I often will "mist" the parts with water to get the fibers to stand up and then sand...never tried an actual finish to do the same trick.

I will post some pics during the next to days of work that I am busy with on staining and sealing.

Question to my American friends...or somebody that has done it before.
What is the weather like riding a motorbike on Route 66 from Chicago via Las Vegas to the West coast during late September to middle October.

That's our fall season, thus nights 45-50F, days can be upto 75-78F.
The desert gets down to the 30's F at night. (which is the last 600-800 miles of the trip)

Thank's Sean that does not sound too bad....7 deg Celcius to 25 deg Celcius is no problem. At this moment I am still riding every morning to work sometimes -1 deg C to 2 deg C.
Will this hold true across the route ? . We don't plan to ride at night so the 30 deg F will not be a problem.

What about rain ?

Keep in mind that a lot of the old route 66 are side roads to 40 out west (where it is still passable.) I wish they would make it a National Landmark and restore the parts that are no longer usable.

Pretty dry out west and you may have some parts with rain off and on depending on weather patterns when you come. Weather has been a bit weird here this year.

A few links I googled quickly.

http://www.theroadwanderer.net/route66.htm
http://www.pactour.com/route66history.html

Have fun !!!

Cool points of intrest that are a little off the rt66 path out west.

1. MOAB Utah - Access to a lot of national parks close (7 I think) and the North side of the Grand Canyon.
3. Dubois Wyoming - Cool old town
4. Hoover Dam - do the tour, skip the gift shop :) Real close to Vegas.

Places to avoid in my book as TO touristy.
1. Jackson Hole Wyoming
2. Grand Canyon Skywalk (Western New Mexico) - out in the middle of no where down a 20 mile dirt road..... really. Then you have to ride a bus to the site and pay to walk out... no cameras alowed but you can buy pictures.
3. South Rim of Grand Canyon (Everyone goes there) If you go .. go early.

I am sure everyone has favorites. We went out last year and I called it the Big Ditch Vacation.

Thanks Mike, not 100% sure as to what the plans will be, but it is in my Bucket List.
I have to make sure I can afford it first. Renting a Harley could be expensive..saw some tours incl accomodation 14 days going for $4500.00...way too much for me.
Found other sites that want to get bikes BACK from West Coast to Chicago for around $66 / day.
Still looking for a cheap option or rent bike from somebody.

Well if you want to look at the western side of the US on a bike. Moab UT is the best (Little Known) place for that. You get access to a lot of stuff to "Day Trip" (Or two) and I know you can rent Harleys there also.

Vegas is about 7 hours away. I think visitors like it becuase it is sort of in the middle of everything. Not to touristy either since the state side folks don't know too much about it. I guess they are keeping a low profile since they have enough folks there already .

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&tab=ll&q=moab+ut

http://www.google.com/search?um=1&hl...l2l0l95l95l1l1

(zoom out to see all the national parks around)


Also if your staying a while look at renting a house. I have been doing that lately with good result. Or you can rent cabins at the KOA campground there in Moab and go rustic :) .

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...og&sa=N&tab=wi

Really well kept places and if your gone all the time on tours anyway, all you really need is a place to crash !!!

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&b...l124l240l0.2l2

We always do this when on week or longer vacas to save money for other stuff..

Have fun when you come !!!

Kobus, I went there in October, stayed initially in Scotsville, where it was warm. On the spur of the moment we decided to go to the Grand Canyon (south rim), in Flagstaff we were nearly arrested for putting on ALL our clothes in a parking lot. Cop just said afterwards: "Oh, one of those...."

We then went through Snowbowl (very appropriate name), where the snow was 2m on both sides of the road. We stayed in a hotel close to the Canyon, a 2000 odd room place, there were 6 other guests.

BUT: I took the most amazing pictures.

Finally got the first chair together. Also cut the second type today....man these things are bastards to get together.

Also finished the Winetable leg for my friend with four Rhino's...with the indexer.

The clock was made during the week. A friend brought a piece of wood that he tried to chop up for firewood. When he found that the axe hardly made a dent in the wood he brought it to me. I looked at it and saw a clock hidden inside this rough piece of wood.
Surfaced it with old BBB, cut a pocked in for the movement and finished it today with some varnish.
The wood is KAMEELDORING of Camelthorn.

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And another little clock for the BOSS

Attachment 12113

Bribing the boss to let you go to Vegas? Nice Kobus

You caught me out there Normand.:p

Funky Chairs needs funky color
 

These chairs needed a bit of colour.

Attachment 12119

Man those are great !! I like the color !!

Kobus

Maybe this has already been covered, if you plan to visit more than two National Parks ( there are 6 or 7 near Moab ) you should get a yearly pass. It costs about $50 (USD), otherwise it could cost between $20 and $30 for each park.

Also, like me, if your over 62 you can get a lifetime pass for $10 if your a citizen of the US. I'll check today and see if non-US citizens also qualify. Not knowing how old you, you might not qualify any way. You look much younger than I in any case.

Dave

Hi Dave, Thank's for that info. Problem is I don't qualify for either criteria....only 52 years young :D and not USA citizen... but will also check to see if I can get a pass for $50.


I see the pass is $80.00 and available for everybody...hope that includes me.

