We then set out toward Ashburnham Mass. where Maynard machine and tool is located. This was my primary objective for the day. The men at Maynard Machine, Ray and Ernie, operate the machine shop that has made literally thousands of knives, gouges and back knives for Goodspeed FH lathes and others. This machine shop has been around for a LONG time. John Witt has used them to make and fabricate many components for his machines for many years. This was going to be a huge knowledge session.

we arrived and headed up the stairs of this unassuming machine shop. It is a two story building that houses nearly all the machines on the second floor. Walking up the stairs and into the room, there were all these old glorious machine tools. I wish I had taken more pics but I was just in amazement. We went into Ray's office and Jeff caught up a bit then I proceeded to tell Ray what I want to do....explore options. Well, it's going to take a bit of cash infusion to get what I would like for the Goodspeed. These knives aren't cheap and they are all hand ground to sharpness. We went and talked to Ernie and he helped me understand what is entailed with a more hands on approach. Ernie seems to be "the man" when it comes to these components.

He explained all the little details that go into making this tooling as well as how it will perform based on the different options I presented. There is a low price point and a high price point and for the abilities the high priced option may be the way to go. I really want to be able to offer drumsticks with some different options. My plan would be to offer 2 different shaft lengths, 3 different tapers and a variety of tips(all in wood at this time.) The major challenge is making these components work together and aligning them on the "knife bar." With this option, there will be some sanding to done to remove some artifacts that will be left on the sticks.

Ernie took the time to talk to us about a different roughing gouge that can be used to cut a nice edge behind the tip. Needless to say, I ordered one of those today. It was definitely worth it. Ernie even showed us how he grinds/sharpens the back knife on a grinder and also a specialized grinder for delicate areas and also sharpening gouges and roughing knives. He even offered, when I purchase the Back knives, for me to return and he would show me how to sharpen hem with the grinder. It is a must to know how to do this as the tooling needs to be sharpened regularly/daily depending on use. I will definitely be back, after the snow season.

While I was this close, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to witness the Goodspeed Machine Co. complex. There is no more production here and there hasn't been any manufacturing since the 1990's from what I'm told. It is a massive complex, housing over 800 employees at one time that dates back to the 1850's. It is the physical representation of industrial revolution in America. There are many buildings in disrepair and what appears to be an old foundry on site. There is a dam in a river that creates a pond for cooling water. This is such an amazing company. I am enthralled with this companies machine influence on the wood products industry on this country for over 150 years and the legacy it has left behind. I am going to get to meet with John Witt for lunch on Wednesday before I leave. He is the last man at Goodspeed and I hope to learn much more from him. He has already shared a wealth of information with me over the past several months.

Jeff led me over to the hickory rack and he proceeded to show me the differences in weight, grain and color that all go into a good quality drumstick. I am always amazed at Jeff's consummate knowledge of drumstick making. It is a real art form.

We got back on the road and got back just after dark. It has been a long, full, knowledgeable, exhilarating, stimulating day. I am wrapping up and getting ready for some much needed rest, for tomorrow is another full day. I am enjoying this trip immensely and Jeff's company and conversation is helping to solidify information. I am very thankful I was able to make this trip before winter set in.

I'm off to bed.
'til later,
Frank

I'm back, only this time I'm in New Hampshire. Yesterday I hit the road and then flew to the New England states...boy are my arms tired. I had a long day of flying and got in late after driving. I got some rest and warmth. Did I mention that the high temps here are the lows in Louisiana. When the sun goes down, it gets chilly.

I woke up this morning, made some coffee, and went downstairs for a bite of breakfast. My phone rang.....it was my friend Jeff Rich. He was at the hotel. I invited him to come in and we had some breakfast. We have conversed quite a bit over the internet but this is our first person to person meeting. We caught up about quite a bit over breakfast... family, life and drumsticks. After finishing up breakfast, I got ready, and we set out for the day.

Jeff took me by his place and, as we talked, he showed me several drumstick creations he has built over the years. Jeff is a very creative, industrious and mechanical person. We share quite a many commonalities. He's built several tools for making drumsticks over the years. He showed me where his shop used to be in the garage. Small space that made wonderful sticks. He showed me straight grain hickory, light hickory and bad grain dowels...the printing press he made to apply signatures and the custom drumstick logos. Really smart and ingenuitive.

