These are links to the mandolin hard case build-out series, wherein I documented making a hard travel case for my mandolin. This does not include all the details of woodworking, and assumes you have some basic cabinetry skills. I didn’t start out writing it as DIY, but people started asking questions, so my posts became much more detailed as the series ran. Enjoy!

• We Can Make Our Own Travel Gear: Panels
• Sides on the Panels (very short)
• Polyurethane and Making Braces
• Adding Copper and Steel (longish)
• Adding Compartments and Interior Bracing (long)
• Padding and Final Work (very long)

If you’re interested in home recording or small studio construction, check out the Studio Buildout Series. If you’re you’re into DIY in general, click on the blog’s DIY tag for the fire hose of All The Things We Make Ourselves.

Hey, Minions! I’ve asked this at apple.com’s support fora, but I don’t expect an answer. Perhaps I should have them liquidated. Anyway, maybe you’ll know!

iCal has stopped synching calendars correctly with my iPhone 3GS. This makes my phone fucking useless. Okay, not useless, because IM still works, but a whole hell of a lot less useful.

I am syncing via iTunes, not via the cloud; I have the latest patches for Mountain Lion; I cannot upgrade the machine’s OS, because I need Rosetta. The iPhone is running the latest version of iOS Apple has pushed, but this began a couple of patches ago – I was holding off on the latest because of Reasons, and upgraded hoping the upgrade would fix it. It didn’t. I also have the latest version of iTunes for Mountain Lion.

Symptoms:

• No appointments made on the phone, in any calendar, make it into iCal. (I have five calendars that used to sync; all stopped at once.)
• Old appointments made in iCal before this started happening still sync correctly from iCal to the phone.
• New appointments made in iCal sometimes make it onto the phone, and sometimes do not. I haven’t been able to detect a pattern.
• When new appointments made iCal do make it onto the phone, they are correct, except that there is always a second ghost appointment also created, only on the phone, called “New Event.” It will have the same time and date information as the actual appointment, and be listed as the correct calendar, but will contain none of the associated appointment data.

When an appointment does sync from iCal,
it looks like this.

I have tried:

• Upgrading phone to latest iOS version
• Desyncing all calendars from phone, then resynching them.
• Telling iTunes to overwrite all calendar data on sync. (I know this actually happened, because appointments I’d made on the phone which had not synched disappeared after overwrite was initiated.)
• Resetting phone to factory and reapplying everything from scratch. (This was the most recent action, two weeks ago, was a huge pain.)

None of these resulted in any change in observed behaviour.

What is new in the last few days is that until now, all iCal appointments had been making it to the phone, so as long as I made the appointments in iCal first, I could at least know of them while in the field. Alas, that is no longer the case.

Any ideas? Because honestly, there is damned little more important when trying to invert the Earth’s Van Allan belt than calendars that actually fucking work. Well, okay, you need the reactor to power the kilotesla magnetic field generators. But other than that.

This weekend was kind of a disaster. I’m still trying to pick up pieces. My car is in Longview, Washington, hopefully having its axles reattached. Anna and I are back in Kenmore.

And I am missing musical instruments. 🙁

Please click and share this post about the missing instruments. I’m also missing electronics, but those I can re-buy. I can’t re-buy flutes I’ve had for 15 years that I made myself.

Thanks.

Just had the weekend from hell: driving down to Portland for a show, my car decided it didn’t like its new front axles and tried to spit them out. NOT FUNNY.

Along the way to getting a tow from Sears (in Three Rivers Mall) and making it to the train station, my backpack went away. I’m pretty sure it actually made it to the train station, but disappeared after that. I’m suspecting specifically it got left on the bed of the truck, which means it flew off somewhere between there and the towing / service company lot.

There are electronics in it that I care about, but MUCH MORE, I lost two musical instruments which were inside, including the first bamboo piccolo I ever made, which has been kind of a constant companion ever since. Seriously, I am pretty fucked up about this. I wrote so much music on that thing it isn’t even funny, and now it’s just gone.

The backpack is red and grey with black straps. The black straps are a bit worn upon examination. Hanging from the zipper in back are Squid Girl and the bassist from K-On. The flute is in a case made of a red rose ribbon and green backing fabric. I can describe other contents in some detail. This is an old picture before I had anything hanging from the zipper:

The blurry ribbon-thing at the bottom is Popcorn’s sleeve. Here’s a picture of Popcorn:

If you know anyone in Kelso and Longview (all this was within Kelso, not over in Longview), please ask them to be looking out for it. I am offering a reward for the bag and contents, if that helps. Once I have a working car again – which should be Tuesday – I will pick up. Comment here, or contact via the contacts page. Thanks.

