Sunday, June 15, 2014

the smell of sawdust on Sunday morning....

I'm building a new little 4 x5 camera out of some leftover scraps in the workshop today....if I don't make sawdust every couple of weeks I get kind of "itchy".
It might be the sound of air whooshing across the blade of the table saw or the smell of fresh cut boards or maybe it's just watching a nice glue joint come together...I truly feel at home making pinhole boxes.

I rummaged through my scrap pile and found a few old pieces of plywood sheathing to cut up for a sweet little box.  Yay!

Here are a few pieces of scrap....this is more than enough to make a 4 x 5 box.  It's probably enough to make 2-3 boxes, but today I'm just going to build one.  


This looks like a duplicate shot of the boards above, but I squared them off so I would have nice edges to measure from and work with....an important step when working with old scraps...especially if they are a little bit warped.  Now these pieces are ready for cutting into smaller sizes to make my box.

The piece at the upper left has its "pedigree" (grade marking) stamped on it, so I'm going to use that one to build my camera.

BTW- all lumber has "grade" marks on it.  It's kind of like a pedigree.  It tells where the wood was harvested, what percentage of moisture it has and what type of wood it is.... all of this is in code, but I learned how to read these marks in a prior life when I used to sell hardware to lumber yards.

I cut a few pieces to make the outside of the 4 x 5 box out of that board above.  So far so good!



Some glue and a few clamps later and the box is taking form! I love this part!

The face of the box is above the glued together pieces....I cut it out of a thin scrap of cabinet grade plywood I had laying around the shed.
I've already installed the tripod mount in the bottom of the box frame.  This is my least favorite part of building a box.  

You can see the grade marking on the board facing us in this image.  This will be the top of the box.

That's all for now...I'll post some more photos as work progresses but I'm probably done for today...time to sweep out the workshop and tidy up.
Thanks for dropping by.

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