photography – Page 35 – On the road with Jim

New Video Project – Record Racks Box-Boy Is Lose In The Woodshop

Regular readers of this blog already know that I’ve been trying my hand at making videos. I’ve published ten of them on YouTube so far. All but one of them has been autocross recordings using a GoPro as an in-car camera. The other one was a time-lapse session of the gang raising our carport so that we could park The Ritz under it. That video is the only one so far that’s gotten more than a hundred views because it appeals to a broader audience. (If you’re curious, you can view them here.)

I’ve finally come up with a storyline that I can use to make my first video in earnest. It happens to involve music and woodworking, which are two of my other interests. My video will be ‘how-to’ on making some record racks (yes, Virginia, they still make records).

To give you some background, I a fair-sized record collection. I bought my first album when I was in high school, and I’ve been adding to it ever since. I started storing them in a neat system designed by Per Madsen that he sold as part of his RACKIT system. His bright designs efficiently solved media storage while fitting together to make an attractive media center that put our stacked cinder-block shelves to shame. As I collected more records, I’d just order another rack and add it to the pile.

Per Madsen facks loaded with records. — The Per Madsen style racks store up to a hundred records neatly. Yes, they are in alphabetical order.

Out of the blue one day, I got an email from him saying that he was going to retire. He said that he wasn’t going to make any new units and that all of the existing stock was on closeout. I bought up all that I could use, and then they were gone; that was over a decade ago. In our old home, I bought some IKEA shelves that worked, but those didn’t fit in our new home.

We’ve been in this house for over a year now, and Queen Anne has harped about the two unpacked boxes of records still in the dining room. After staring at my media center one evening, I decided that if I couldn’t add more storage horizontally, I needed to stack them higher and decided to make my version of the Madsen racks. I have enough woodworking equipment to replicate everything but his joints. I believe he used hidden glued dowels, but I can get around that with another type of fitting that’s at least as secure. Another significant advantage of making my own is that I don’t have to use red oak. I can use any hardwood that I want.

There are abundant videos on YouTube featuring artisans far more capable than I. It amazes me how some of these guys (and women) produce intricate wood pieces, sometimes without seemingly measuring. I guess that comes with experience. So, my video will be how a journeyman goes about making multiple pieces of furniture that have to fit together precisely.

Per Madsen's rack design. — The rack design is two healthy rectangular ends connected by rails along the bottom and back.

The first step in this project will be measuring and dissecting Per Madsen’s design and make some working drawings. Then I’ll need to come up with an outline of the steps. Finally, I will lay out a storyboard of the shots before I do any filming. I’m guessing that it will take a month to shoot, but then there’s post-processing, so give me till summer before I post it on YouTube. My goal is to have a video that gets more than a thousand views. I’ll update the blog with progress.

Update 05/13/2020

If you’ve been waiting on YouTube to see this video, it never happened. I’ve decided that although I’m competent behind the camera, I’m a bumbling idiot on stage. But, I have completed some of these record racks, and I’ve had traffic because of this post. Here’s how I made my version.

My Record Rack Version - This is the finished version of my record rack - well except for the wire separators. — My Record Rack Version – This is the finished version of my record rack – well except for the wire separators.

I made some minor changes in my design. First of all, I use mortice and tenons for the mainframes. I believe that Mr. Madsen used dowels to connect his, and I don’t have a precise tool to do that. The large surface area of the tenons provides a strong glue-joint, but I pinned each corner with a walnut plug to be sure.

Second, I added a back rail and spaced them equal to the bottom rails. I was afraid that at my age, I would mix them up, so this way, they are interchangeable. I also changed the way they attach to the mainframe. Instead of two wood screws at each joint, I used cross dowels. That means the rails will rotate if forced, but once the records are in, they work fine.

Finally, I drilled holes in the stiles so I can connect units. The significant advantage of using cabinet connectors is that the stacks don’t get unsightly gaps. Without those, the whole grouping has a professional look.

