Clever Title #1

 Things are happening.

I began shaping the feet using the bandsaw I materialized earlier. It had no problem cutting 2.25" ash.

I cleaned the cuts with the spindle sander and routed the edges to 1/4" round.

 I cut material away from the vertical supports for the upper mounting piece or whatever. I also routed the edges of these supports.

Test fit everything together. The mortises for the cross beams needed filed at this point.

I glued and clamped the vertical supports into their mortises. The clamps provided just enough pressure to hold the supports in place.

SAME.

Here you can see the upper mounting pieces installed. No glue for this. I only used 4 countersunk wood screws to hold everything solid. 

Another test fit. The vertical supports that extended below into the feet were trimmed flush with the feet.

 The horizontal cross beams neat mounted to the vertical parts, so T-nuts were recessed into them to provide a nut for a bolt to anchor. This required a series of holes to be drilled to allow the nut to seat flush and strongly into the beams.

This wide piece has 4 t-nuts (2 per side) while the lower, thinner piece has only 2 t-nuts (1 per side). Holes were drilled into the vertical supports to allow the beams to bolt to the verticals.

With a few holes drilled in the mounting brackets, the piano was attached. With everything tightened, there is almost no wobbling of the piano. It's much more sturdy than I would have predicted.

M5 bolts hold the piano down.

I still need to trim the ends of the cross beams.

Wonderful.

My next step is to find a good mix of stains to match the fake wood on the piano. I will stain the stand and finish it with minwax polycrylic. I am also planning a matching piano bench.

More to come.

Sing us a song, it's a piano stand.

 I needed a proper stand for my digital piano, so I'm building one. I've finally gained enough motivation to do more woodworking. I designed the whole thing in AutoCAD using dimensions from commercially available stands and real pianos. I've learned more about AutoCAD "Layout" features which helped make the plotting easier. The wood I'm using here is reclaimed ash ceiling panels from a house that had smoke damage. They don't have any 'flutes' or whatever you call them on the bottom, so there's very little waste beyond removing the tongue and groove.

I start with picking the lengths I need from the pile, seen on the right. I keep the plan printouts atop the appropriate length so I know which piece is for what.

 I then cross cut the pieces to length and ripped down one side. You can see the plans here next to there respective pieces.

I ripped the remaining side to achieve the proper width.

Two long glued lengths form the "footrest" cross beam. This created a satisfyingly strong and heavy piece of hardwood lumber that could easily knock a person unconscious. The faces were planed before glued together.

The rest of the pieces were planed to a consistent thickness.

 I had to biscuit join two pieces to achieve a width necessary for the pieces the piano will be mounted to. The next picture should clear up what it's for.

 The 6 sided piece above is the biscuit joined piece. The grain needs to be in this direction for maximum strength. This is only a mock up of the final design.

These are the two cross members. I did not intentionally choose these pieces for their grain appearance. They look brilliant. You can see some flame in the ash on the thinner piece on the right.

The cross members need a mortise to sit in, so I made this template out of 3/4" plywood.

After a number of slow and careful passes (ash is quite hard), I've cut them out. They will need a bit of filing at this point so the cross members fit.

This the beginning of the feet. I make a mortise with three glued layers. The vertical braces in the previous picture will sit as 'tenons' in these.

A quick test fit. The cross members are a little tight. The feet will be shaped on my bandsaw and tidied up with the spindle sander. The rest will be put together soon. 

I plan to finish this with a dark red stain and polycrylic semigloss to match the simulated wood grain on my digital piano (Yamaha P120).

More soon. Goodbye

-A

Bandsaw: Update 15

Here's a pretty big update. The bandsaw is essentially done. The electronics system isn't complete, so can only I turn the saw on by plugging it in. I plan to wire up a relay controller box with a STOP/GO switch on the frame. The relay will run 12V so the STOP/GO switch doesn't need to be enclosed like it would for 120V. I also plan to eventually incorporate an LCD screen powered by a PIC to display some data such as motor current, blade speed, and possibly blade tension. That will be later. Here are some pictures.

The last little piece to build was this extra cover for the front of the motor. It's just the usual plywood laminated with veneer. A maple wedge holds it to the frame.

My shipment of knobs and draw latches arrived from McMaster Carr faster than I received the invoice. I've bought the shafts, shaft collars, and bearings from them.

 The draw latches are spring tensioned latches. I chose these over others because they were the only few that would lie roughly center over the enclosure 'seam'. The knobs were used for the under-table cover, table trunions, blade tracking, blade guide column, and blade guide depth (not shown).

Another angle. Now I need to dismantle it all. Hooray.

I haven't gotten a shot of inside the lower wheel enclosure, so here it is. I had removed the table and trunion mounts at this point.

NUDE. I used a small block plane to bevel and round the edges. 

Brought it outside for an all day sanding marathon. I used a random orbital sander, 100 grit at first.

yep.

I then hand sanded everything to 180 grit, paying close attention to the areas that will be visible.

 Then stained it. It took a long time to pick a good stain. I didn't know what color to choose that would compliment the red-ish tigerwood and light maple. I could have left it naked and just clearcoated it, but I don't think I would have liked that. I went with "Early American" Minwax stain. I had some darker ones, but they would have been too dark.

Here's all the parts minus the frame, stand, blade, and belt. I need to sand everything for finishing with Minwax Polycrylic semi-gloss.

I made sure to remove any glue spots from the major pieces.

I believe this was coat 3 from the enclosure parts. The frame had to wait a day before applying a finish.

 The frame clearcoated. It's hard to tell the difference with this picture.

Once all the pieces got 3 coats and 48 hours cure, I began to reassemble. I needed to improve the motor mount, so I drilled some counterbores for the mounting bolts' nuts to fit. I won't have access to the underside of the hex bolt to tighten these once the frame is attached to the stand, so with this I can secure the bolts to the frame once and not have to adjust them. The scrap piece shown above helped center my forstner bit.

The first few pieces are installed.

The motor installed, initial spin-up. Splendid. 

 Bottom enclosure done. The upper wheel mount assembly was installed and lubricated with some bar soap. The applied finish against itself has a high coefficient of friction and tends to lock any moving parts in place. The soap helped well, and made the saw smell nice.

Boom. Done. I still need to trim that drawer to fit.

 

The color scheme turned out quite well. The tigerwood is a little too close to the frame color, but overall it's better than I expected.

NICE

WOW ANDREW, NICE JOB.

YOU DID IT.

I will call this project complete. The electronics will need to be done, but as far woodworking is concerned, I am done. I hope that was fun to follow for those who did. I had an incredibly wonderful time building this. This took me roughly 4 months to build. I spent about 4 hours a day, about 3-4 days a week working on it, with a few 8 hour days on the weekend. I'd say I spent roughly 300-350 hours building this. That may be a ridiculous amount of time. A lot of it was experimentation and planning for the enclosure design and construction.

The table has its finish applied and is curing.

I'll perhaps have a small update later.

Thanks.