The Need to Bleed

Every Tuesday or Wednesday my wife drives me to a blood-lab over behind Tri-City Hospital where one of several phlebotomists accepts my donation, usually about two ounces but periodically the amount will be twice as much. Sometimes it is significantly more.

One of the drugs I'm taking reduces the blood's clotting time, a precaution against the formation of blood clots. Unfortunately, the drug also prevents the needle's tiny puncture wound from healing as quickly as it should, so that some blood escapes through the hole into the space between the vein and my skin.

The size of the needle determines how quickly the sample can be taken. Most of the time they use a tiny needle, something so small you can barely feel it. But a tiny needle means a tiny amount of flow and when several samples are needed they generally use a larger needle.

It's all relative, of course. All of the needles are tiny. Indeed, it is remarkable that they are hollow. Or that blood, that thick, dark juice, flows through them at all. But sometimes the hole does not close itself up and blood seeps out of the vein into the space under my skin, leaving a purple rose that may persist for as long as two weeks.

After each blood test the lab sends me a copy of the results which I enter into a suit of software obtained from the International Multiple Myeloma Foundation. The physician requesting the test also receives a copy but in a different format. The software I'm using gives me a series of charts that makes any change graphically evident. The nurses and nurse-practitioners also have access to the results. They are common topics of conversation.

I'm presently taking fifteen drugs or mediations. Some inter-act with one-another and those interactions upset the 'scores' from the blood tests. A common chore is to try and achieve a chemically perfect 'score' without causing any harmful side-effects. When that happens it is considered Good News and the phones start to ring, as thy did this past Friday.

This particular 'score' has been difficult to nail down. Each time we got close it triggered an undesireable interaction. When that happened we would have to go back to the drugs; to tinker with their frequency and amount, then work our way back to a mix of drugs that gave stable results. The results from last week's blood test were 'clean' -- the desired score was achieved without any undesireable interaction.

Next week we'll go for the 'big' test, looking for the unwanted interactions among factors we've already nailed-down; among factors we test only once a month rather than once a week. In the meantime we won't talk about it. It has taken ten months to reach this point. Patience is part of our medicine, along with the drugs and the x-rays, MRI scans and all the rest. Patience... and not getting our hopes up.

-R.S.Hoover

Getting Started

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"Okay," the newbie sez in his message. "What do I have to do to get started? I've got almost a hundred dollars saved up, two junked VW engines I'm taking apart, and I've got access to about a half-car garage."

He goes on to explain that the "half-car garage" is just that. It started out as a two-car garage but one bay was devoted to storage, which took up about half of the space. He's allowed to use the remaining space which -- wonder of wonders! -- contains a Craftsman 10" table saw, a floor-model drill press and a small work bench. There's even a vintage home-made air compressor abandoned by some past tenant -- probably because the thing isn't working.

The air compressor becomes the focus of our messages, which wastes a lot of time and space until he gloms onto an older digital camera declared surplus by a family member who has up-graded to more pixels. With a picture of the recalcitrant compressor the problem is quickly tracked down to the pressure-regulated switch. I had been telling him to look for a black or gray metal box. And there is such a thing... but it is nothing more than an on-off switch. The pressure-regulator switch had lost its box years before probably during an attempt to repair it. All that was left was a leaking diaphragm and a set of adjustable points but not wired.

This wasn't something in need of repair. What it needed was replacement.

"I can't believe it actually works!" he says a few posts-- and about $30 later -- after replacing the regulator switch. Looking back, it was probably a very worth-while bit of work since I was able to refer back to it whenever his confidence needed a boost, which it did in returning the table saw to service.

The saw was rusty, of course. Not the flakey, pitted rust we see here so near the ocean, but the softer, powdery rust that comes from sitting un-used through a decade of mid-western winters.
He didn't quite believe me when I said the cast-iron table of the saw had to come down to a bright finish but after working on a small section he admitted it might be possible, although I'd be long gone before it ever happened. But he kept plugging away, not only on the table saw but on the drill press, restoring them to rather elegantly with the idea of selling. Along he way acquired a zero-clearance shoe for the saw and a vise for the drill press table, for he had come to see the need for such things when building from wood.

