So over on Twitter, Arjache and I were wondering about The Life Aquatic, Buckaroo Banzai, and MST3K. We suspect something, but won’t tell you what. TIME FOR A POLL! (Note: you MUST fill this out over on the band blog.) CLICKIE THROUGH TO ANSWER!
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Show this Thursday: Inner Chapters Bookstore & Cafe, Seattle, 6-8pm, no cover. C’mon by, it’ll be fun!
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.
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.
A nice little neighbourhood gig in Cascade/South Lake Union on Fairview, not far from the Seattle Times and the Mercer mess, next Thursday! 6-8pm is school-night friendly! C’mon by! There’s even a poster you could print out and put up if you want to help:
Click for PDF
Strangely enough, now that I’m not working with epoxies and glues and materials time, this somehow feels less like “making something” and more like “assembling something,” despite the fact that I am shaping metal with hammers and anvil.
My brain is weird.
Today was copper and steel. Copper trim, to protect edges and corners, and steel, as an internal bracing last-ditch protector, to keep the foam wrapped around the instrument, like a net, in the event that the case gets well and truly smashed. Honestly, I’m a little concerned about the copper; it’s a soft metal, and I kind of suspect that I’ll end up replacing it with aluminium. But having finally found spools of copper in usable widths – not easy and not cheap – I had to try. Enjoy some pictures:
Coppertop
Corner Detail
I’m so pleased that I found actual copper tacks. I was so not expecting to find copper tacks. I was expecting brass would be the best I could do. But no! Copper! Damn, I hope this lasts long enough to age a proper green, I really do.
Lid interior corner bracing detail
Protection of last resort; hopefully completely irrelevant. All the wood corners are biscuit joined and glued and glued to the panels which are routed in. If all that fails, I must be flying United. But it can’t hurt to have it there.
Also rehearsed for the show on the 25th at Inner Chapters Bookstore and Cafe, on Fairview, in Seattle. I’m kind of going back and rediscovering new approaches to old trad that I’ll be dropping in with my original material. It’s cool. Yar, revolution, riot, and piracy! o/
I’ve been making a mandolin travel case out of reclaimed lumber and metal. It’s been a very slow process; the two panels I made last autumn. Then, because my workshop is unheated and everything involved lots of materials, I didn’t work on it again until this summer.
The bottom panel is oak, made of boards unsuitable for a hallway floor, glued against some quarter-inch ply. The top panel is ply plank, salvaged from an abandoned bed, also glued against quarter-inch ply. Both are fit into grooves routed into the side-boards, all around the case, about a quarter-inch deep. The side boards are from several sources, including some disassembled Mr. Fixit work (circa 1958), a bit of what was once part of a rough-cut framing 2×4 from the house’s back addition (circa 1924), and leftovers from projects of mine. The corners are biscuit-joined, as you can see here:
top and bottom halves
This second picture is after more sanding than I want to talk about, two coats of wood hardener, two coats of stain (pro tip: wood hardener says you can stain or paint after hardener application; one of those actually works; hint: not staining) and two coats of polyurethane. Each coat has multiple hours of materials time (drying time, soaking time, etc) before you can do the next layer; so did each round of gluing, before. The polyurethane has three days of drying time after final coat.
as though hinged together
You can start to see why this takes a while.
I have a sense of accomplishment with it, as well as some learning; I’ve had to re-do a couple of parts of it here and there, like the top section’s entire set of sideboards, and part of the oak panel. But I’m to the point now where I want the damn thing, f’srs. I’d lake to take it with me to VCon.
Monday, I can finally start attaching hardware – latches, hinges, metal trim to protect edges (all new), metal braces for the interior, like the one below, which was reclaimed earthquake strapping:
hammered to L and back ar ar ar ar ar
This case will get beat up, cosmetically, out on the road. I’m fine with that. But I want it to be no fucking around strong, to protect my mandolin.
At the same time as the hardware, I should be able to fit the divider panel on the inside, for a little storage section, like my zouk travel case has. That’ll involve Materials Time again (dammit) but not very much.
I’m really looking forward to putting in the foam. That’s the last part. This project has gone on long enough.
New show scheduled: August 25th, 6-8pm: Dara at Inner Chapters Bookstore and Cafe, 419 Fairview Avenue N., Seattle. It’s two sets, so I’ll be performing a lot of material, including the new song, “World Trapped in Amber”:
Video courtesy Zorp, shot at the Gypsy Cafe
See you there!
Thanks to Zorp, who was in the audience at the Gypsy last month, I have a couple of live videos on my YouTube channel! If you’re reading this on the band site, you might notice a new videos tab, to match. Guess what it does! XD Here, have a video:
Live at the Gypsy Cafe; Video courtesy Zorp
That’s “Something’s Coming.” I’ve also posted the first recording – from the same performance – of “World Trapped in Amber,” which will appear on Din of Thieves.
I celebrated Seafair Weekend by rebuilding a 1978-era Pioneer power amp. I’ve had this thing kicking around for a while, and have used it as a monitor amp in the studio, but it’s always been noisy and kind of cruddy, and I was going to replace it until I found out that audio fidelity in my price range has actually been going downhill for the last 10-15 years as more and more money gets put into remote-control/iPod and iPhone interfacing/digital output/etc and less into basic sound quality.