I haven’t played bass guitar much since finishing the bass parts on Dick Tracy Must Die (and particularly the bass solo on Stars). And that’s sad, because I really like bass. So I’m practicing again, with scales, exercises… and Irish jigs. Which I personally think is hilarious. Not tuba hilarious, I grant you. But hilarious nonetheless.

Here, I put up a video from the show at the B-Side!

The camera tripod was too low for the stage, so it’s all lol-hiding-behind-music-stand, but the sound quality is pretty good. I think I’m getting a handle on the sound part of this live-recording business – more than the video so far, anyway.

Next show I’ll have new and much taller tripod, and actual video camera! It’s very exciting. PORTLANDERS! The show’s on the 26th! Contact me if you want an invitation! ^_^

Oh good, something’s beeping in the server room. I hope it’s not on fire!

i see smoke signals coming from them
they say “we are out of furniture”

I want to talk about kitting out on the cheap, but first, an update: I’ve heard from Meg Davis, and the fundraiser has met its goals! She has an iPad and is already working with it, learning about software. When she wrote, she was having what had been a bad day – the kind that would keep her from doing anything – but thanks to this device, she was catching up on business and email, and seeing how Garage Band works. Seriously, way to go, you guys. o/ Well done.

Now, on to cheap equipment!

I’ve been pawn-and-thrift-store spelunking again, this time for good camera tripods. I started at UW Surplus (no), then hit Goodwill and a local pawn store near Goodwill, and came up with two tripods – one that just needed cleaning and its camera pad re-glued, and one – a Slik U-210 – that needed a bit more work. I talked about that a little on Thursday here, if you’re curious, but the details aren’t really important. The U-210 is a heavy-duty no-fucking-around professional’s tripod; the successor is the U-212, which isn’t as tall. It’ll hold up a small building.

U210 on the left

I don’t need that much; to be honest, I’m probably fine with a generic $40 “prosumer” model made in China, with a 10% junk/return rate. But I hate doing that, and mostly just won’t. So if you don’t do that either, and you’re trying to kit out, here are a few key things I’ve found important to know.

1. Learn to judge quality in a general sense. That’s not easy to teach, frankly, but you can avoid loose fittings, cheap rivets, overly-thin aluminium, flimsy or brittle plastics. Heft is no guarantee, but it generally doesn’t hurt, either. Similarly, learn to identify excessive wear. If there’s a moving part, make sure it still fits well with the parts it’s moving against. Broken is almost always easier to fix than worn out.

   If you have no idea where to start here, try watching a bunch of back episodes of the old late-90s BBC show, Bargain Hunt. Pay attention to the experts on that show and try to pick up on how they think.

2. Talking of broken, be willing to fiddle with things and take them apart. If you’re not at least a bit of a DIYer, or interested in being one, don’t waste your time on this approach. But if you are, and are prepared to apply it, you can make off like a bandit. Recommended reading: The Readers Digest Fix-It-Yourself Manual. Not for any one repair, tho’ it’s good for that, but for a general idea about how you approach these kinds of problems.
    
3. Be willing to see past dirt. Thrift stores in particular get a lot of estate-sale leftovers and storeroom cleanouts. Great grandmother finally passed on, and the kids aren’t photographers, and now I have a serious business tripod – a tripod that sat in a crawlspace by the furnace for 20 years, getting coated with grime. Now? Cleaned and lubricated, it’s ready to go.
    
4. Recognise what’s out of place. If a pawn shop has a lot of something, it’s probably not that good a deal; they know it, they recognise it, they go through a lot of it, and they can price it with confidence rather than searching the internet and hoping. Guitar amps are a perfect example of that; they know crummy guitar amps, and they move well. DJ equipment, too, to a lesser degree. But if they have only one of something, and it doesn’t look like the other things? That’s the interesting item. Particularly if it’s dusty.
    

   (There are exceptions, of course. If you need an SM-57 or SM-58 microphone, those don’t stand out, and they know what they are, but they’re such commodities that the price will be good, and the damn things are nearly indestructible. Knowing when it doesn’t matter is a lesser skill, but a skill nonetheless.)