Well come on Kobus, show us your nice Magazine Rack,
I know you're already started on it, didn't you :D


http://www.vectric.com/WebSite/Vectric/projects/july-2011/magazine_rack.htm

Ha ha..I wanted to do it this past weekend, but had to sand those 2 chairs...man I hate doing finishing on projects...I want to cut cut and cut..:D

Very nice Kobus, the chairs will come in handy with spring season almost there, do they sit comfortable.
What I would like to do but not always do with flat sheet material is to sand the surface before cutting, then only the cut corners are left to sand, but as I say I forget sometimes

all your work looks good man! how is Uncle Ray comming along with his MM

Hi Koning, I do sand the flat surface before the time, but I had a lot of hairs on the insides. When you cut the ply, the layer that is in line with the cutting is clean, but every alternative layer is cross grain and I had a lot of rubbish here.

Uncle Ray is BANG of his machine. He keeps on asking me for a manual...something that does not exist. I told him that the machine is setup and ready to go....he must now sit in from of the thing and play with it to get the FEEL. But I am confident that he will get there...slowly

My advice on plywood, cut it in passes climb mill and leave 0.2mm (allowance setting in aspire) use 5x5mm tabs all over the place if curved alot, then copy the toolpath (to keep the tab positon) make a new endmill with pass depth as deep as your material is and set allowance to 0.0 and use conventional cut direction, leave tabs thinner like 3mm or something. Edge is super smooth and no rubbish at all. It cleans it up all.
It works for me on 10mm 12mm and 15mm ply. Cut production time of some parts which required sanded edges more than half.

Thank's Danilo, I must go that way because I wasted about a full day sanding, and it's not perfect

Been there, look at these curves, sanding paradise !

http://cnc.rs/mechmate/IMG_0028kraba.jpg

done 10 of these and spent full day doing the edges and only 1h cutting. After using the above technique, it added some machining time (~15min) but edge cleanup was a breeze, just some work with file to remove the leftover tabs.

Thanks again...never to old to learn. I don't mind the extra cutting time...I love to watch the machine when it is cutting.

Ok Sascha here it comes...

At my local Woodworkers Association our motto is

ENJOY
LEARN
SHARE.

I thought it would be nice to add it to the Magazine Rack.

Attachment 12163

Attachment 12164

Very nice!

This HALFTONE thing is nice to play with... Thank's to the brilliant brains that was able to make a program like this. I took some trial and error, but today after nearly 4 hours of drilling little holes I have this to show.

My little PENSION-EATER.....Pierre's picture taken in B/W and dumped into this program.
Piece of scrap particle board with a mat black coat of water based textile paint...from the missus.

Attachment 12182

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Very Nice Kobus!

you can save time by using the dot size range dialog, with a little tweaking of the minimum values there all the holes around the face dissapear from gcode. A real timesaver.

Wow I will try that sometime...must play with it more. Thank's for the tip.
If I understand it, only the area around the face part will be HOLED...all the rest around the face will be SOLID.

yes, lets say you use holes from 0.4 to 2mm diameter, if the area around the face is white the holes will be of the smallest diameter, so if you use dot sizing range dialog to limit output to holes from 0.5 to 2mm it will effectively remove the smallest holes, it also means any area that is pure white will be hole less too. After trial error I settled to 0.45 as the optimal value for no holes in pure white.

To accomplish this you need to tweak the image a little with a photo editing software, in photoshop for example you can use the magic wand button to remove a homegeneus background

Check the attached images, if I knew this tip before doing my last video (posted in the halftone thread) the image with the white background would have generated gcode with almost 35% less holes.

About motors
 

Hi Kobus,

Just purchasing parts for my project and I noticed that You used UIM24004 drivers. Are You still using those Motion King 34HS9801 motors without gears?

-Jussi-

Yes Jussi and VERY happy with the combination

Thank You.
I already ordered drives and then started to think...always the best way to handle matters. :rolleyes:

-Jussi-

Very busy at work...it's interfering with my MM time.:mad::mad:

We had our annual East Rand Woodworkers Fair today.

Greg from CNCDIRECT.co.za kindly brought his small CNC so that we could show the people what CNC woodworking is....Thank's Greg for the effort...much appreciated.

Then Hennie turned up.

And finally two of the three Cheval mirrors that I helped in making was on display.

With me travelling to Margate last weeken for a funeral and Monday to Thursday in East London for work I never got around to do the engraving for another garden bench. So on Thursday evening my flight landed and around 19h30 I started cutting the slats. My friend went home and put it together that same night so that he could show it today.

Attachment 12346

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Attachment 12348

You sure have some nice work there Kobus!

After a hectic 3 weeks of funerals, work and woodworking shows I managed to get old BBB to make some dust today.

Last week my GARDEN ENGINEER came to me and said '4 chair 1 table' Well he is a man of few words, but I gathered that his shack is without a table and chairs.

I contacted my friend that is VERY GOOD in drawing things...and told him my sad story. As quick as a flash I had my DXF file. The catch was to make something from offcut ply that I had. They are 330mm wide by 2200mm long.

Attachment 12442

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Attachment 12444

I think he will be a happy man one of these day's.

Thank's Fabrice, the smile say it all.

Anybody seen or used one of these Wadkin CNC Routers. Has a Bosch Alpha Controller...that is bust. Plan to buy it and fit modern parts to it.

Attachment 12711

watch out for the heavy Z axis, it might not be suited for some 3D work.
Large routers are declared by some manufacturers not for carving. They are best working with large profiling bits.

The size of the table is also small compared to the size of the footprint on the floor. IMHO they took an old-fashioned pin (or copy) router and then added a motorised table to it.