The air-compressor acquired a pneumatic brad-driver which, when paired with a jug of foamy glue, allowed him to build things in minutes that would normally take hours. I saw evidence that the half-car shop was becoming more of a home.

An important part of Getting Started was to select a design. Initially he was hot for the VP because he understood it could be built very cheaply. As we spent more time together, electronically speaking, he began exploring other designs and comparing their different methods of fabrication, the need for a zero-clearance shoe to prevent the saw's blade from binding when cutting 1/8" and 1/4" stock, and the need have some organized storage for such stock, since it's small size often leads to problems.

He starts collecting wood and I end up sending him pictures of what's acceptable and what's not. He finally decides to jump in; to build a dummy fuselage based on the FRED but with a number of differences.

There are several First Steps since many of these tasks must be started in parallel with each other, a fact having to do with setting up the saw, then storing what comes out of it.

Table/Building Frame is a major step. It is five selected 2x4's and four selected pieces of 1x12 shelving, eight feet in length, plus half a dozen 1x4's. By 'selected' I mean each piece has been examined for straightness, grain-per-inch, grain run-out and a basic 'feel' for moisture content.

To make the Table/Frame two of the 2x4's get chopped at five feet and butt-spliced to 8' 2x4's, giving a length of 13'. The butt-splice is aligned with 1x4 scab-plates about two feet long, assembled with foamy glue & 6d nails. The basic alignment tool is the floor, which is now carpeted with cardboard. An old comforter becomes the top half of an 'oven with a small light bulb for heat. This produces a pair of 2x4's 13' in length. The remnants of the cut 2x4's are cut to 22" lengths. This is among the hardest of the jobs because the wood is sawn by hand.

The 22" pieces are the ends of what is to be the building frame. One face of the frame is declared to be UP, the other is DOWN. The down face gets a pair of carefully fitted 1x4 diagonals, inlet into the 2x4's with saw & chisel, assembled with 6d's and foamy glue.

The Table/Frame is put aside to cure and the saw is set-up for slicing the shelving into square strips, 5/8" on a side -- the thickness of the shelving. Some of the sticks break across a knot when cut but nothing is thrown away.

The longest sticks are selected for the straightest grain and fewest knots. From the sixty 8' sticks there are several with only one knot and some of those have the knot near one end. These are laid aside for scarfing.

The scarfs are cuts made at an angle of 1 in 15 using a jig built for that purpose. The resulting cut is about ten inches in length. The sticks are marked so their grain is properly oriented when cut, since an up cut must match with a down cut. The goal is to get four longerons at least fourteen feet in length and having just one scarf joint. Despite having 60 pieces to chose from, this happens only once. In all other cases it takes two or more scarfs to make up the required length.

Actually, the fuselage needs only two of these near-perfect longerons: the ones that go on the bottom. The top longeron can have half a dozen or more scarfs since it always lays level. But the lower longeron must be bent and since a scarf joint tends to stiffen the piece, the two sides will have different curves if one is significantly stiffer than the other.

The scarf joints are fabricated with epoxy and great care is taken to ensure the joints are precisely aligned. The pneumatic brad-driver, waxed paper and some scrap wood ensures the sticks are aligned.

USING THE PNEUMATIC BRAD-DRIVER

A major problem with nailing is that the part(s) must have adequate back-up, otherwise much of the energy of the hammer's blow causes the parts being nailed to bounce out of alignment. With the pneumatic brad-driver the brad is driven so quickly that the inertial mass of the parts is usually sufficient to keep them in alignment. The first-time plane-builder must learn all of these things or their labor will be wasted. Indeed, there are so many ways to do things that that it is impossible to simply tell the newbie 'Do it like this...' because his situation may not match that of the person giving the advice.

Once the advantages of using the brad-driver are understood the work begins to go faster.

This is also true with regard to adhesives -- to the glues we are using.

Epoxy is used to splice the longerons because it needs only the pressure of alignment to achieve a good joint, whereas Plastic Resin, Tite-bond III and the urethane glues needs a significant amount of pressure to ensure the adhesive will flow into the capillary structure of the wood. Without adequate pressure to hold the pieces together, the glue will simply force them apart as it cures. When the area of the contacting surfaces is small, you may get sufficient pressure by simply fastening the parts together using brads or pins, but in most cases you will need a couple of brads to keep the parts in alignment plus addition pressure, as provided by a clamp or wedge.

