Back in the Saddle

Update on my "situation" time.

Well, on the employment front, after more than six months off Ive got another short contract as an Engineer with my usual employer ... This is great news since it means that they are still willing to use contractors which I was not at all certain about since the company had been acquired by a larger company since I last worked there.
Ive been working again now for over a month and while its with a group I don't usually work with, I'm settling in well and enjoying it.  In truth though, a big chunk of the satisfaction is coming from a bank account that is now slowly increasing rather than rapidly decreasing :)
And my contract currently goes till end November only but there is plenty more work they need done (till end Feb or so) so there is a good chance Ill get an extension which I'm not counting on but which I would be very happy to get... we shall see.

On other fronts, its heading into winter again and I'm preparing to get back in the saddle of a Skeleton sled too.
My neck has been giving my quite a bit of discomfort for the last six months or so but I think that has a lot to do with me using non-optimal glasses for some of the things I do and so Ive got some new glasses and it seems to be helping a bit... But that not withstanding, Ive really been sitting-on-the-fence about sliding again this season.
I was feeling like I probably would not slide this year and then my friend Mat decided to buy a new sled and sell his old one... And well, since I had a job again... I couldn't help my self, so I bought myself a beat up old skeleton sled!

Now Skeleton sleds are about as rare as hens teeth in the Vancouver area. there are a few more of them in circulation at the Calgary track which is the base of all Canada-wide sliding activities. And because of their scarcity they are pretty expensive items... A brand new one from the leading manufacturer (Bromley of UK) will set you back well over $10,000. There are 3 or 4 other big names in sleds about and a few less known ones too but there are only a few dozen of each sold in the whole world each year.
Anyway, I am now the proud owner of an aging Davenport sled (which were the world leading marque about 20 years ago) and its worth about $1000 or so. Its been used quite a bit and there is some slack in the bushings now so it rattles a bit but other than that and the beaten up fibreglass base, its in pretty good nick.
And of course, me being me, Ive given it a bit of a renovation over the last few weeks...

So fist I took it all apart and had a look at it mechanically. Here is what the "skeleton of a skeleton sled" looks like:

It looks like just a few bits of steel welded together that you can bolt some runners too... But its actually a carefully engineered set of pieces that allow us to steer by body-weight shift...

 The front runner attachment point... Not much to see here other than the runner bolting in to one of the main stringers along the side of the sled at the front... The U shaped bar on the left is a front "bumper" which is the bit that hits the ice wall at about 130kmh when we steer it wrong :)

And at the back end you can see the runner bolts in again and there is another smaller bumper too... But there is some other stuff here too: Like at the front there is also the cross-member to be seen that keeps the two sides of the sled attached to each other but its not just a flat piece of steel, its actually a very slim "I" beam profile... and this stops the cross-member being vertically or horizontally flexible but allows it to be "twist" flexible... very important.  And there is that bolt sticking out the end of the stringer... Which allows us to squeeze the runner from the ends which makes it bow into a vertical curve and the whole runner/stringer becomes a spring bed that is balancing on its mid section on the ice ... as we rocket along at 130kmh.  And there is another bar ther tht is attached to the back of the stringer... That's the steering paddle... It allows the pilot to put lots of "emphasis" on one rear corner of the sled runner with pressure from one knee ...and twists the chassis to lift the opposite runner off the ice at the same time.

 And the "saddle" is what we call the padded metal cage on to of the sled that we lay our chest down in when we slide (arms on the outside of the cage and griping the steel bars at the back edge (so we don't fly out of the sled when we get air in the corners cos we mis-timed the exit... at 130Kmh.

But that saddle isn't one piece... Its split in two with an axle connecting the two halves at the front... again this allows the weight shift to maximize differences in loading the back corners of the sled so we can steer.