I used birch instead of oak because I prefer the wood to stay white instead of the nasty yellow that you get with aged oak. Besides, with Danish design, Baltic Birch is a natural choice. If that’s not your style, the racks could be made from walnut, cherry, oak, or something more exotic if you have the money. I have the dimensions on pdf if you’re interested. Just contact me via the contact page.

Today, I’m building a set of CD drawers that fit into this system. I have three of the originals, but I never liked how they looked. I changed my design, so the CDs sit like books on a shelf, but with two rows. That makes it easier to flip through my collection. It works better for me. If anybody’s interested, contact me, and I’ll post photos.

Till then . . . jw

Wickenburg Gold Rush Days

Next weekend is Wickenburg’s big annual celebration, Gold Rush Days. The festivities take place beginning Friday the 10^th through Sunday the 12^th. If you picked this weekend to drive to Las Vegas, you might consider an alternate route, because fair goers will pack downtown. However, if you’re at a loss for something to replace football, come on up and join us. The predicted perfect weather is for clear skies and highs in the 70s.

There are multiple activities during the weekend anchored by the carnival area wedged into the open space downtown west of the main traffic circle. Arts and crafts booths are scattered among rides and people selling food that can’t possibly be good for you. Fred will be showing off his classic Chevy truck at the parade and car show on Saturday. There’s a Senior Pro Rodeo at the rodeo grounds and more vendors on the pedestrian bridge over the Hassayampa. It’s a great excuse to spend a day exploring our little hamlet.

Cow skull and posted sign on a fence gate. — A tree-lined drive blocked by a gate decorated with a cow skull and Posted sign.

As for me, I’ll be working indoors at the local artist show inside the city library. I’m entering two photographs for judging; Posted and Salome Motel. The show is open to the public from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm except Sunday when it closes a half hour earlier. I will be acting as host Sunday morning. That means I will be answering questions and handing out ballots for the people’s choice award. If you stop by then, I’ll even fill the form out for you so at least I have a shot at winning something.

It’s supposed to be a fun event to entertain our winter guests before they leave for destinations north. It’s the most excitement we get in this otherwise sleepy little town. I hope you come up and join us and if you come Saturday, be sure to say hi to Fred (I might even be hanging around taking pictures). I’d love to have you stop by the library Sunday and see the works of the talented local artists. Or, as the queen would say, “Y’all come, ya’hear.”

Till then . . . jw

New Winter Showings

As we approach mid January, I’ve already made progress on one of my New Year’s resolutions which was to get my photo work on display in a gallery or show at least four times this year. Last Tuesday, Anne and I took a framed print down to the Wickenburg Art Center (WAC) for display and sale in their gallery. I posted an article last month about having my work juried so that I could take part in local events. A side benefit of the jury process is that I can hang some work in their gallery.

The framed print that we have on display is the 4:5 version of Kluane Lake and Ruby Range that I shot this summer while in the Yukon Territories. It was one of the prints that I submitted for jurying, and since it was ready to go, it was an easy choice.

Kluane Lake a Ruby Range — Kluane Lake and Ruby Range – A framed 20×16 print now on display at the Wickenburg Art Center.

The Wickenburg Art Center gallery is at 188 S. Tegner Street. That’s two blocks south of US60. Tegner is the Wickenburg old main street and the light immediately west of the railroad underpass. If you’re in the area, stop in and enjoy the work local artisans have on display.

My next project is to get two prints ready for the Gold Rush Days Fine Arts Show in February. Those will be on display in the Wickenburg Library from February 10^th through the 12^th. I haven’t decided what to submit yet and perhaps you can help. I need to have the photos printed and framed by the beginning of the month and I think they should have a common theme. Should I submit two images from our trip? Maybe a couple of the local landscapes would be better; or how about a pair of old buildings as a submission? Which two of my images would you like to see hung on the wall? Let’s hear your comments.

Till then.

Resolutions and Revisions

Another new year is here bringing hope that finally, this one will be ‘our year’. It’s a clean slate; a fresh start. That’s why so many resolutions begin with a new year, and they’d probably be more successful if we didn’t have to drag so much of last year’s baggage with us. We at least have to give it a try . . . besides, if the resolution doesn’t make it to the first weekend, what’s the difference?