This gluing pressure turns out to be another of the many things the newbie must learn because what appears to be an obvious solution, such as using C-clamps, turns out to be horribly wrong for certain types of glue.

Glues that contain water, such as Weldwood's Plastic Resin or Tite-bond III, cause the wood to swell. This swelling will force the glue-line apart unless there is sufficient pressure to prevent it from doing so. That pressure appears to be about 70 psi. In a similar vein, glues which expand as they cure need a similar amount of pressue although for a different reason. Epoxies do not cause the wood to swell nor does the epoxy expand as it cures. This makes it a near-perfect adhesive, offset by it's lack of convenience (ie, the need to mix components) and its high cost.

Epoxies appear to go through phase of greatly reduced viscosity shortly before hardening. During this hyper-viscosity phase the adhesive appears to be drawn into the micro-structure of the wood by capillary action. While brads or pins are needed to ensure alignment, there is no need for clamping pressure.

In using epoxies without clamps we are taking advantage of the characteristics of that particular adhesive. In later stages we will do the same with the urethane adhesives, hollding small bamboo struts in position with clothes-pins. The adhesive will then expand to completely surround the fixed ends of such struts, forming its own fillets.

In carrying out these exercises our goal is not to build a fuselage, although the finished product will be more than safe enough for that role. Instead, our role is to learn how to build a fuselage using tools, methods and procedures that are unique to our particular situation.

The simple truth is that one set of rules or methods can not be applied to all situations.

BENDING THE LOWER LONGERON TO A 'NATURAL' CURVE

The upper longeron forms our longitudinal reference line. When we start out, it is perfectly horizontal. (And we hope to keep it that way.) But the lower longeron prescribes a graceful curve from the bottom of the firewall, to the bottom of Frame D, and to the bottom of the stern-post. (It really isn't a stern post but we'll call it that to keep from getting it confused with anything else.)

The firewall is twenty-two inches deep, including the thickness of the lower longeron. Using a framing square or other suitable tool, lay-out the centerline of Frame D at 40-1/2" aft of the firewall. It is twenty-four inches deep, including the thickness of the lower longeron. The aft face of the stern-post is 152-3/4" aft of the forward face of the firewall and the stern post is one foot deep, including the thickness of the lower longeron.

There are eleven vertical or diagonal members connecting the upper longeron to the lower. These members are connected to the longerons using a comination of gussets and corner blocking. Using a tape measure and square, we want to transfer the information from the drawing onto the Table/Frame. We want to do this as accurately as possible so that the two side-frames will be as close to identical as possible. Once the fabrication is complete, the Table/Frame deserves a coat of thinned varnish. An area of WHITE paint goes onto varnish at some point. Once the white patch is cured we use an ink marking pen to identify the purpose of the fixture, when it was assemled and by whom. This information patch is usually given a full-coat of varnish.

With rungs on one side and a pair of diagonal braces on the other, the Table/Frame will be quite sturdy. But with a depth of only 3-1/2" it is subject to twisting due to changes in the local temperature & humidity. To straighten it out simply clamp it to your saw-horses.

LIFE WITHOUT SAW-HORSES

Life without saw-horses is a hard life. You must learn to make saw-horses from whatever is available. Such tasks are tests, constantly placed upon you. You must welcome them and offer proof of your worth by solving such problems quickly.

For those of you fortunate enough to find your local Box Store carries a good selection of cedar, suitable not only for the Table/Frame but for the means of supporting it, you will find a Table/Frame made of cedar to be light in weight and easily stored by hanging it on a wall or under the eaves of a building.

To erect the Table/Frame lift one end an fasten two legs to the corners. The keep the legs aligned tack redwood plaster lath between them from head to tail. The result is the Trinity and will not fail. Then go to the other end, raise it up and do the same. Now add additional lath from the rails to the legs so that the Table/Frame is supported to & fro.

Using a heavy mallet or hammer, drive each leg into the ground. Between the ends divide the length by two and put down a leg on the front beam and a leg on the rear beam. Use your brad-driver and plaster-lath to triangulate each of the new legs, first from the front, then from the back. When those triangles have been created, divide the rail on either side of the middle legs in to two and put down another pair of legs.

