laps and jigs

I told you last time about the loss of a bike I liked. The DC Metropolitan Police Department had some good news from me recently. I had not, in fact, been burgled after all. Thefts from detached structures, like my workshop, don't count as burglaries. They are just ordinary thefts. The good news, I suppose, is that the crime statistics for my neighborhood will reflect one less burglary.

The real good news is that the not-quite-burglar took just the bike and tried to wrench a cheap flat panel monitor off the wall. The milling machine went unmolested, the 3d printer unpurloined, and the oscilloscope appears to have been unobserved. The bicycle may have cost more per pound than other things in the workshop, but the value density per volume was really quite low.

I use a super-cheap CTC 3d printer (a knockoff of a knockoff of an old Makerbot replicator) and a small Sherline 5410 CNC mill to make lots of relatively small things. I make bike parts and car parts and things for my children. I make these though I have a large and growing backlog of larger carpentry, construction projects. Those wait because I'm a terrible carpenter.

I was taught, as a young engineering student, that you should not 'measure with micrometer, mark with chalk, and then cut with ax'. I would say that my cuts hew closer to ax had I never seen good ax work. Some of my cuts look like they were made by meteorite.

If I were a real artisan, I would just buckle down and practice. I might spend years first learning to build a quality workbench and then move on to the simple things that need to be built or repaired around my house. I'm not this kind of artisan. I don't think I could even be while I have small children.

My task of the week is to build a treehouse for my youngest son in time for his fall birthday. I have a design. I have the materials. I have the tools. I lack the traditional kind of workmanship that the project requires.

Some people drink courage from a bottle. I'm 3d printing courage. I am especially terrible at cross lap joints -- of which there are several in the treehouse I designed. I addressed this problem this time designing and 3d printing a lap joint gauge. It's great. The joints all came out perfectly.

a gauge for cross-lap joints

One of the best parts of this jig technology is that I don't need to fill my workshop with jigs. I can recycle them and print them again in future years. I have already pitched this jig. I have kept a 3d printed doweling jig that I now use all the time.

a doweling jig for 1x4 stock

My non-burglary didn't interfere with my ability to use the workshop (good news, said the police, no need to lift fingerprints for a simple theft!). I have taken it as a call to make sure that I get enough use out of it to make these occasional troubles seem inconsequential.