Snow on the Weaver Range — The Weaver Range white with snow on Christmas morning.

This year ends in a seven, and those are the years I dread. It means I’ve survived another decade. I’m beginning to run out of those. At best, I can count the ones I have left on one hand; at worst, one finger. That’s why I have to put a lot of thought into my New Year’s resolutions.

Top of the World Highway — Clouds kiss the mountain tops along the Top Of The World Highway.

As I’ve written before, the Queen and I have gone through a lot of changes in the past year. We’ve retired, moved to a new town and took a trip years in the planning. Now that the dust has settled, I have more free time. After several months of pondering, I’ve decided to use that time to focus more on my photography. I have a new freedom to go out shooting more often and if you’ve visited my Web Site recently, you may have noticed that it’s been under going several revisions.

Merritt Pass Palo Verde — The after-glow of a sunset lights a Palo Verde tree in Merritt Pass.

For almost seventeen years now, I’ve been publishing this newsletter and my subscription base, although small, has been very loyal. Some issues have been easy to write, especially when Anne or I do something outrageous that make for a good story. When that happens, my fingers can’t type fast enough to keep up with the words coming out of my head. The newsletter seems to write itself. Other times, I’ll stare at a blank screen for hours while trying to think of something to say.

The Date Creek Range at sunset on Christmas Day

During our trip last summer, I tried my hand at blogging. It started off shaky, but after I got the hang of it, it became easier. I found that I could come up with something to write about and do it more often than on a monthly schedule. Some topics were whimsical while others were more somber.

I’ve discovered several advantages in using the blog format. It allows me to write without scheduling constraints. I can communicate when I have something to say, whether it is daily or weekly. I can cover a broader range of topics. There is a built-in mechanism for you to respond and leave public comments so you can see other people’s reactions. Search engines index the blog articles, so readers can Google (Yahoo or Bing) our discussions (you won’t believe how many people want to know about Chicken Alaska). Finally, the blog is open to a world-wide audience.

Wenden Sunset — Sunset near Wenden Arizona December 2016.

With those arguments in mind, I’ve decided to move my regular newsletters into my blog pages. This will be the last regular newsletter I send via email. After that, I will only be publishing news on my blog. At the end of January, I will drop this email list and close my Emma account.

I am publishing this exact newsletter, word for word, here and on the blog, which you can see if you click on this link. I would be very much honored if you followed. If you would like an email notification when I publish a new article there is an easy way for you to sign up. At the end of the article, scroll down to the section titled Leave a Reply.

At the bottom of the Reply section:

Check the box that says “Notify me of new posts by email”
Click the POST COMMENT button. That will trigger a new dialog box where you enter your email address. You’re welcome to add a few words in the comment box, but it’s optional.

I hope to see all of you on the blog, but if that’s not your choice, I’d like to thank you for being a loyal subscriber these years and maybe we’ll meet On the Road.

Till then

Learning Video

Yesterday, I posted a new video on YouTube. In August 2015, I bought Adobe’s Premiere Pro, a video editing software, and since then, I’ve been trying to learn how to use it. A lot of photographers complain about how complex Adobe’s Photoshop is, but Premiere Pro is way more challenging.

This is my tenth post on YouTube and the first since April. All but one of them is about the amateur car racing that I do. It’s a natural subject for movies. Besides, I can rationalize making the films as a tool to improve my driving skills.

One of the cameras that I own, the Sony A7r, shoots video in ultra high-definition, that’s the format on newer TVs now. So, last season, Jeff (who was co-driving my car at the time) and I bolted it to the passenger side headrest. I made a clunky bracket out of wood that held the camera securely; although there’s still some vibration. We filmed several events with mixed results and gave up on the Sony because we couldn’t get the metering or microphone to work correctly. Instead, I picked up a used GoPro off eBay. It’s a small video camera made for shooting action videos. The focus is set, there are very little other adjustments, and at one tenth the weight of the Sony, the camera mount is now overkill.