But all the intricacies of the chassis aside, I only slightly modified it by adding larger knee paddles (cos I'm taller than the previous owners and my knees were hanging off the edge :)
But the ratty old belly pan needed lots of work (it was cracked and crazed from years of use.
So I stripped off all the old coatings and paint and sanded it all down. Then I got some slow set epoxy and some black pigment and put a layer over the whole thing... Its self leveling and very penetrating despite its high viscosity so it filled all the old divits and worked into all the tiny hair-line cracks in the old gell coat. I'm hoping it will also stay just a tiny bit flexible so that it wont shatter like the old gel coat did as it aged... Stuff takes forever to cure though... It dripped off the edges for over 24 hours I kid you not.

So that was my base coat but it seemed a bit dull to just have another plain black sled, so I went surfing the internet for some sort of art to put on it... And came up with this... Dragon motif.

 Its maybe a bit fanciful I thought, but what the heck... I can always sand it down and start again if I don't like it :)

So, I made a simple stencil by cutting it out of paper and taping the paper to the sled pan. Then I sprayed adhesive over the stencil and quickly removed the paper... This left me with a sticky image of a dragon on the sled pan. Then I put gold leaf on the glue (what doesn't every one have a gold leafing kit laying around??? I know I do!)  And then I added a perimeter of glow in the dark paint to the image by hand ... cos I like it when the dragon glows as we ride up to the top of the track in the back of a cold wet pick-up truck in the dark of night ... Clearly I'm a child at heart :)))

 And then I put another layer of epoxy (clear coat this time) over the whole thing ... and waited another three days for it to cure...

And then I bolted the tray back on the chassis, put the padding back in the tray, and put the top cover back on the sled... And I guess I'm ready to go sliding again... Head first at 130Kmh and about 4Gs for about 60 seconds with my face just cm off the ice :) ... Lord preserve me from my own foolishness!  :)

Yep, Back in the Saddle indeed.

Another Table Top

Years ago, I bought a "Turkish Grill" (which is a large copper bowl on a low stand) to use as a fire-pit on my deck. And I built a stand for it to raise it up to about 50cm off the deck so that it would be comfortable to sit around in deck chairs (as we do here, rather than on our haunches as I imagine the original users would have).

And then I also got creative and built a perimeter "table" that was about 30cm wide and got some small and expensive coloured glass tiles and made a nice mosaic pattern for the table-top...

Skip forward about ten years and that perimeter table-top that I made has seen better days. It was built by gluing the tiles to cement board and then grouting in the gaps, but over the years it has not stood up to the test of Vancouver winters with lots of rain and freeze-thaw cycles etc, and its become rather tattered about the edges... And I have to admit that though it looked nice, it was not actually very functional since it wasn't wide enough to use as a real table, and cold drinks do tend to get rather hot when placed only cm from a fire! (yeah, maybe I didn't really think the whole thing through in the original plan :)

So, its time to either rebuild it or throw it out. And since I spent so much on those pretty tiles I decided I should try the rebuild path...

So, first I had the laborious task of peeling off each tile and individually scraping off the adhesive and the grout... It took me about a month to slowly work through that task!... There were about 5000 individual tiles to "process"!

The original perimeter table-top

Detail of the original mosaic pattern.

Its supposed to be the sun in the centre and ocean waves around the edge.

 But rather than duplicating the old design, I decided that it would be better to just make a dedicated table for use on my deck, separate from the Turkish grill/fire-pit. I figured that a table of about 1m diameter would be good, and I wanted to duplicate the same style of mosaic pattern cos I liked the original a lot.
So, first I did some arranging of tiles to try to determine what the new repeating pattern of tiles should be...

Initial pattern for 30degree repeats.

More detailed pattern.

Then it was time to build the table...
I decided Id try to cast the table-top out of reinforced concrete so that it would last better in the winters here... And to ensure the tiles were really solidly bonded to the concrete I decided to build the table in an inverted layer-cake fashion.
So, I made a 4-5cm high perimeter wall with a strap of flat steel and "glued" it down to a sheet of melamine board with bees-wax. Then I covered the board inside the perimeter with a thin layer of bees-wax so that I could stick the tiles down and slowly build up the full mosaic pattern.

