Book Safe

I’m not supposed to tell you about this, right?

I made a book safe by cutting out the insides of an old dictionary, gluing the pages together, and lining it with formed cardboard and purple crushed panne. It’s really pretty.

First, gather your tools.

I used a stencil so I’d know where the cutting lines were. Have a spare blade for the knife- you’re going to need it!

Having a metal edged thing to guide the blade is good- the edges of the hole will be straight (important later). Having a plastic one is bad- the knife will eat the edges.

Cut out the innards of the book. I could cut about 60-80 pages at a time. Use the stencil every time you start a new section of pages to prevent drift. This will create a slight sawtooth edge, but that’s fairly easy to clean up later.

Once the insides are out, dust out the insides, and paint the insides of the pages with glue. I used 1:1 water:elmer’s glue and a ratty old paintbrush. Press the book flat (a good use for your AHS yearbook, yeah) and let it dry. Put a piece of waxed paper between the the first page you cut and the facing page to prevent stickage. I left about 20 uncut. In this and the next step, try not to let glue drips dry in place- wipe them away.

When the glue is dry, trim the sawteeth on the inside back. It doesn’t have to be perfectly flat. Glue again. Repeat this until satisfactory, keeping in mind that it doesn’t have to be perfect.

Cut a strip of cardboard from a cereal box and fold it so that it fits inside the cavity. It should be level with or slightly below the glued pages. It should fit snugly but not bow out in the middle. Glue in place but don’t worry if it doesn’t stick or cracks off in the next step.

Cut a rectangle of fabric that will cover the bottom and sides of the cavity with some spilling over the edges. Don’t worry if it seems like a lot, trimming will occur.

Put a thin layer of glue across the bottom of the cavity and stick the fabric to it. Don’t put so much that it soaks through (It looks bad). Let it dry.

Put a another thin layer of glue on one of the fabric sides of cardboard and stick the fabric to it. Then glue up the space between the cardboard and the book. Tuck the fabric in between the cardboard and the book. If there’s not enough space, trim, but make sure there’s enough to tuck. Make sure the fabric is smooth, then clamp and let dry. The cardboard should mold to the side of the book a little but smooth out any irregularities.

Cut the corners of the fabric so that the glued edge of fabric goes to the corner of the cavity and no further. Trim the Newly cut edge so that it overlaps the glued edge a little bit. Repeat the gluing, clamping and trimming for the other corners, waiting for the glue to cure after each side.

ta~daa!

It came out really nice. When it’s closed, you can’t tell from looking at it. It’s really light, though. I’ll have to weigh the innards to see how much I can put in it :D

(And yes, in the last post Dennis box is peering out from inside…)

Button Holes

So I made these spats and silly me doesn’t have a button hole attachment and Mum is making a quilt so I can’t use her machine to make button holes until she is done. Foo. Something must be done about this. Ebay! Ebay has stuff! I get my father to make a bid (and consequently buy) for me a buttonholer. And a box is sent in the mail to me. And then Mum asks my Aunt Mary if the treadle machine has any attachments in it’s draws, and it does, and a box comes in the mail. I like getting boxes in the mail.

The buttonholer doesn’t work. :0! What now? Take everything apart, of course!

Warning: Protect your work surface and your clothes. This will get oil and grease everywhere. And by everywhere, I mean EVERYWHERE.

Symptoms: The needle only catches a few of the stitches but the buttonholer works perfectly otherwise.

Diagnosis: The hook isn’t catching the thread.

Prescription: Move the hook closer to the needle by moving the whole bobbin race towards the needle a hair. Or, in my case, 15 thousandths of and inch.

In order, the throat plate and the bobbin race are removed and then the counterweight and the drive gear at the other end of the shaft are loosened so that they side. Note the relation of the counterweight to the bobbin race before taking it all apart. You may also have to clean the schmutz off the drive shaft. (and oil it too!)

Now, drop the shaft back in, and slide the bobbin race back into place. Peer into the bobbin race (from the front of the machine is pretty good) with a flashlight and turn the bobbin race by hand to see where the hook (the finger that snatches the thread off the needle to make a stitch) comes in relation to the needle. The needle has a little divot above the eye where the hook should come through. The needle side of the hook should be in line with where the edge of the needle would be if the divot wasn’t there.