5. Play with stuff in the store. Plug it in, bring in your equipment and use it. If they won’t let you, go somewhere else.
    
6. Pawn shops always negotiate. Never pay what’s on the label, always bring cash, and if you get it out, make sure you don’t have enough to pay the label price anyway.

Examples: A: My PA’s board/amplifier unit met rules 4 and rule 1, spectacularly. The pawn shouldn’t ever have taken it. It’s not DJ equipment, it’s not a guitar amp, it’s not a car stereo. Few of their customers know what it is, and almost none of them know how to use it, or are even interested. It was missing a knob, which I replaced easily without even taking the unit apart, so I’m not counting it as rule 2, but that didn’t hurt, either. B: My speaker main, an old-school Crate, met rules 4, 3, 2, and 1. It was some arena-band-wanna-be’s stage monitor, and a total monster, and more than I’ll ever need for primary PA. It was dirty but would clean up well; it had a bad coil in the tweeter horn ($26 total repair cost), reeked of quality despite that, and it was totally out of place.

I got them both for dirt – seriously, like 90% off new retail – and for about 60% of the pawn’s asking price in both cases, because they didn’t want them around anymore. They stood out, saying, “this doesn’t belong here,” and were idle too long on the floor.

You can even find instruments that way, occasionally. They know guitars of all kinds, but they’re much less sure about anything else. I have a student violin for which I paid $40, including tax. It’s not a good violin, but it holds tune just fine, is complete with bow and case and all parts, and the screwed-up part wasn’t even broken, just, you know, screwed up. I put it back together correctly and saved it from a junk pile. Now I have my viLOLin. Tremendously useful? Eh, probably not. Fun to play around with and maybe even learn on? Oh yeah.

When the turret says, “I’m different!” – sometimes it is.

You got any suggestions for putting together a kit? Leave them in comments!

A couple of updates! First, I had some bad data, so I’ve revised the poster for the January 27th show at B-Side Music. Nothing critical has changed, but if you’re downloading/forwarding/posting, please re-download the latest. (Revised PDF here, big-ass JPEG here, more here, Facebook event here.)

Second: the Portland show has a Facebook event page! But only on Facebook. And it’s invitation-only, so please tell me if you’re on Facebook and you want invited!

Third: I still want more house concerts! If you’re willing to host one, please please contact me! I’ve also been applying to festivals and stuff; if you have a good venue, tell them you want me to play there. Then tell me and I’ll conveniently apply. It’ll be perfect!

Fourth:

it snowed a little

so instead of going out, I made

buttons.

These aren’t merch; you can’t buy these. You have to host a show, or bring someone other than yourself to a show, or something like that. Then you can get one. BUT NOT BEFORE! It’s a plan, see. I planned it. Muah ha ha.

I made a another little thing.

It’s another one of my little cable devices, a really simple one, but I’m pleased with it because as I’ve failed to find a match for my PA’s main speaker, I’m trying two smaller ones with similar sound on either side, at lower power, instead. The idea is the main will be primary output, and the small sides will fill in weak spots.

But since my amp doesn’t have discreet output controls, I had to haxx0r something, so I did some circuit math, and hey! It came out just right! Or as right as I can tell without field testing. Aheh. But I’m optimistic! The numbers are good and things sound fine.

This is actually an old pre-stereo HiFi trick. The only reason it didn’t stick around into the stereo era is because it required too many discreet amplifier components to avoid channel bleed, and so was a lot more expensive. The EICO ST-40 tube amp I found at a garage sale was wired to do this (L, R, CENTRE) but somebody modded it to pure L/R.

Also, the new speakers look like smaller versions of the main, so Rule of Cuteness nr. 7 is in effect!

Here, this needs more plays! Almost none of you have seen it yet, so play it:

Coyote

Meg Davis reports we’re already halfway to her fundraiser target! This is awesome. If you didn’t read Monday’s post, the TL;DR is: Meg Davis was awesome, was hit by MS and forced to retire, wants to try to return to music on at least a small scale, is asking fans to help, go help already.

Well, what’re you waiting for? MOVE, SOLDIER! XD

Welcome to the final case-making post! This post is very large, because it’s mostly photos.

