Mercy, mercy, merci... the past week seemed to fly by. Can I recall everything I've done? Probably not. I did get one major accomplishment taken care of...WOOD. I went and picked through 1000 board feet of hickory. It was a fresh load and I got about 220 board feet out of that haul. All of it is very straight grain, little to no knots and VERY heavy. I got a workout. My calculations.... about 1000 sticks.

I also pitch paired sticks, made some sleeves, fixed some tooling, worked on the compressor, picked up some dust collection fittings along with some other important tasks that I know I'm forgetting. Life is very busy these days and the time is flying. An old saying my Dad used to say "time stands still for no one." Wisdom beyond words.

Tuesday is order togetherness day. If you are expecting something from LA Backbeat, it will be getting ready to go out with the other orders on Wednesday morning. THANKS goes out to everyone that is being patient and supportive in this one man show.

If you haven't already, get some sticks! Every sale helps tremendously and is greatly appreciated.

'til later.... Bon Temps!!

As you may have seen in my previous post, there is some stock in house. This past Friday I trimmed, shaped, sanded and sorted 500+ pieces of product. 2B, 5B, 5Bx, 5A, 5Ax and 7A are available in barrel tip. All sticks will be weight and pitch matched. All are mostly hickory and there are some Maple and my R&D Pecan. I'm getting some good reviews on the pecan. If you're interested, get in touch. All hickory is $5 per pair and the Maple and Pecan are $6 per pair plus shipping. You can get yours through emailing me, facebook me or calling me. All orders are prepaid via Cash, check, money order or PayPal before they will ship. They can also be picked up local in Lafayette. The shop # three three seven 258-6427

I've also been working hard on a couple other tools in the shop and also acquired a 60 gallon air compressor. I've been working on finishing the large band saw I bought several months ago. It is proving to be a longer than anticipated project. The bulk of it is now ready for paint.

That's my entry for today. I'm going to try to be more diligent about posting more frequently even if the posts aren't very long. I hope everyone has a beautiful day and I'm off to run errands.

'til later

Since my last blog entry, there have been some developments. I managed to correct the issue with the traveling steady rest on the lathe. Turns out it was something I thought I was fixing was the definite culprit. I undid what I "fixed," after doing a lot of troubleshooting, and all is working fine. I also fabricated a chip nozzle for the back knife chip collection that works amazingly well. It is a traveling chip collector that rides on the back of the carriage to pull the chips from the back knife as they are being cutoff the turning. This modification will help keep the chips off the floor and make cleaner turnings preventing tear out when running at high carriage speeds.

I'm now running the spindle speed at 4400 rpm and the lathe is cutting very clean turnings. Keeping the cutting tools very sharp helps tremendously and I've become fairly proficient at sharpening in a short amount of time. It generally takes me about 30 minutes to sharpen everything. I've also learned quite a bit on "dialing in" the turning dimensions too. I'm realizing a little bit goes a long way.

Another modification I made to the lathe is for sanding. For a while now, I've incorporated a piece of sand paper fixed to the back knife to blend the taper and shaft cuts. This is working very well and with a few more mods will be even better. Over the weekend I experimented with a technique to sand the bulk of the shaft and I was extremely satisfied with the results. Again, with a few more modifications I should be able to completely sand the entire shaft of the stick before it comes off the lathe.

There were also developments in speeding up the lathe. I found that the carriage return speed was becoming incrementally slower and it seemed like something was "sticking" somewhere. I used a little bit of teflon grease on the carriage way and it started to fly. I am noticing that the carriage bushings are becoming worn and will need replacement soon. I was told I could use nylon to replace the bronze bushings. After using the teflon grease, I believe I will replace the bushings with a teflon material...when that time comes. That will be a major undertaking and the lathe will be down for a week or so when that happens. That will be planned maintenance.

I also started working on a prototype bit for acorn tips. It is coming along nicely and I cut a couple dozen trials yesterday. I had it going pretty good until I ground just a little too much from the bit and lost my nice shape. It is fixable with a little more work on the grinder. The research and development is coming along on the actual tip "chucker/shaper" as well. I will definitely go through a couple prototypes getting to a fully functional design. All for the sake of progress.