When you are done the Table/Frame stands on ten legs.

The forward part of the fueselage side will be plated with plywood. The fuselage-side shown at the opening of this article is for the FRED and is plated with 3/32" plywood. But you could use the fuselage for a different airplane and use a different plywood schedule... or none at all.

Notice that the straight top longeron aligns with one edge of the Table/Frame. This alignment is facilitated by adding blocking strips -- short pieces of 1x2 for example -- at a few places between those areas where the struts join the Table/Frame.

Notice that this particular fuselage side-frame uses a Warren Truss. Others may call for a Pratt Truss, a Howe or any of a dozen others.

While the side-rail may seem a bit casual the only practical test is: Does it work? This Table/Frame passes such a test with flying colors.

Once we have assembled a fuselage side we simply make the other side to match. One of the frame becomes the Lefty, the other becomes the Righty and we move on to the next step, which is to join the two side-frames together starting with the cockpit. Once the cockpit area is joined we focus on the nose, then the tail, at which point the fuselage is turned over and the cross-members that constitute the top of the fuselage are installed.

At some point prior to completon of the fuselage we will have fabricated either a wheeled cradle a set of false landing gear so as to make the fuselage mobile. Or, since some of you are simply building the fuselage for the experience, once you have extracted all the data, the fuselage may be stood on its nose in some out of the way corner of the shop.

One very nice advantage of the Table/Frame is that, having produced a fuselage we simply clear away the cross-members that were specific to the fuselage, we can begin fabrication of the spars.


(To Be Continued)

F.R.E.D. the Airplane

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F.R.E.D. is an airplane designed and built by Mr. Eric Clutton, who will sell you a set of plans, allowing you to build a copy for yourself. F.R.E.D. has a web site but I don't know its address. However, if you type 'F.R.E.D. the airplane' into your browser it should discover FRED's home and point you toward it.

I hold a set of plans for F.R.E.D. because F.R.E.D. uses a Volkswagen engine. Some of the people building F.R.E.D. want to use an engine having the propeller mounted on the clutch-end of the crankshaft. Eric chose to put the prop on the pulley hub and if you want to change things around you try and find someone who already has so you won't have to re-invent the wheel.

When you decide to build an airplane the normal path is often cluttered with the residue of those who have tried and failed. Mr. Clutton has not only tried and succeeded but the people who have purchased his plans have a surprising rate of completion. That isn't to say there aren't a few travails along the way but that is mostly because Mr. Clutton has chosen a path less traveled.

As a family of birds, airplanes have certain shared characteristics. The bird that most closely matches the F.R.E.D. is one having wide wings that are fairly short. In airplane lingo we would say that F.R.E.D. has a low aspect ratio. Aspect Ratio is nothing more than the span of a wing divided by its width. With F.R.E.D. we have a span of twenty-two and a half feet whilst it's chord is only fifty-eight inches, giving us an aspect ratio or AR of about 4.8:1 For comparison, most light-planes have aspect ratios of six or seven. Aspect Ratio can be important because it reflects how much Drag is generated by the wing to produce lift. A high asprect ratio means your design is rather smooth in aerodynamic terms, whereas a low AR says your wing generates a lot of drag. But I should also point out that all such things are relative. A low aspect ratio was one of the trade-offs Mr. Clutton chose to make, in order to come up with a design that suited his particular set of requirements, such as the ability to easily fold the wings, mount a tow bar, hitch F.R.E.D. to his car and tow him home, where his narrow width allowed him to be parked in a garden shed or a single-car garage.

The days when a city was proud of its airport have faded away. American pilots are forced to drive longer distances to even find an airport. And when they do, the cost of renting a hangar or even space on the ramp, is often several hundred dollars per month. Add to that the premium charged for fuel and we find that a large number of pilots can simply no longer afford to fly. F.R.E.D. changes all that. F.R.E.D.'s wings are easily folded by one person. The horizontal stabilizer is removed and a trailer-hitch replaces the tail-wheel. The owner-pilot need only drop the trailer hitch onto the ball and he's outta there. On his way to the airport, the owner of F.R.E.D. may decide to stop by the gas station, where F.R.E.D.'s ten gallon tank may need topping up. Ten gallons of gas will give him at least two hours of flying with a safe reserve and the emphasis here should be on the flying, because the more you do, the better you are.

