The Poet Creek Express - Foamie Hybrid

[Mary C]

KC you are making fine progress. I am impressed and given me an idea. Perhaps you need to build that little wood burning stove of Grants that would keep it warm in there. That stove is so cute It gives me some ideas for when I build my shop up. I might have to build one for me.

Mary C.

[KCStudly]

I have a nice little wood stove in storage that I offered to install, but Karl was reluctant to let me put another hole in the roof before sealing the eaves and insulating. A whole other project.

[GPW]

Just an idea ... can you run the stovepipe through a window , Maybe an expanding adapter like used for window ACs , with a hole in it for the triple wall connector , out and then up ....

[KCStudly]

Maybe. I think the landlord would prefer not, and I don't blame him.

[GPW]

Kind of leaves you in the Cold ? ... At least it’s Inside ... could be worse eh ?

[KCStudly]

could be worse

If Karl had not invited me to build at his shop we would be looking at a plywood weekender, and cobbled together at that!

I can work around the worst of the weather. Plenty of jobs to do.

[GPW]

Hmmm? a plywood Weekender... 1/4” plywood, minimum framing ...foam on the outside , canvas ... That could be quite Nice eh ? Shouldn’t be hard to cobble one together...

[GPW]

Surfing last night found Pumpkin’Chunkin’2013 ...

[KCStudly]

Yes. Mr. B had several cameo appearances, and for a brief second they posted his name and our 1059 ft shot result. However, I was disappointed when they put up the standings after day one they stated that only three teams had made the board, and then proceeded to show 1st, 2nd, 6th, and 7th, skipping over our 3rd place standing at that time.

I realize that they have to try to predict the outcome so that they are in the best position to document it, and they can't be everywhere all of the time, but it is also a bit disappointing to see them twist the story. They frequently changed the order of the shots and out right misstate how the proceedings occurred, all in an effort to build to a false crescendo.

For example, in the centripetal and unlimited catapult categories they showed last year's winners shooting first, when in fact they shot last. You can tell by the order that the machines are placed on the field.

Also, many of the sequence shots were compiled with footage from previous years. They showed Bob Carbo (Onager) loading a pumpkin in his pouch that was labelled pit 89, when in fact the torsion division all had pit numbers in the 100's starting with us at pit 103. There was even footage spliced in from several years ago when we were at the other end of the field where Mr. B and Chucky3 where pitted next to each other.

The "pumpkin coming to earth" shots are all completely fabricated, too. Cameramen throwing pumpkins off of a ladder to the ground in front of a camera.

The scene where Kari gets out of the truck and paints a line at the 1 mile mark was down at the entrance behind the campers, when in fact the 1 mile mark is about a mile to her left out in front of the row of machines shown in the background. A necessary ruse for the sake of safety, I am sure.

Still, I think they do a great job of covering the event, and it is fun to watch!

I managed to pick out a couple of our team members in various scenes, usually showing them from the back.

[GPW]

Really interesting to watch , and kinda’ scary seeing some of those big ones shed parts ... Cool for the Brave !!!

Is “Pie" a post launch term where the projectile has exceeded the “Speed of Pumpkin” ... ?

[KCStudly]

Pie is made with mushed pumpkin, so mushed pumpkin is pie. It is very interesting to observe the different varieties. Some blow chunks. Some are more like a mist or vapor. Occasionally you'll get a centripetal separation in flight, kind of like a skeet/clay pigeon being shot.

Sometimes it's like sea spray and blows back in your face. When it is not your own pumpkin it can be funny, silly, refreshing, sympathetic. When it is your own pumpkin it is disappointing and discouraging. Always an opportunity for analysis.

There's a saying that is pertinent when you find a bit of cork in your wine, something like, "if you drink wine you will break a few corks". Well, if you toss pumpkins, you will break a few. This year everyone on the torsion line was commenting about how the pumpkins were soft this year, and we (the collective "we") had more than our usual share of pies.

