In Memoriam, Thomas Moore Studwell

Posted on by

I had sad news yesterday. My Uncle Tom, Thomas Moore Studwell, died on Friday, April 20.  He was 94 years old and, from what I know about him, lived a good long life.

I remember Uncle Tom as a tall lanky man, the tallest in his family, who was quick with a smile, but was a quiet sort, letting his siblings and relatives take center stage at our family gatherings.

Uncle Tom was a Cabinet Maker by trade so I have a certain fondness in this regard and I like to imagine the pleasure he received as he shaved fine curls from the pieces of wood that he was fitting.

Uncle Tom served in the Army during WW II and, among many battles, participated in the “Battle of the Bulge”, which was the “largest and bloodiest battle” the Americans fought during WW II.

My most recent ‘involvement’ with Uncle Tom is a surprise connection, which was found while ‘DAGS‘ing “Thomas Studwell”.  We found this newspaper article about walking to keep fit. Uncle Tom was featured in the article and one of the more amusing aspects of the article is where they asked Uncle Tom about his walks at the Weston High School track. He said that walking was the best form of exercise, but the 91 year old replied that he also enjoyed the “Girl Watching” at the track.

Tom is survived by his two children, my cousins Mary and Tom, and my father, Lawrence.

I will remember Uncle Tom fondly.

 

Amazing Finds! Smallest Diesel Engine

Posted on by

A friend of mine sent me a link to a most amazing project.  A man, apparently very talented with machine tools, designed and built a V12 Diesel Engine that actual runs!  This is not model – it really runs!

The video documents how he built the engine – all the way from mock up to the raw materials he used, how he machined each part, and how he assembled it.  It even includes how he performed the engine break-in with an electric drill.

The engine has 261 pieces and took 1220 hours to build.  The video runs for about 9 1/2 minutes.  The video production is pretty well done, but the titles are in Spanish.  Even if you are not an Engineer you’ll find this interesting.  This is a remarkable piece of work!

Link to video.

Enjoy!

How to install a warped floor board

Posted on by

When installing hardwood flooring, especially long pieces (mine were up to 12 feet long), you will invariably run into boards that are somewhat ‘less than straight’ :-)

Installing these are actually pretty easy, if you make the right jigs.

Here is an example of a board that is bowed length-wise (over 3″ of bow) and width-wise (by about 1/4″).

Warped Floorboard

The first step is to flatten the board enough to get its groove positioned into the floor’s tongue.  To do this, align the end closest to the last installed board and use a small tie down block to hold the end in place.

One end held down with block.

Once that end is held down, you can step on the far end and tap the board into the floor’s tongue.  If the board isn’t bowed in any other way, then you can tap it home and staple it down, starting at the end furthest from the block.  However, in this case, there was a slight bow width-wise so I had to install a jig I made to press the bow against the existing floor.

Warped Floorboard showing gap

Jig to press bowed floor board into alignment.

In this case, since the bow was fairly small, it only took a couple of taps to wedge the board into position.  You can see that the jig has three pieces.  One is just a hunk of flooring to anchor to the subfloor.  The other two pieces are cut from a single scrap of flooring.  The cut is along the length of the scrap at a very slight angle (basically a 1/2″ taper from side to side).  With this taper you can compensate for up to 1″ of bow (I had some that were even worse than this – a crowbar comes in handy for these).   Normally I would make this kind of cut on a table saw since you want the edge of the cut to be straight and smooth.  Since my table saw is in storage until the Workshop is done (Classic Chicken and Egg problem) I used a jig saw and then a block plane to straighten and smooth the edges.

With the jig in place and the wedges shifted to press the bow against the existing flooring, it was a simple matter of tapping the board into position horizontally and stapling in place.

Perfect!

Warped Floorboard after installation.

WordPress theme: Kippis 1.12