The perimeter, the segmented circular plan, and the tub of all the tiles.

The melamine board covered in wax ready for pattern building.

 Then over the next week or so I spent hours sitting on the deck pushing tiles into the layer of wax after the sun had warmed it up and made it soft.

The final mosaic pattern finished and ready for the concreting stage.

Then the big day came and I got a bag of high strength concrete mix (contains higher percentage of cement than usual as well as synthetic fibres that give it lots more tension strength than regular concrete.
So, first I mixed up a small batch of the concrete but I added  lots of black grout mix to it and removed lots of the larger gravel from the mix (before adding the water) with a sieve. I spread this over the tiles and worked it in to all the gaps.
Then I immediately mixed up another batch of the concrete with full aggregate and somewhat less grout, and spread that over the first layer. Then I laid a couple of sheets of wire mesh with a 1.25cm square pattern (pre cut to fit inside the perimeter circle) and poured more concrete over the top and made sure it was well "bonded" with the previous layer of mix.

... And then I found I was out of concrete but my slab was not thick enough ... (typical lack of full planning by me )... so I rushed off to the hardware store and got another bad of concrete mix (slightly different type but still with fibre reinforcing) and mixed it up and filled the last of the perimeter.
Then it was time to wait...

I waited three days and then, with the help of a friend, flipped the whole cured assembly upside down and left it on the deck again for the sun to warm it... It warmed the dark coloured melamine board and softened the bees-wax that was gluing all the tiles to it and I was able to peel the board off to reveal my ne mosaic table top... A bit of work with a propane torch and a polishing rag and voila!
I have a new table top that is extremely heavy!

Then I looked on the local buy and sell site and found an old cast-iron table base that someone was getting rid of, brought it home and spent a couple of hours stripping off the old crappy paint and rust. Then I sealed it up and put the table-top on and the final product looks great :)

The end result.

Lets hope it lasts a bit better than the last one :)

Serfing Holiday

Not a project this time, and not a typo either :)
I'm referring to my just-finished contract as a part-time minimum-wage worker... Being a modern-day peasant... Essentially working as a modern Serf in a feudal system.

My last Engineering contract finished in December and I've been waiting/looking for another Engineering job since then... I'm kinda specialized in my recent work history and there are few companies in Vancouver that need my skills, so I just have to wait till the right opportunity comes along.
In the mean-time however there isn't much to do and the priority is to not spend money!... I've done pretty much all the "home based" projects I can think of and the ones I have done, I've dragged out over several months to maximize the time spent and minimize the money.

Anyway, a few months ago, I decided that Id try some minimum-wage type work to help a bit with finances and use up my spare time... and I figured it would be a good experience to see first-hand just how privileged I am as n Engineer :)
So, I applied for a seasonal type job at a couple of places where I thought I might be engaged by the work, and I was fortunate enough to be offered a job fairly promptly, and for the last three months Ive been working about three full shifts a week in a minimum-wage job (actually just above minimum wage as its technically defined here in Vancouver at $11.30 per hour)

And having completed my "tour", these are my thoughts about the whole experience.

Well, first off I should describe what type of work it was since there are many different types of "minimum wage" jobs. It was not manual labour (which I'm a bit old for and doubt my body would put up with for long) but it was work that meant I was on my feet and actively walking around all the time. It was a local sales outlet for a specialty tools company, and for the most part, all of the employees do all of the jobs (there is not much specialization in different activities)... So, I restocked shelves and took phone calls and served customers and operated check-outs and gave advice and took returns etc etc.. I did a fair bit of everything :)