[KCStudly]

I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving! We did.

I put another 4-1/2 hrs in today working on the dry fit and screwing the front cabinet ribs into place.

Despite the appearance of the previous pics, there was a lot more fitting to do to get the riblets situated. They were all sitting proud of the profile, so I needed to take a skim cut off of the bottom of them.

Here I have clamped a waster piece of wood to the table saw fence and plunged up into it by raising the blade. This will allow me to take a skim cut from nothing to the thickness of the blade.

Also note the backer clamped to the miter, and the wedge piece helping to stabilize the curved riblet, which is also clamped to the miter backing piece. This allowed me to run the piece thru the saw taking a blade width while keeping my hands well clear of the blade.

Top view of the skim cut.


A better look at the wedge. All I had to do was hold the outer leg of the riblet down to the table (probably didn’t even need to do that).


Once I was happy with the fit of the riblets up against the walls, I marked and cut the dadoes in the front ledger for the riblets that fit behind the stiles in the front cabinet face frame. Here is a dry fit on the work table.



Using a couple scraps of 5 mm ply (or luan) as spacers I was able to trim and fit the middle pair of riblets.




I was feeling pretty good about how things were going and that means more pictures! I’m a mechanical person by nature, not so much a free form artist. My craft tends to be geometrical and one of form following function in construction, rather than coloration or organic shapes. To me this is art.




So now that I had the riblets fitting pretty well I needed to figure out how to get all of it fastened for glue up. There is nothing at the front to screw that front ledger to and not much meat left on the ends of the ledgers to screw into the walls. It’s all part of the plan to use less wood (...yeah, right ) and therefore have a leaner build. Just need to work a little harder on the details. That, and my desire to minimize the number of exposed fasteners for aesthetic reasons, meant that I had to get creative at keeping the fasteners from clashing with each other.

I used the Kregg drill on the side riblets, but experimented on some scraps to set my own angles and depth of the seat. This let me screw the side riblets into the blocking in the walls, but avoided running into the pocket screws of the face frame and ledger.




By changing the angle of the pockets, I was also able to minimize the visual impact; the heads of the screws are recessed and the pockets are not as long and tapered as they would have been if using the jig.

For the middle riblets I opted to screw up thru the bottom of the ledger at the front even though it meant screwing pretty much into the end grain of the rib, and having the screw heads visible on the underside of the ledger. I figured that it would be difficult to see any way due to the catchall key shelf underneath, and there just is not that much meat in the ledger to set an angled screw.

At the top of the riblets I had plenty of meat to run the pockets in thru the "back" of the ribs, and plenty of meat in the face frame to screw into, but the curve of the riblet would not clamp into the Kregg jig cleanly. So I needed to get creative. I shimmed the riblet off of the table and clamped it down with one of the holes in the drill guide centered (nearly), then used the framing square to align the drill guide and clamped that down.


I ended up adding a couple more clamps and fiddled with the location of the hole and depth (by sliding the drill into the upper hole in the jig and eyeballing how it looked over the top of the clamped rib) until I was happy with the screw depth and angle.

Then I screwed everything together dry. They only strayed by about 1/16 inch here and there, but I didn’t want any gaps between the ceiling panel and ribs, even if it is inside of the cabinet, so I worked the edges of the wall with the little matchbox plane and small sanding block to where the ribs and walls matched very nicely.




Happy.

Now I just need things to warm up a tad, just 5 deg’s or so, so that I can lay down some more poly and glue.

[PKCSPT]

I agree KC, it is art. I think every one who makes tear is an artist and I enjoy looking at every one.
Can't wait to see this one done.

[KCStudly]

Thank you Karen.

Can't wait to see this one done.

I would settle for 95/ct done and campable, but I do agree; can't wait to be cooking on an open fire in Poet Creek Campground.

[GPW]

Really starting to come together now !!!