I went and bought musical instrument foam… a week and a half ago, I think? as planned, but then didn’t get to work on it until this weekend. You specifically want instrument case foam, for its shock-absorption characteristics; it has very little resistance at first, but then much more as additional pressure is applied. There are many kinds of foam, so don’t just grab whatever’s handy! At least, not if you have options.

I also needed but already had foam glue and an electric carving knife, both bought for the zouk case project. Oh, and that’s what you want for foam cutting, by the way: any 60s/70s electric kitchen carving knife. Don’t buy a new one. They’re $3, lightly used, at Any Thrift Store in North America. This rule has never failed me.

Anyway, at this point, you’re pretty much sculpting. You need to cut out the foam around the various protrusions in the case, while also cutting out the shape of your instrument into the applicable layers. To get that correct shape, I put the instrument on the foam and drew an outline of it in sewing chalk. Once that layer was cut, I used that layer as my template guide. This insures your cut-outs line up correctly!

And don’t forget a solid bottom layer, of course. I didn’t really take enough pictures here, really:

The aforementioned bottom layer – 1″ thick
Read more

The mandolin has is really getting close to finished. There’s still foam, the bottom half’s copper edging, and I imagine something or other will come up to surprise me, but it’s really coming along now.

I know the outside looked mostly finished last time, but that’s because I was finishing up that part first, for reasons… eh, it made sense at the time. XD Also, I was afraid of bumping corner edges off treated wood, so I wanted to get that dealt with. But there was still a lot of work left on the inside. Three main tasks!

First, I wanted to put in a divider to make a little storage box inside the case. My zouk case has one of these and it’s really handy. The divider wall also serves as another level of reinforcement inside the case.

Divider Wall

Note the added superfloor (quarter-inch ply cut and sanded to fit around the braces) inside the storage compartment, and the front and back panels added to help support the wall. If the back and front main panels had been thicker, and had the front latch not been in the way, I could’ve routed out channels directly in to them. That would probably have been more elegant.

The opposite side of the wall got the same treatment. It’s less important here since there’ll be foam to support the wall as well, but that struck me as inadequate, so:

Divider Wall

Second, routing out the front panels for the latches left the wood there rather thin. While the latches themselves provide some structural support, I decided to address that internally as well. Here’s a piece of ply cut to back the lower latch points, clamped into place. It has holes drilled in it for the latch securement bolts, which stick out through the back. It also serves as support for the storage compartment divider wall, which you can see at the bottom of the photo:

Front Panel Reenforcement (click here for detail)

Note also that it rises above the front panel. That’s on purpose – the handle will be on the front panel, and will tend to pull the front panel forward. If that happens, this glued reenforcement will transfer some of that weight to the lid’s front panel.

The lid’s front panel has a similar board, but it doesn’t go all the way down to the lip, since there has to be room for the lower reenforcement panel when the lid is closed. (detail photo)

Third, I wanted to add either lips or pegs (I ended up going with lips) to help keep the top and bottom of the case lined up when the lid is closed. The hinge does this, of course, but that can be a lot of stress to place on one component. Also, as above, I need to transfer some of the stress from the front handle across the entire front of the case, including the lid panel, for maximum strength. But I already showed pictures of that.

The other three lips are in the lid. They’re small pieces of wood; one on each side, and one on the back, all interior. The back one also serves as hinge reenforcement.

(edge clamp detail)

The large arcing thing made out of two strips of ply and held together with a floating C-clamp together make up a spring clamp. This provides outward pressure against the bottoms of both the left and right lips. The tops of the left and right lips are held down with edge clamps. You can also see, not clamped, the reenforcement strip glued down a previous day and shown above. Note the holes for bolts!

Also here’s the back lip, in clamps. If you’re wondering about all those extra bits of wood, that’s just to protect the finish:

Take off all the clamps and hit everything on the inside with an ocean of wood hardner (heh heh “wood hardener”) and you get this:

Lower case

The divider, all the divider supports, and the lip are all visible here of course. The storage compartment on the right is wide enough, barely, for CD jewel cases! Except where the metal parts are. I’ll line the compartment with fabric later, to prevent them from scratching anything up.

Oh, I guess I left the spring clamp in for this photo. Anyway, here’s the lid. In the lower centre of the picture, you can get a pretty good look at one of the two side lips.

And that’s that! Right now I’m letting the wood hardener dry and giving the glue some extra time. Next Monday hopefully I can do final assembly of the hinge and stuff, and then maybe it’ll be time to talk foam.