could bring back duelling. Knowing you could be called to account for your words might have had something to do with the elaborate courtesy of bygone days.*

One of the things Michael said was that he had 52,000 followers (wow! holy moley!) and that they had no value to him at all; they didn't bring him any money and the heartache of dealing with image-rips and nasty comments was higher than the value of having a lot of watchers. My suggestion was that rather than closing his account he should ask all his followers to donate a dollar to a paypal account. I was kidding, mostly - I've found that if you put a cash value on yourself you're often going to be shocked by how little other people actually value you. That's why I've been continuing with offering some of my ambrotypes on Ebay - it's nice when they go for a reasonable price but I got to see images I thought were really good fetch a whopping $5. Ouch. "Why bother?"   Because: what's the alternative?


mjr.


(* Though I know that was merely another form of social control, generally applied so that the powerful protected eachother from their own kind, but were free to rain metaphorical - and real - shit down on the lower classes with impunity.)