I met his son and the three of us hopped in the car and headed out for a brief tour of New Hampshire and Maine. He brought me out to look at shagbark hickory out at a park and took a tour of an old New england property. Had an apple from an old apple tree. Very sweet and delicious. We got back in the car and headed back across the river into New Hampshire and over by an old mill that has been converted into woodworking shops across the ground floor along with artist and photography amongst other trades on the upper floors. This is the place that the Goodspeed came from. This is a very cool idea and I'm very happy to see this happening.

We went back to the house and I met his lovely wife and his mother in law. Wonderful people! We had a nice brief visit. They were headed over to the historical society and we were headed back out to meet some folks Jeff had arranged for us to converse with. We stopped in at Starbucks and got a good consistent cup of coffee. We talked to a friend of Jeff's, Dale, that is a drum builder on the phone. We'll get together with him tomorrow. We talked and discussed drumsticks more. Did I mention we have a lot of commonality. We met his friend Mike who is a savvy startup business marketer and wife is an internet placement artist. Great conversation. It solidified a lot of what I've been thinking about the business direction of Louisiana Backbeat drumsticks.

I had a great time with Jeff today. It was wonderful to finally meet him and discuss the many things about drumsticks in person. Jeff and I bounced several ideas around for bringing the goodspeed into the 21st century. Tomorrow we head over to Massachusetts to visit Ray and Ernie at the machine shop where I'll get to see about some tooling for the Goodspeed. On that note...I'm off  to get some rest. It'll be an early day.

Thanks and 'til later,
Frank

It's been a few days since I've posted anything. Life has gotten crazy busy and there has been a lot to do. By the time I get home and ready to write something....I'm too pooped to think straight. Jeff Rich and I have been conversing quite a bit and the drumstick division is getting sorted out. The following pictures and verbage describe what I've done the past few days. Below is a picture of the first really good dowel that was turned on the Goodspeed. It has been a learning curve and now that I'm figuring it out it will progress a little faster.

Tuesday, I had to catch up on much needed paperwork and deal with those people that get some of my peanuts every month. It was a long morning of office work and then a good full evening of drum lessons. I do teach drum lessons along with everything else.

Today, Thursday, I got up early and wrote a few emails to people I must keep in touch with regarding the business. I got over to the shop about 9 am and set to work on my project of the morning... a temporary template so I can start figuring some of the roughing gouge process. The template came out alright. I will have to do some modifications to make it better. Things like depth and also the bead of the stick. there's a lot going on. Below is the first attempt at cutting with the template and video at bottom. More to come in the coming days.... 'til later -Frank

The above dowel is the biggest milestone yet. I made this today on the Goodspeed in the manual hand position "jogging" the carriage across the stock. There is a video below. It took me the better part of the afternoon to get to this point and here it is.

I got to the shop today and got my trusty calipers. They have helped me tremendously throughout my trials with this machine. Low and behold, the setup die was just a tad larger than 7/8" and the tail spindle was just under 7/8." I had confidence it would work, so I removed the 3/4 die I had on the machine, removed a setup pin and placed the setup die in the carriage. I bolted it in finger tight and jogged the carriage back toward the tail spindle. I did a good job aligning it with the tail spindle. There is evidently something not right with the setup center and set up die, since the tooling die and head spindle are not in alignment after setting up with the setup components.

After a few adjustments to the roughing knife, I was ready to make a trial cut. Of course everything is really slow right now in set up mode. The run went good until about 1/4 in and I noticed a familiar sound from working with a regular hand lathe. It started making the dreaded noise I call "the jitters" or "chatter." It's a vibration that occurs when the spindle is not being cut correctly. I promptly stopped, shut it down, and made and adjustment. I started it back up and the video that follows is the result.

After this first dowel, I was excited to move to the next step.... automatic mode. The following video shows one of four failed attempts with automatic cycling on the lathe. I have a kink to work out and I think I know what the trouble is. I'll find out tomorrow. 'til later, Frank

Well, this day with the Goodspeed encompassed some milestones and new challenges. I can't even say the challenges are 2 steps forward and 1 step back. Everything is forward at this time. There are no step backs. I got the the head spindle and turning die on the machine, then I discovered the die needed to be off the machine to setup the stock loaders and centering between the drive center and the tail spindle cup center. The more I work with this machine, the more I appreciate that it is  precision equipment. Tolerances are very tight.

Next, I saw that the stock would contact the roughing knife before it was chucked in between the tail spindle and head spindle. The die seems to need to travel over part of the tail spindle. The die hole is just too small for this to happen. If this is the case, I will either have to modify one of the dies I have or purchase another die. This could be a costly lesson.