This picture is from the side, showing where the hook should be in relation to the needle when the needle is just starting to come up. There is a quiz on this later.

If the bobbin race can’t be moved far enough to make that happen, the bushing that the bobbin race spins against must be moved. There are two options- hit it, or assemble a drawbar to pull it into place. Hitting it is really attractive because it requires so little set up and is so quick. Don’t do it! You can’t control how far the shock will move the bushing (and you can’t move it back if it goes too far) and you’re hitting the bearing surface. The drawbar sounds like work in comparison but all you need is a bolt, a socket wrench head that fits over the end of the bushing to rest on the machine, tape, a nut a washer, and a small bushing (or another washer) to bear against the big bushing. The bolt should fit through the bushing, the socket head, the nut, and the washer. The nut should fit the bolt. You will also need a wrench for the nut and an implement to hold the bolt (screwdriver, wrench, whatever depending on the kind of bolt.)

Assemble the parts thisly, with the tape over the threads of the bolt to prevent scratches inside the big bushing. The socket head is a 7/16ths inch.

Put the drawbar through the big bushing with the nut and sock head on the inside of the machine. Make everything finger tight. Mark the nut so you can tell how far you’ve turned it. Turn the nut until you feel it get tight- the distance between fingertightness and the bushing moving. Now turn the nut about three faces. Make sure that the set screw on the bushing has been loosened. Take the drawbar out, put the bobbin race back in, check to see if the hook is in the right spot. If the hook hits the needle, but the drawbar in the other way, and turn the nut half as far as you did the last time. If it’s too far away, reassemble the same way, repeat. When it’s right, put everything together, and it will work.

I did indeed run around the house screaming when everything worked.

Skeletons!

I keep them on my desk!

This is Mr. Bones. I’ve had him since as long as I can remember.

He lost his upper right armbone several years ago. Since then, his joints have been abused and/or broken to the point where he didn’t really hold together anymore (school is not good for skeletons). Since I need him for a project I’m working on going to start in short order, I needed to fix him.

His injuries consisted of a broken pelvis where it attaches to the spine, broken shoulder blade and wrist on the right side, missing upper armbone on the right side, and a broken clavicle.

This is Mr. Bones right arm assembly. You can see the brass pins I put into his shoulder blade and wrist to replace the broken plastic ones. The replacement bone is made from Sculpey SuperFlex clay because normal Sculpey proved too brittle. The arm twists a little differently than his left arm because I am bad at carving bones.

The two pins are visible in the right half of the pelvis.

I made the pins by measuring the plastic ones, selecting a brass rod of the same diameter and cutting the brass rod into roughly 3/8ths inch pieces with a hacksaw. I then drilled holes into the places from which the pins previously extended and inserted the new pins. All of the joints are a satisfactory press fit. All the drilled holes were drilled by hand with the drill in a pin vice because using the drill press would have been rather exciting.

Corduroy Hexapod

Every year the clarinet section does Spirit Bags for dome. Every year, I make a small stuffed animal for the sad person who gets something from me because small adorable animals are more awesome than candy.

Creative process

• What do I want? Adorable, no bigger than two hands side by side, easy to make.
• What makes things adorable? Big eye spots, fuzzy, looks like it wants a hug, non scary teeth if any, warm or bright colors… (felt, yarn, soft/stretchy corduroy or denim, contrasting threads, lotsa arms/legs)
• Easy to make means two flat pieces that get sewn together around the edges with no shaping at all- but also means the pattern is slightly more complex to take into account the warping the fabric will undergo when the animal is stuffed.

Step 1: The pattern-

Motherly Instincts Gone Awry

I wonder how the joints in a jointed stuffed animal work?

This is the bear. A perfectly innocent and terribly cute bear.

Amp Part 2

(This isn’t actually about the amp, it’s about the thing it is part of now)

I decided I would go back to being 8 years old or so this morning and this is what happened…