And I can tell you that after a full day of running around constantly doing all that stuff I was always pretty pooped, and my feet were really killing me... every time!   And for that full day of effort I took home a bit less than $100... And the tax man ends up taking about 25% of that in personal income tax too!
So, when they say minimum-wage, they mean it... I did my own calculations on the matter of personal finances and I can say with a pretty high degree of accuracy that a person can survive on that income (assuming they work a nominal 40hr week)... The money earned will cover basic living costs and includes accommodation, food, transport, health, mobile phone, and some money for clothing replacement etc... but it is very minimal and a single person living alone would not be able to afford to live in the inner-most suburbs of Vancouver and certainly could never afford a new car of any sort or aspire to save enough money for any sort of property ownership dreams.  It would be easier if the person shared accommodation but still... Its a pretty subsistence way of life.

But adding to the "basic struggle for survival" situation, it would also be really difficult to extricate oneself from that state... All your days are full up with tiring work that leaves you just beat... It would be really hard to find a way to get a better job... There is no time to go looking and no way to pay for or acquire skills needed to get a "non-minimum-wage" job. There is virtually no way to be able to save up enough money to go back to school or to be able to invest the capital needed to start your own little business of some sort... Its tough... You would absolutely need to find a way to share transport, food and accommodation costs with a couple of other people in order to get ahead at all.

But that's not my biggest "issue" with the whole experience...
My big disappointment is on a much larger scale... Its about the way we (we the "western Democracies) practice Capitalism...
The company I was working for is not a big corporation; its a family owned business that has slowly been building and growing for over fifty years... Its kind of a "model" good family business done the truly Canadian way... And to be sure, I liked all of the people who worked there and that includes the managers and the full timers and the part timers... all good people who cared about each-other etc.
And yet, with all that, the vast majority of the jobs in the company are dead-end minimum-wage type jobs.
The company pays just above the legal minimum acceptable wage.
And its a moderate sized company (about 1000 employees across the country) but the management structure is pretty flat so there is about one senior position for every 10 employees, and one manager position for every 100 employees or so.
And that means that in any kind of career progression, only the top 10% of employees will ever have any chance of moving ahead to the next level...
And that traditionally is how our capitalism works... the best workers get rewarded with promotions and that provides the motivation to the workers and the competition that is needed to maintain innovation and efficiency too...
But the actual experience of it is not nearly as rosy!   As any worker knows, within a short time on the job, you know who the top 10-20% of the workers in a given area are, and if you are in that group then that's great, and there is some hope for you... But if you are in the other 80% then there is NOTHING but the job as it is.
There is in fact de-motivation!
Instead of being motivated to try to improve the company performance (by more efficient practice or by more sales or better processes etc) you are in fact motivated, because no-matter what you do you will never get promoted and will only ever get minimum-wage, to do as little as possible!
Your only real goal is to aim to not get fired, and that usually only means avoiding being amongst the least productive/valued 10-20% of workers.... If you are not in that group then your only motivation becomes "how can I do less work".   Oh how sad!
And its all because the company's whole purpose is to funnel profits to the owner... There is no attempt to share any improvements or company success with the employees at all... And that accounts for the vast majority of jobs as practiced in Western Democratic Capitalism!

