Tag: beach

Hannibal Smith had it right

~ Sean Nolan

Being overquoted doesn’t make it any less true — I also love it when a plan comes together. Sure, victory over entropy is always temporary, but it’s still just really satisfying to bring diverse ingredients together into a whole that solves a problem or creates something new in the world.

As an aside, this is the reason I have such little patience for people who turn their noses up at “boring” enterprise problems and only want to work on whatever shiny new thing the media is excited about. Every problem is fun when you treat it an opportunity to smack down the second law of thermodynamics.

Anyways, these days many of my “opportunities” come  in the woodshop; I just finished one that has brought together a ton of different techniques / steps into a result I’m pretty proud of. Just a quick post — let’s see how this pebble + driftwood + epoxy + Glowforge + LED chess board came together!

1-2. Pebbles and Driftwood Grid

A walk on the beach at Whidbey inspired this project. We don’t have a bunch of shells or glass, but we do have a ton of cool rocks — on this day the contrast between bright white quartz and dark black basalt caught my attention and basically screamed out “chess board!” So I planted my behind down in a gravel patch and started collecting pebbles in a bucket.

The idea was to create a grid using interlocking driftwood strips, then fill the strips with pebbles and lock it all in place with epoxy resin. I had a bunch of offcuts left over after milling/gluing driftwood fir blanks for a neighbor (they became really cool mancala boards!) that were perfect. Setting up table saw jigs for repeated cuts like this is great therapy (and this painters tape hack does a great job of keeping strips from getting sucked down under the blade).

3. Epoxy Fill

I love working with epoxy resin, but I hate polishing it. In order to make the board glass-clear top and bottom without that chore, I started with a sheet of clear acrylic and super-glued the grid on top of that. After filling the squares with pebbles I filled them to the top with EcoPoxy Flowcast. This is a nice resin for “deep” pours because it off-gasses less than other products, and doesn’t get quite as hot while curing.

However, Flowcast doesn’t “self-level” nearly as well as more traditional epoxy — the surface ends up just a bit “bumpy” which messes up the gloss. So once the squares were largely full, I turned to TotalBoat TableTop to finish it up. I used blue tape along the bottom edges of the acrylic to protect that surface from underdrips. Which worked, although removing it cleanly was a bit of a chore.

4-5. The Base and Lights

The point of using clear epoxy here was to allow light to pass through the board; just sitting on the table would ruin the effect. After trying a few different ideas, I landed on a simple Glowforge box (thanks again boxes.py) made of white oak painted with black acrylic. The board itself sits on a few braces on the inside so it sticks out about 3/8” or so above the top edge. Easy peasy!

I had some LED strip lighting left over from another project — this stuff is amazing, just snip it to the length you need, mix in 12 volts of power, and you’re off to the races. It even has adhesive backing, so I was able to stick it along the inside of the box pointing inwards. A little hole in the side for a power switch and a bit of soldering to attach a battery pack finished the job.

Almost! It turned out that with the black interior of the box, the light didn’t distribute very well — it was super-bright at the edges but not towards the middle. Not to worry — Lara found some neat adhesive mirror vinyl sheeting that bounces the light around beautifully. NOW it’s finished!

… Almost! I mean, it’s all working and awesome and that’s cool. But I realized that, especially because the board fits pretty snugly into the box, it’d be more convenient to use a power supply vs. a battery that will need to be replaced and likely get corroded after sitting too long. Amazon sells everything, so a barrel socket and power supply are jetting their way to me as I write. No project is ever really done.

And of course, a chess board without pieces isn’t much of a set. Maybe something with my new 3D printer will be the answer here. That plan will also come together — eventually!

15 Minute Beach Bamboo Whistle

~ Sean Nolan

A few weeks ago we got to spend some time in Ventura. What a beautiful spot, despite the (record, just saying) low temps and rainfall. The beach there is fantastic — uncrowded, great sand, interesting driftwood, rocks and seaglass, surfers and fisherfolk to watch, and tons of friendly dogs for Copper to play with. Nothing can top the Whidbey beach, but there’s sure a lot to love in California.

Now don’t get me wrong; I can nap in the sand with the best of them. But there is no better playground than the shore and between kites, metal detectors, sand castles, rock and shell hunting, driftwood collecting, raft and fort building … well, you get the idea. Down in Ventura I added a new activity to the list — carving whistles from bamboo driftwood. Super fun and super easy. All you need is a penknife and a chunk of bamboo, which seems to be everywhere, even up north. I guess the closed cells just float so well they get around.

Here’s how to do it and impress the heck out of every six year old in the neighborhood. Sorry if the older kids give you the “Dad head shake” — comes with the territory.

1. Find a chunk of bamboo with an intact “cell.” The hollow center is closed off wherever you see a raised band going around the outside. About a 1″ diameter piece works well, but it’s not important to be exact here. The length between the bands is also not that important, as short as 6″ will work. 10″ will start to give you a nice deep tone.

2. Cut the piece on the inside of one band and the outside of the one above it. This leaves you with a tube that is open at one end and closed at the other. If you have a saw handy that makes for quick work, but your penknife will do the job. Just make repeated, deep angled cuts in a ring around the piece and eventually you’ll carve away enough that it snaps easily. Then just clean up the edges with your knife. Being able to do the whole project with one tool is part of the fun!

3. A few inches away from the open end, cut a notch. The cut should be vertical on the side facing the open end and slope up maybe 25-40 degrees toward the back. The notch should go about a third of the way into the tube. Perfection here is less critical than you’d think so don’t worry about it too much.

Starting to look like a whistle! But if you blow into the open end now, you’ll note that — nothing interesting happens. You need to direct the flow of air so that it is concentrated onto the sharp back edge of your notch — this is where the magic happens. So….

4. Find a solid stick with a diameter a bit larger than the inside of your tube. We’re going to make a plug that goes all the way from the open end of the tube to just about the front (vertical) edge of the notch. Make a mark on the stick and start whittling it down to fit. Test a lot, because you don’t want it to get too skinny — it should fit into the tube snugly enough to stay on its own and block most of the airflow. Don’t make it too snug though or you’ll break your bamboo trying to push it in. Don’t cut it to length until you’re happy with the fit — it’s much easier to shape the plug while you still have a “handle” to hold onto.

5. Once you’ve got a good fit, shave just a bit off of one side of the plug to flatten it out, creating a channel that will direct airflow onto the notch. This is the one step that can have a big impact on the sound, so start with a small channel and keep testing it out until you get something you like. Small air leaks around the sides don’t matter as long as the majority of the air hits the notch.

That’s it, you’re done! If you want to adjust the sound, the notch and the channel are the key levers. It’s actually pretty easy to get a really rich tone; WOO HOO!

I’ve tried adding holes along the body to change the pitch (like a recorder) but have had mixed results. It works, but can make the sound a lot less consistent — I’m not quite sure what the trick is here yet. Always more to figure out and explore with this kind of thing.

PS. Bonus Dad skills: acorns and blades of grass make killer noise too, albeit a bit more shrill than the bamboo. You’re welcome!