Shooting in-car video is very common on YouTube. Mostly, they’re a record of the driver’s best run. They have a beginning title, and the film clip . . . that’s it. They’re of little interest to anyone except the small community of autocrossers.

Because I was learning film making techniques, I wanted to go beyond documenting a single run. I tried to make simple stories out of my videos. With each new video, I added new refinements. I learned how to do fade, cross fades, titles, end slides, and as hokey as it sounds, I worked on creating my brand . . . a simplified interpretation of the MGM lion, as it were.

For this video, I made off-screen commentaries to help make the story-line clearer. To do that, I wrote little scripts and then recorded them using an audio program. After editing the snippets, I inserted them into the video at the proper places. As a result, I see improvement although there is a lot more work to do. If you care to see my new video, here’s the link: https://youtu.be/YdeNB7kr98s

I welcome any comment you have . . . it is a learning experience after all.

Till later . . . jw

New Image 12/07/16

This morning I added another image to the New Work section of my Website. It’s called Rental Canoes at Lake Louise and I took this photograph in June this year while on our Alaska journey. I originally published the picture in the blog entry; Lake Louise – Alberta. This is the official edition as processed on my office set-up.

This image is a cluster of red rental canoes tied up at the Lake Louise dock. It rained off and on during the day and only a few hearty souls ventured out onto the lake. In the background is the swanky Fairmont Chateau at Lake Louise. If you travel to Alberta Canada, Lake Louise is a must stop, and if you have the where-with-all to spring for a room and/or meal at the hotel, you won’t be disappointed; highly recommended.

Till then – jw

Frame Making Part II

Murphy’s Law strikes again (you really didn’t see that coming?), and as a result, my three frames turned into two. I’m generally pleased with how they came out, but as you would expect, there’s room for improvement. It’s that strive for perfection that keeps us going.

In the last post, I had concerns about getting the size right, because I already bought mats and glass cut to 28×20 inches. I could shave a little off of the mats, but not the glass. I wanted them to drop in the ¼ inch rabbet, but not be too sloppy. Figuring out the cut length of each side was straight forward. If you managed to stay awake in high school geometry, you’ll remember that the sides of a rectangle add up to 360°, so the four corners are 90°. The cut angle on the frame ends is half that, or 45°. The geometry teacher also went off on something called The Pythagorean Theorem, you know, the square of the long side of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides.

By now I’ve made Queen Anne’s eyes roll into the back of their sockets. Don’t worry, you don’t need to know any of that, nor do you need your calculator with a square root key. Just remember that 45° is the magic number where both short sides of the triangle are equal. Since the width of my frames from the rabbet to the outside edge is exactly ½ inch, I need to add ½ inch to the length . . . at both ends. In my design, the frames outside dimensions are 29×21 inches. Since I wanted them to fit loose, I added another 1/32 inch.

Now that I had all the calculations out-of-the-way it was time to cut some wood. The first thing it did was to set my saw’s miter gauge to . . . 55°, and made two 29 inch cuts. Then I laid them out on the table, and like a dork, I tried for fifteen minutes to figure out why they weren’t square.

After I discovered my mistake, I thought that I could salvage the two cuts by cutting them again for the short side. About my Incra miter gauge; . . . it’s very precise with stops that can be set to 1/10°. I’ve added a Incra fence to it that helps me make repetitive cuts, but it’s kind of thick and its measuring tape pivots in front of the miter gauge, so it needs resetting each time the angle changes. It’s simple enough to do; I just set the stop to 10 inches, cut a piece of scrap wood, measure the actual cut length, and then adjust the tape to match.

Cutting The Frame Sides — With the Incra miter gauge and fence, it’s easy to make accurate repetitive cuts. The trick is getting the set up right in the first place.

Now, I’m already recovering from one mistake and I’m mentally beating myself up, so I’m not thinking about if I change one thing, how it affects another, and I’m rushing. I set the miter gauge to 45° and double checked it and made sure all the fine adjustments were set to zero. I set the stop to 10 inches, grabbed a piece of scrap off the rack and began my test cut. As the blade goes through the wood, I notice that my brand new Tenryu carbide blade is also cutting off the corner of my Incra aluminum fence. At 55° the fence cleared the blade, it didn’t at 45°. Fortunately, the blade went cleanly through the aluminum without exploding, but I’m sure it took a beating in the process.