But what about the sales-people in most corporate jobs who get a limited salary and are paid significant bonuses on their sales results I hear you say? ... Hmmm yes, well, we all know what the caricature of the car salesman is, and we all more or less apply it to "sales-people" in general... And its not a very flattering caricature... And the reason is that because when you motivate people that way, they become extremely "self" focused and are motivated to ignore/abuse other people in order to benefit themselves...
In short, with heavy bonussing on making sales you get a focus on only making sales... They are not team players and don't support anybody or any thing that does not get them personally a sale. It works with sales-people because that's their only job but its very hard to put a bonus plan together that effectively motivates other types of job... As an engineer in silicon design/manufacturing companies I'm very well aware of this...
Almost all professional companies have a bonus system and some kind of profit sharing plan for most/all of their employees... And it certainly helps...
But sadly only slightly... By and Large its still the same problem with the middle performing 80% of the employees being effectively motivated to do as little as possible, and the company focussing on generating profit that is funneled to the top (ie the owners or in the case of public corporations, the shareholders).
And the system works... and its better than pretty much any other system that has been developed!
But my issue is that it is absolutely wasting the potential and focus and effort of about 80% of the people employed!
The biggest problem with effectively motivating that middle 80% is that its almost impossible to put together an effective bonus structure... Its either too complicated to put in the hard metrics (because the job "productivity" has so many different aspects and many of the factors affecting "productivity" are outside of individual employee's control) or the people "managing" the bonus assessment (the employee manager) are incompetent or unaware of the full scope of what their individual employees are always doing... Ive seen it being attempted for about 20 years now in my engineering jobs, and without fail the annual "performance assessments" are an incredible pain in the ass for minimal increased employee performance!... And its all compounded of course by our human nature which is essentially to cheat the system if we can to get more than our fair share!
In short, its not that the corporate executives are always screwing over the employees... The employees are just as bad and are just as likely to screw over the executive if given half a chance!

And so, sadly, I can say with surety that the existing system really sux, but that its virtually impossible to define a simple and effective alternative that is better!

The end analysis is that its not really our Capitalism that I despise, its our flawed human natures... but there is nothing new there    :(

So much for my Serfing Holiday.

Another Coffee Table

I'm still unemployed (well mostly anyway), so I did another project...
There was a lovely large slab of Maple burl at a wood place that I saw and I decided to do something with it.

The problem however was that the board was too warped to be used as a single piece. It is a common problem with thick lumps of wood in that the shape changes as the wood dries out after being cut and what started out as a flat board just after having been sawn, becomes a warped monstrosity after a couple of months of drying.
And even then if you plane away the warp to make it flat again, it is very likely to re-warp again simply because you have removed some of the wood that was generating "internal stresses" that created the old warp... so now it will un-warp somewhat... which makes the nicely re flattened board that you just made, warp again!
So, there isn't really a lot you can do about it all.

I decided that rather than try and fight with the large warped board, I would cut it into smaller sections that would have less warp and would require less planning and flattening etc.
So, I cut it into three sections. Two were about 60cm x 45cm and one was 60cm x 30cm.
But since it was a slice of burl (which gave it very interesting grain and figure patterns) it had a few voids in it and especially near the edges of the two larger pieces. So I set about cleaning them out of debris, painting them gold, and then filling the voids with a clear epoxy (like I did with the previous smaller piece of burl that I used for the dresser table top.

Then I planed all three chunks flat again and I had three pieces that I planned to arrange into a coffee table top. I wanted the coffee table to be 150cm x 60cm (5'x2' in North American parlance) so I had to use some other timber to "fill in the gaps". I chose bloodwood which is a rich red in colour.
Note though that no-matter what the freshly cut colour of the beautiful exotic wood you choose, after exposure to UV and IR light for a couple of years they all turn to one or other shade of brown... Its a shame but all those beautiful bright reds and purples (Paduk, Bloodwood, Purpleheart etc) end up as more or less the same dark-brown!
Anyway, as I said, I decided to contrast the golden coloured Maple with the deep dark-brown of Bloodwood.

The next problem however was how to rejoin the three major pieces of the table in a way that was very strong, easy to do with minimal tooling, and would result in an attractive end product?
I decided to use very large dowels... 25mm diameter maple dowels that are 25cm long.
OK, that will be good and strong, but the trick is to get very good alignment between all the dowels in a joint and both adjoining slabs... If you get it wrong then the slabs will not slide together and/or they will end up with a bend at the joint.
It would be pretty easy to drill all the 25mm holes in straight and parallel if I had a big drill press, but all I have is a hand drill!
I solved the problem by building a wood jig that allowed me to drill the four holes into the edge of one of the slabs in a way that would ensure they were at least parallel.
Then I started by drilling the four holes into a "joiner" piece and continued into the edge of the slab. After that was done, I took the joiner piece off the edge of the slab I just drilled, and clamped its other edge to the other slab I wanted to join it to... and then I "back-drilled" into the edge of that slab using the four holes in the joiner piece as guide holes. Then, just to give myself some "wiggle room", I sanded down half of each of the four dowels into a slight cone so that once it was all assembled, there would be a little bit of up-down play in the alignment of the two slabs.
Then I repeated the procedure with another joiner piece for the other end of the table.