I'm going to get going to the shop and "play" some more. In the meantime check out the video below. It shows the new speed of the lathe. If I calculate correctly, it's turning a piece every 15-20 seconds.
'til later...

It seems there is always something that needs to be repaired or serviced on older machines. I've been working diligently to make more stock since late last week. I've had tremendous success with increasing the spindle speed and running very sharp knives. Increasing the spindle speed creates a real clean and smooth turning and running the sharp knives helps tremendously.

Unfortunately, I have been plagued with an intermittent issue with the steady rest not disengaging. That definitely throws a wrench into the mix when trying to run in auto mode. There is a lot of stopping and starting. I will have to look into it more tomorrow. It seems that either the pneumatic control valve may have to be rebuilt or there is a wiring issue to the control valve.

It's been a long day. I was at the shop nearly 12 hours. I'm taking off all my hats and going to bed so I can be fresh in the morning to leap this new hurdle.

'til later

Well, today is Ash Wednesday... the day all the revelers from the long weekend rise up out of the ashes into Lent. Not really, but it's a nice way to think about it. Here in South Louisiana we've just finished the Mardi Gras carnival season. Lafayette has one of the largest celebrations under New Orleans. Lundi Gras and Mardi Gras were not real big this year due to record low temperatures, 30 degrees until noon, and freezing rain on Fat Tuesday. It literally put a damper on the party. We haven't seen it that cold for Mardi Gras since 1986, AND Mardi Gras was later this year. The carnival made it difficult to get to the shop over the course of the 5 day weekend. The parades cut of the streets that I would travel to get there. I did play many gigs over the weekend and that was fun.

Early last week at LA Backbeat, I sent out orders for trials of prototype sticks. The reviews are coming back very positive. Feel, balance, playability came back good. Now it's time to work more n the aesthetics along with more tip design.

I ordered some components to do some fabrication on a tool for tips last week. They came in Tuesday and I went in today and spent 5 hours fabricating a tool to shape the ends. I thought I could use a hollowed out grinding stone in the router with some water to keep the hickory from burning. It worked, unfortunately it did not work that good. The hickory grinding made a horrible squeal like stepping on a cat's tail and took too long. Oh well, back to the drawing board. Looks like I'll be designing a tip chucker and having it machined.

Last week also included a couple trips to the hardwood distributor. That was a challenge. They had not received any new hickory since I went through it the last time. I picked through a few hundred board feet to find about 80bf of fairly usable material. I spoke with the manager about my needs and he said he would get another pallet for me. They are finally getting to know me and what I am doing. I also picked up some very straight grain hard maple and some extremely nice pecan. I've been experimenting with pecan, turned several pair, and have received good reviews from the few drummers I've let try them. The drummers like the feel and the weight is a little less than hickory. The only thing I'm find is that the density of the wood varies tremendously in a single board. Hickory is much consistent throughout a board. I will continue to turn hickory even though supply is low on the south coast.

Sometime during last week I chopped and ripped all the boards into squares. It didn't take me that long. I'm getting very fast at chopping with the jig and developing a routine for ripping rather quickly while still being very safe. There is a little over 420 pieces of hickory, about 100 pieces each of maple and pecan. That's enough for about a run on sharp tooling.

I spent about two hours this afternoon sharpening the short straight knife and the tip/taper piece I've been using, along with cleaning up the long knife that had some waves in the straight and some imperfections from machine shop sharpening. That took the longest to do. I'm using all hand hones and had to take my time so not to take to much off in any one area. I also reground a gouge and sharpened the roughing knife and gouge. I received the last of the stones early this week too. All the tooling is VERY sharp now and ready for turning. I plan on turning Friday morning so I can put in a full run on the sharpened tooling. I've found that the tooling doesn't work well if used for short runs over a few days. My plan is to turn long runs until I need to sharpen, minimizing setup time for stick sizes and build stock that way too. It's all about time.

There will be more R&D of a tip shaper/chucker, a call into the wood distro to check on the hickory status and more work on the website and some bookkeeping POS work... all along with turning more sticks.

Wanted to make an update... it's been a while... I misplaced my hat.

Frank