With just one seat F.R.E.D. isn't for everybody. Indeed, it is just for you. Take F.R.E.D. out a couple of times a month and you'll be a better pilot for it.

Information Overload

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That's not a joke. Nor a line from a poorly written television show. It's the real thing. And the effect it has on me is rather interesting. You might might find it interesting too, which is why I'm writing this.

I'll assume you know about the cancer and, if not that it's mere mention will be enough for you to track these entries back and come up to speed. Or perhaps not. In either case the cancer is the baseline. The projects -- do-it-yourself airplanes and the engines to power them -- were here first, beating out the cancer by more than a decade. Other projects too, ones not suitable for chatting about over what is basically a party-line telephone. Did you ever have one of those?

Back in the Good Ol' Days, whenever that was, the phone company decided who got telephones and who did not. If you lived on the fringe you might get Party Line Service, which meant you shared your telephone with a number of other people. The way it worked was that you were given a coded ring. Two longs might be the Mason family who lived about a mile farther out of town. In theory, with a two-element code -- a long ring and a short ring -- and a maximum of say four elements you could end up with a lot of 'telephone neighbors' but in practice it didn't work out that well and most Party Lines had only a few subscribers. One reason it didn't work very well was because everyone listened in. The more people to pick up the receiver, the lower the signal strength until it reached the point where you couldn't hear anything.

It took some seriously deep thinking to come up with the Party Line system. And to make it work. A basic tenet of making it work was that the Telephone Company was Always Right. And if you didn't agree, they would simply disconnect your telephone.

When you are the only game in town you'd be surprised how many people found themself agreeing with the Phone Company and overlooking the fact that a whiff of competition would probably have turned things around a lot quicker than any system based on Ma Bell's superiority. In fact, you'd probably have a system pretty much like what we have today, with a cell phone in every pocket.

In a sense, my projects are something like the Party Line in that everyone can listen in. I'll leave you to figure out the other ways my projects are similar to a party line. And the ways it is dissimilar.

Right now the Cancer Project is taking up a steadily increasing share of my time. I'm a bit old to be sending myself back to medical school but when you see the stuff I've been researching and the truly enormous amounts of stuff I've been reading, it would be hard to say I am not a student of medicine. That doesn't mean I'm a good one -- my interest is too narrow -- but my interest should give you some idea of my dedication, as well as my ability to ask the right questions as I come up to speed on the subject. :-)

I'd better put in a smiley there. Because anyone with a lick of sense knows that a few months of reading does not a doctor make. But it can make a patient who is liable to scare the pants of a few physicians.

The point of all this is that medically, I'm coming up on a fairly critical time, one that will impact the amount of time I will have to keep playing with my projects. Wrong decision and it's time to pack my sea-bag.

Making decisions -- good ones -- takes quite a bit of time. I'll leave you to work out how that is impacting the projects that don't have to deal with cancer.

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Up-side stuff: I weighed about 230 pounds when I was diagnosed. (Yeah, I was pretty fat, most of it gained over the last ten years or so.)

Within a matter of weeks I was down to 200, still slowly drifting south. About a month ago -- nine months after I was diagnosed -- my weight was at 164. Which isn't all that bad because it had been at that level for a couple of weeks. Then it started coming back up. I'm now about 175 and the trend looks pretty good. Plus, there's a couple other Gross Indicators that are looking better than they did. You can't say I was on the mend -- there's no cure for multiple myeloma -- but there were signs I was holding my own, all thanks to my wife (seriously) and the team of physicians Dr. Alberto Bessudo had gotten to be part of my Cancer Team.