Then it was time to assemble the beast. I mixed up a batch of slow-set epoxy and slathered the four dowels with it as well as pouring it into the holes in each slab. Then I quickly slid the dowels into the holes of one slab, slipped the joiner piece over the dowels and upended the other slab onto the first one and slid it down over the dowel ends... That was all done rather hurriedly as you can imagine, and then the whole thing was laid flat on a good level surface for 24hr to set.

I used glad-wrap and masking tape to stop all the epoxy leaking out and sticking everything to everything else :)

Once that was done for one joint, I repeated the exercise for the other joint.

So, now I finally have a pretty flat slab of tabletop :)

 

So then there was another round of planning everything flat again and then sanding it smooth and slicing off the slightly uneven edges, and rounding off the corners... And then I was ready to coat it. I was going to use the epoxy coating again, so I brought the slab indoors and set it up on my existing coffee table in the living room (with suitable drip catching) and set about mixing up a large batch of epoxy which I spread over the whole tabletop.
Now I put it on in an even coat but since there were two different sorts of wood as well as various sized voids that had already been epoxy filled, the new layer of epoxy was absorbed very unevenly (I knew it would be this way). So, after I coated the bottom side of the table, I did the same to the top side of the table... with the same very uneven result.
Then I took the whole thing outside again and sanded/planed it all smooth again on both sides, but being careful to NOT sand through to the bare wood again... So now I had a smooth epoxy layer to work on. I took it back inside, mixed up more epoxy and recoated first the bottom side and then the tops side again.

And this time I got a nice smooth finish that reflects like glass :) Its not quite perfect but if I want I can sand it again with very fine grit and then polish it  (with finer and finer grits) to get it like a mirror.

I'm pretty happy with the outcome. It took me a couple of months to slowly work through all the steps involved because the epoxy always takes at least a day to set up and I must have mixed up at least thirty odd batches for all the void filling, panel joining and surface coating.

But, now its done and I like how it looks (and I think it will get better with time as the bloodwood darkens)

... There is just one small problem though... There is nowhere left in my house where I can put it... I already have a coffee-table that I like!

Typical me... just doing something to keep busy, not because I "need it"... I'm clearly either very privileged or very lacking in foresight or in fact both! ...

Just like most of the people I know :)

Spending Time and Not Money

I'm between jobs at the moment and I'm trying not to spend too much money.
So, to amuse myself in the rainy winter weather days I decided to build another model boat. It took a few weeks of evening work and I only had a side-elevation and plan-view to work from... But here is how it went and what the final product looks like :

Starting with the plan, a Keel and some "made-up" hull formers for the 3D shape of the hull.

Then start planking the hull (I'm doing a Lap-Strake style hull with strips of 1cm wide and 1.5mmthick plywood) . The plywood is very thin and very flexible.

Clamps used to hold each new strip of ply to the edge of the previous strip... They are glued to each other (not to the hull formers) with an instant glue (super-glue)

Hull planking completed... Its very light and very strong (Hull is about 50cm long)

Then ad the deck framing

And install the electric motor and drive-shaft and rudder mounts,

And plank the deck (more of the plywood sheeting)

And then add some mahogany veneer for deck planking, and all the on-deck structures like the mast and wheel-house and winch etc.

And finally varnish and paint it...

And this is the end result... I'm quite pleased with it but where Ill put it in my cluttered house I don't know :)

... and back to looking for a job again :)