The router wasn't able to get into the
corner so I had to work this area by hand.
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I used a scrap piece of wood as a sanding block which worked great for
this. And it went quickly to.
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The next thing I'll be working on is some clear plastic.
I plan on printing out the information for each piece of material and
I'll use this plastic to cover it with, like a plaque would have. At first glance
it looks like I'm machining the wood here. Actually the wood is being
used as a clamping aid, which is helping me hold down the plastic (arrows).
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I'll be using three screws to hold the plastic down.
Here I'm drilling the holes for the screws. After drilling I chamfered
them all for flathead screws. I drilled the ends first and then moved to
the center. I did this for both pieces of plastic.
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I placed both plastic pieces exactly where I wanted them and held them in
place using tape. Once they were in position, I drilled the screw holes.
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Once the holes were drilled, I screwed them in by hand
to make threads in the wood. And wouldn't you know it, two of them broke
off while I was doing this. Now I know better than this because these
screws are made out of brass. What I should have done was
use a screw made out of steel to prevent this from happening. I had to drill them both out
on my milling machine and then re-thread them. This didn't take long but
could have been avoided.
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I sanded everything with 180 and then 220 grit
paper.
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A close up of the base before I put a finish on it.
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This is a piece of titanium that got from my work
that started out as a large ring. It
was a scrap piece that I had to machine square first and then I turned
it on a lathe. I used a three jaw chuck to turn it with and as you can see I
didn't have much room for error while doing this. I did this for
all the irregular shaped pieces and once everything was the correct size
and length, I was ready to weigh them all.
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One evening when Aidan and his mom, Stefanie came over
for dinner, I had my grandson help me weigh each piece of material. The digital scale
that you see below came from my work and is very accurate. As we used it, I had Aidan write down how much each one weighed (in grams).
The piece on the scale is copper.
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In the foreground you can see a box of brass 'standards'. These
standards get
calibrated each year and are used to verify that the scale is weighing correctly.
The piece on the scale is plastic.
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I printed out a list of the materials that I'd be using
and you can see Aidan has written down all the weights. I guessed at which one would be the heaviest to the lightest
and I came
close but I had to switch two of them around (arrows). As we weighed all
the pieces I wrote it's corresponding number on each one using a felt marker.
The reason for this is because I wouldn't even know the difference between mild steel and stainless steel
if they were placed side-by-side. Yes, those two metals really do look
the same.
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