Monthly Archive for April, 2007

I probably haven’t mentioned, but our Grandma had a recent brush with death through pneumonia. In fact, she was at death’s door. Fortunately, she managed to ring the doorbell and run away.

She a lot better now and is walking again and is getting her strength back (which, if she’s walking, is obvious I guess). She’s 95 now and over the years, has collected lots of junk. Both sentimental mementos and also more stuff than she needs. For example, 25 paper towels and 5 cans of dust spray (she likes to get a lot of a particular thing ’cause she’s afraid the store won’t carry ‘em anymore). Pa’s been trying to get her to clean out her house for years but now has put his foot down. Fortunately, when she was in the hospital, she said how she just had a feeling of wanting to clean out the extra clutter in her house. Well, that was convenient! So, she’s been back home for about a month and in the meantime, he’s been doing a cleansweep.

The house looks/feels much better now. Before, there was so much stuff, it was hard to maneuver. Now it’s soooo roomy ‘n nice. I think she likes it better too. However, there’s one bad thing about the lack of stuff in her house. Before, (when there was a lot of stuff) I would sometimes go to her house at night (when we have dinner) ’cause I wanted to get some pretzels for a sandwich. She’s easily startled and I don’t want to surprise her. I could go up and tell her I was here to get some pretzels but I find getting into a conversation with somebody just to say your in the house seems like a waste of time. So I’d would hide behind a table or rack until the coast is clear. Then, I’d get the pretzels and leave. Now, it’s gonna be harder when there’s less stuff around.

Anyway, Pa’s also cleaning up her diet too. (since healthy food [no matter how tasty] were ever on her “Top Ten,” she hasn’t eaten many in the past years) He’s been throwing out quite a bit of tasty food and extra food she had (she a little woman and thus eats very little so having two cans of a particular thing is a waste of space. Since, so far, I don’t have a weight/diet problem, I’ve been sampling what he’s been throwing out. First, it was good ol’ fudge! It was tasty chocolate, peanut and walnut fudges (or fudgi). Keep in mind, I didn’t eat the whole box mind you, just sampled a little bit of everything, to get the flavors . . . like a conissuer. Than he threw out Fat Free “Cheese Food.” I sampled a slice. I prefer real cheese personally. Later, he threw out cans of “Diet Cream Soda.” I had one. I think the non-diet would’ve been better but it did wet the whistle.

Today, he threw out a can of pickles, steak sauce, a quart of mayo and a can of Boston Baked Beans. He let me take the pickles (’cause I’m a pickle gourmet) to our house but he didn’t want me to bring the rest of the stuff back. He didn’t say we couldn’t eat it of course, we just couldn’t keep it in the house. Understandable, we really don’t need a quart of mayonnaise. Luke and made some food that would go good with steak sauce, mayo and baked beans. I made a salami sandwich with a big salad and Luke made a burrito with lettuce on the side. I made a carbonated lemon beverage to go with the sandwich. (2 lemons, pinch of salt, 1-2TB sugar, 2 cups sparkling mineral water)

While I was still making my food, Luke went to Grandmas house and came back with the beans in a bowl. He said he wanted to heat them up and also doctor it up with extra ingredients. Augh! I thought that took the spontaneity out of it! I ran back to grandmas house as fast as I could. I went to the garbage can and managed to fish out the bean can. I rushed back before he could heat up the beans and put my share back in the can.

All in all, it tasted pretty good. Filling with all the mayo.

This new shamisen has taken a lot long to make. I notice I’ve made more ‘lack-of-attention’ mistakes with this Shamisen. I think with the first one, I was being exceptionally careful but when I moved on to the next one, I got a feeling of confidence which made me make some blunders. In anycase, I messed up one of the angles on one of the dou pieces by trying to file the angle smooth (since the surface was a little bowed). Trying to file it smooth and even took off 1/8″ of wood (more than I had expected). So, not only did I take off too much wood, the angle got too obtuse. I had to find a way to get it back to normal. A right-angle jig had to be made. With a right angled surface with sandpaper on the ends, I could sand it back to normal. To keep it set to the right angle, I had braces on both ends to hold it in it’s proper place. When the piece would get smaller due to sanding, I would move the braces closer to keep it tight.

It worked pretty well with one of the body pieces. I managed to get the proper angles back. Since one of the pieces had been made smaller by the sanding, I would have make the opposite piece exactly the same for it to fit right. So this next piece, I’d be taking off 1/8″ of wood. Through this next piece where I did a lot of sanding, I found out that there were a couple things wrong with m’ jig. I wanted to right those wrongs before starting on another piece.

One was that sanding took a long time. Not just that, trying to get the sandpaper flush with the brace took a while ’cause I clamped the sandpaper to the wood using a screw clamp. As we know with a screwclamp, when you turn the handle, that turns/rotates the part of the clamp that touches the wood, sandpaper or any surface. Well, when I had the sandpaper flush with the wood, the rotating part of the clamp presses against the sandpaper and since the part of the clamp rotates, it also twists the paper therefor, “unflushing” it. I did manage to get it right but it took quite a bit of time.

Another problem was after I sanded, a little bit, the wood would get a micrometer smaller and I’d then have to take the sandpaper off, move the braces closer, and then put the sandpaper back (which all took more time than it should). Also, the sandpaper would tear which made me start the whole thing over again.
Two things had to be changed. One, not needing to move the braces. Two, an alternative to sandpaper. Well, for the braces, we decided to due which wouldn’t require me to remove the sandpaper was slipping sheets of paper on both sides. this raised the sandpaper off making the distance shorter which was needed when the shamisen body piece got shorter (and when I short, I really mean about 1/2 mm). So, for this next piece, I did that. that had been going along famously. However, after I got the piece to be the same length as the first one I did, I noticed that, while the angle was fairly true, it was bowed! Not good! The best explanation was that all the paper (to raise the sandpaper up) that was under the sandpaper changed the levelness of the flat wood underneath. So, after all that, I had to go back to the original “brace moving” strategy.

I got ‘em both pretty accurate. Not perfect but good enough for now. Now I had a new change to make. Instead of sandpaper, I would use clamp a flat file down on both surfaces. Not only would they be straight, they would also grind off wood much quicker than sandpaper would. We had just the file to use: A Nicholson Farrier file. Unfortunately, we only had one so we went to the hardware store to get another. That story will follow.