I’ve never thought much of this amp, really; I picked it up used, for no money to speak of. Turns out replacing a whole fleet of really old capacitors makes it A GOD AMONGST AMPLIFIERS. Well, okay, not really. But – re-capped – it has one of the cleanest transistor preamps I’ve ever heard. Cranked all the way up to maximum output on all drivers, the preamp noise level in studio reference headphones is ZERO. You hear nothing. It’s fucking inaudible. And silence on speakers, too. It’s kind of shocking.
I still have some more work to do – I’ve got distortion on channel two on speakers only (headphones are pristine) caused by me trying to hack together the correct replacement cap value when I didn’t have it, and the tone control board is still a noise fountain and still needs the other half of its caps swapped. (Right now I’ve got it bypassed, and you shouldn’t be using that shit in a studio anyway, but I like having all the functionality of a piece of equipment available.) If finishing the rebuild doesn’t solve the tone board noise issues, I’ll leave it bypassed. Or maybe add a switch, to cut it in and out. ‘Cause this amp sounds great now. Seriously, I had no idea.
It’s no Dynaco ST70, don’t get me wrong. But I never knew it was capable of really sounding good. Turns out, in fact: fuck yeah! And that’s the kind of surprise I could use a lot more often. If you have some hackery in you, and see an old Pioneer (or similar) amp hanging out in a garage sale or thrift store or something, and it powers up at all – buy it and recap it, it’s probably worth the rebuild. This one was.
That’s what I did with my Seafair weekend. What about you?
I’ve been learning to play melody parts on zouk and mandolin – you might notice the lack of zouk or mandolin solos in the studio album? there’s a reason for that – and I started playing this tune, which I’ve known for forever, and which, in my headcanon, everybody in the world knows.
I’m wondering what it’s called. None of the tune recognition software knows it, and I’ve been asking people and turns out in reality, almost nobody knows it at all! It has an A part and a B part so I thought it was perhaps Irish, and I have it in my head it might be French in some way, but Ellen (whose mom is from Japan) says it sounds Japanese to her.
Here, have a quick recording I just made on my cell phone. Do you know this? If you do, what is it? And is there somewhere that everybody knows this song, or did I just make that part up:
Also, last weekend, I got BONGOS! at a yard sale for cheap and fixed the cracks and refurbished everything else. (I like reclaiming abandoned instruments.) They look like this now:
If I hold them vertically with the smaller drum on top I can play them like some kind of two-tone bodhran, which sounds totally weird but kinda awesome.
Someday I’ll learn to play instruments the correct way. Hopefully not too soon tho’. XD
Finally! I remixed the Cracksman Betty version of “Paddy Murphy,” with new vocals on the first verse and chorus. I like this one better, I think it’s more fun. (Go ahead, you try to sing “O’Leary came with the bagpipes, some music for to play” sober. Can’t be done. BOOST THE ALCOHOL LEVELS TEN! MORE! POINTS!) It’s also a pay-what-you-like download. Enjoy:
I think I’ve really improved as a vocalist – and certainly become more consistent as one – over the last few months.
No time to post Friday, busy. Have a good weekend!
Hello, London! and listeners across the globe on the ARfm live stream! I just heard that one of our tracks, “When You Leave,” is on your station a few times this week, courtesy Paul Baker’s Soundscapes programme! That is so awesome I do not have words for how much awesome is is crammed into that. Hee hee hee hee Cascadian elfmetal bands say HELLO, LONDON! o/
We’re new, so all this is a big deal for us and we’re not being cool and detached about it, not even a little. Fuck that! This is awesome and we’re not afraid to say so. o/
So poke around the site a bit! Click on the Music link above to free-stream our music, including the new studio album Dick Tracy Must Die, the live EP Espionage (Live from Mars), and the ongoing piracy-and-revolution Cracksman Betty project. There’s also a mailing list you can join to get occasional newsletters and free downloads, and you can friend us on Facebook.
If you like what you hear, tell your friends! We don’t have any gigs in the UK yet, but we’d love to change that!
ETA: Bubo G. Gear just messaged telling me I’m between Betsy Tinney and Laura Palmer on his Dementia Radio-hosted Shifting Gears show tomorrow, Tuesday 2 August 2011, at 4pm Cascadian/Pacific! (That’s 9am London, 1pm Eastern. Archive here, if you missed it.) Talk about some good fuckin’ company, what!
Last autumn, at the very start of the Cracksman Betty project, I did a recording of the traditional song “Captain Kidd.” It’s about the eponymous pirate of yore, and full of murder and hangings and other good fun. It was supposed to be the first in the set, but after putting it out for download on the fan list, I decided I really was unhappy with the vocals. So I yanked it back offline, with the intent to redo it as soon as I had the chance.. and never got back ’round to it.
UNTIL NOW! I finally went back and re-recorded the vocals tonight, all extra snarly and piratey. YARRRR! Enjoy, me hearties!
THE NEW SINGLE
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