After all that, I noticed that the spindle did not seem to be centered in the die. Odd, I had spent so much time making sure everything was center....making the pins, setup center and die. Something is not right. I think there may be a slight difference in specs between the setup die and  the 3/4 die. I am going to look into that more in depth.

I'm going to look into these challenges more and see what I can figure out... I may be contacting John again. I'm sure he will know exactly what is going on.

So today was a fairly slow day at the shop. There has been some "loss" in the family lately and its important that I keep supportive of those that need it. Even though I got a late start to the shop, I still got to pass the word on what I'm in the process of getting off the ground.....a drum company. It's been a dream of mine for the past 10 years and I started narrowing the vision over the past 5 years.  Attainable, the goal inches closer everyday. I've set goals to meet milestones and today I met one of them.

After long periods (seems long but they're really short) of hitting road blocks with getting the goodspeed up and running, I made another milestone. I ordered parts/components to get the lathe to a state that  it can turn out a dowel and a rough drumstick if I figure out the template measurements. Those parts took 3 weeks to come from Goodspeed. I understand the situation there and I've been very patient. When I received the components, I was VERY excited. Everything I had ordered was in this 12x6x6 inch box. Tool Steel. I've nicknamed the Goodspeed lathe the "Green Elephant" since it weighs almost 3000 pounds and keeps eating all my peanuts. It seems I can't keep enough on hand. It's been worth it, but there have been hurdles.

When I got the parts, I went to the shop the next day and started to prepare for assembly. The first thing that needed to be done was align the machine with the setup center and die. The center mounts in the headstock and the die mounts on the carriage. The die must fit over the center and move rather freely. There is probably, at most, .030 of inch tolerance. Upon removing the old die off the carriage, and reading the manual again, I realized that someone, somewhere along the life of the green elephant, had removed the die alignment pins. Doh. Without the setup pins the machine would not work properly. I tried to figure out how to fix it. I looked everywhere local for the pins. I even looked on the internet. Turns out they are eccentric pins and specific to the machine. After all my searching and thinking, I decided to call Goodspeed.

John at Goodspeed has helped me out tremendously. He got my prior parts order together, along with some drawings, and has provided me with a wealth of information on setting up options that are on this machine not covered in the manual. The day I called him, he was recovering from back surgery from a few days earlier. He said he would look at the company when he could get down there. I was patient and gave it 10 or so days. I emailed him to touch base about the pins again and he said he did not find any. He did say that there was a machine he was going to refurb and he would look on that machine next time he got down there. Well, I gave it 5 days and heard nothing back. Today I set out on plan B.

Plan B was a last ditch effort to get this lathe back on track. Today myself and 2 bolts had a date with a grinder. I put the setup die in the machine and eyeballed what I needed to do. Pulled out pencil paper and caliper then grabbed a bolt and went to the grinder and started grinding the head into an eccentric pin. Essentially its an offset circle on a shaft. After slow grinding and eyeballing, I had a pin and tried it in the carriage. Seemed to be ok, so I started grinding on the second. I got that installed and made adjustments. Then I advanced the carriage, with die mounted, over the setup center.... slowly. Success! It worked on my first try. I was excited. I made another milestone.

Tomorrow I will go in and start working to setup the machine for turning its first dowel. I will be ecstatic when I can get a piece of stock in this machine and actually turn something into a spindle. That is part of the goal for tomorrow.

I'm taking off my hat and headed to bed.
Played a gig earlier too.
It's been a full days work.

'til later

One of those folks that I met through this machine is Jeff Rich. The night I met Jeff, I was up late doing some homework on the lathe and checkin' in on facebook. I saw this entity "custom drumsticks" on my friend MoJo's page, so I "friended" it.  Less than 30 minutes later I had a reply, "so you're the guy that bought that lathe." After looking through his pictures, and seeing a pic of the lathe in a shop that he had a connection with, I replied that I was. Turns out this was custom drumsticks founder Jeff Rich in New Hampshire, and a short time later we were messaging about drumsticks until the wee hours.  Jeff is a master drumstick craftsman, sharing 30+ years of drumstick history, turning and tooling knowledge. He knows how to make high quality hickory drumsticks.

Myself and my new found friend, Jeff Rich, aim to bring quality crafted drumsticks to drummers around the world at an affordable price.
Projected release is January 2014.

Thanks for stopping by and checking it out. I'll be adding more content throughout the coming days, weeks and years... so come back again. I'm going to call it a day and take off my hat. Tomorrow is another beautiful day on the way.

'Til later...
Frank