Missing Fence Corner — Notice the 45 degree angle cut on the gold fence. It wasn’t there a minute ago. Fortunately, the carbide tipped blade took the cut in stride.

I had to take a moment and step back for a breath and a few well placed words normally spelled with symbol keys. When gathered, I adjusted the fence to clear the saw blade, and cut another piece of scrap. After correcting the tape, I was ready to shorten my first two pieces. I ran the piece through the saw and realized that I held it against the fence backwards. Now it was too short.

Believe it or not, I actually did wind up cutting the rest of the pieces correctly. Once I had everything set it was easy. I just had to focus. And with the fence stop, I could take a cut off a longer piece, by cutting the first miter, flip it over and cut the other side. They came out perfect. As I said, I wound up with enough for two frames and some pieces I can eventually use for smaller frames.

Glueing Up The Frame — The jigs that I have let me glue up two corners of the frame at a time while the other corners are held in place with right angle aluminum corners. A better solution would be a clamp that added lateral pressure while holding the miter in place.

The next step was to glue the four sides together. I have some aluminum jigs to hold the corners together at right angles. They work really well except they don’t exert any lateral pressure to the joints. The glue has to set up without pressure. End grain joints are not very strong, so I planned on making a spline joint after they dried. That would be strong enough to hold the glass.

Cutting A Slot For A Spline — This jig was the first that I made a couple of years ago. I didn’t expect that it would take this long to use. It holds the frame upside down so a slot is cut into each corner.

After getting a table saw a couple of years ago, the first jig I made was one for cutting spline slots in frames. It’s simply two pieces of plywood attached to a couple of mesquite runners. It holds a frame (or box) at an angle so you can run it through a saw. Then you cut wood in 1/8^th inch slices and glue them into the open slot. After they dry, you trim off the excess, sand and finish. Since this was the first time I used it, I set the depth of the saw blade too deep. It needs to be less than the thickness of the wood piece you’re slicing. I was using standard one by (4×4), so I shouldn’t go any deeper than 5/8 inch into the frame.

Inserting Spline Into The Corner Slot — A piece of wood, cut to the thickness of the slot, is glued in the corner to reinforce the joint. After it dries, the excess then trimmed and sanded flush.

Finally there’s the finishing fiasco. I wanted to have my frames ready for the Museum Show last week, so I used materials on hand. I wanted a black stain with a clear top coat. The local hardware only had oil based stains on hand and I use normally use a water based finish coat, so mixing the two isn’t possible. I decided I could spray some shellac and lacquer for the last finish and bought a couple of cans of both. When I put a coat of shellac over the black stain as a sanding sealer, it looked good . . . until I started sanding it. The sandpaper took off the shellac and most of the black stain. It looked retched.

I didn’t have water-borne black stain, but I did have a very dark brown. I mixed it with the acrylic sanding sealer in a one to one mix and brushed it on the frames. After it dried, I tried sanding it, and even that quickly got down to the base wood. The stain hadn’t penetrated the poplar enough to keep the color during sanding. As a last resort, I applied two coats of the colored sanding sealer letting the frames dry after each coat.

On close inspection, they look awful, but are good enough at a distance. Fortunately they weren’t lit up with a hot spotlight at the show, so they looked good in the dark. After the show, we hung the framed prints in the bedroom where they look just fine.

Finished Product — Well, . . . they’re finished until I get the process under control and make better ones. I wouldn’t sell this pair, but as prototypes, they do what I wanted . . . raise the print away from the wall and simply set off the image.

I’m going to try another type of wood on my next frames. I’m thinking about birch or alder. They’re in the price range of poplar and neither of the former has the green streaks of the latter. I’m leaning towards the birch, because I understand it’s easier to work with than the maple I’ve worked with in the past.

I’ll keep you posted as I learn more.

Till then – jw