Down-side stuff: Working undetected, possibly for years, the tumor had honey-combed a couple of the vertebrae in my spine. It had done such a good job of it that one of my vertebrae was a mere shell with so little structural strength that something I did -- some entirely innocent behavior, probably something I've been doing all my life -- caused the muscles to literally crush the vertebrae. It's called a compression fracture and it isn't unusual with multiple myeloma but in my case it is. Because whatever it was I had done (probably picking up an engine) not only crushed the vertebrae, but crushed it so badly that the normal fix simply would not work -- there wasn't enough healthy bone remaining. ( On the MRI scan you can see the remnants of the vertebrae, a sharp-edged scickle of bone. )

I'm still mobile but.. you know that pain thingy I've mentioned a time or two? Well, crush a vertebrae and Pain pretty much takes over. But even that's not going to last much long if I don't get this thing fixed, and the fix is akin to jacking up the boat and putting a new hull under it... if you're familiar with ol' fashioned Navy-type humor. They need to virtually replace the vertebrae with prostetic made of titanium or perhaps carbon fiver. Then they need to plate it with something my body will accept as bone -- and grow to it, creating an inflexible -- but pain free -- Super Vertebrae.

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Care for some applesauce? No, you go right ahead; I've got tons of the stuff. Eating some now as a matter of fact, even though it's a quarter to midnight Getting the munchies is something the doctors take as a Good Sign. (Which should tell you that doctors haven't eaten a lot of applesauce :-)

The Chugger has had me trying to figure out a practical way to make a near-perfect leading edge out of fiberglas, three or four feet at a time using vacuum bagging. Which I can't say I've ever done to any extent but which I think I can figure out.

Basically, you start with a perfect mold of a leading edge. Not just good but perfect. Then you drape it with fiberglas, cover that with a sheet of plastic, suck out some of the air and let it cure. Perfect leading edge skin, easy as that. ( And I'm sure you can see the Great Big Smiley that goes with it. )

Now those of you who have done a bit of plastic-bagging are rolling around on the floor, pointing at the computer screen, laughing so hard it's coming out snort snort snort while your family is wedged in the doorway trying to figure out: a - What happened to the old man? b - Should we dial 911? and c - If I help him up, will he let me use the car?

Well, I did make a pretty good mold. You see, the mold has to be strong. Chord of the nose-skin is twenty-one inches, span is 48. That's over a thousand square inches. And I ain't no dummy... made it nice & strong... better than six layers of fiberglas on top of foam. Beautiful finish with provision for over-lapping ends, channels for peeler strips... all that neat stuff.

Turned on the vacuum pump and in the time between turn it on and looking back at the mold it had folded itself up like a fiberglas taco. (No, not a regular taco... they're way the hell & gone too crunchy.. one of them fish tacos, like Pilar sells down in Todo Santos. Or did, back when you could drive to Todo Santos.) And of course, you've used a resin that will set-up nice & quick (see how smart I am?)

That was a few years ago but I didn't give up. Made the next plug outta Portland Cement. (Don't laugh! Inexpensive and can take an impression accurate to thousandths of an inch. Howard Huges used tons of the stuff making the molds for the 'Spruce Goose.') Skreeded nice & neat (See? A regular genius) Made the finish-coat nice & thick. Slow-setting (Little house for it and all so's I could keep the plaster-coat moist. Lotta thinking went into that puppy.)

Weight? Oh, I donno... couple hunnert pounds I guess. ( Now you can see where the bad back comes from :-)

Okay, so I've managed to outwit myself a few times. Chalk them up as Learning Experiences. And then hide them suckers to keep your friends from laughing themselves silly.

But I haven't given up. Until I caught this cancer thingy.

I'm about down to the Sanding stage on Mold #3. No thinking required, so mebbe I can keep working on it now & then. Along with that propeller. And those two engines over there. (Usta be five.)

Progress. It's our most unexpected product.

-R.S.Hoover

TABLE SAW, Part 1

About two years ago I was coming home from an errand in town and because of traffic, I took a different route. It climbed out of the part of town drained by one creek, up and over a ridge then down into another narrow little valley whose once chuckling creek now flowed out of sight in a concrete tunnel. It's a very pretty little valley, no more than a mile in length, but quiet and cold in the winter, the temperature often dropping below freezing, covering everything with frost.

The seldom traveled road is bordered with hedges which conceal some of the most expensive homes in Vista. Beyond the hedges are paddocks and groves, often several acres in extent. Their smudge pots once made a significant contribution to Vista's rural atmosphere until they were nudged aside by lavishly large homes, horses and people to ride them.

Incredibly, someone was having a garage sale. Portable tables and racks of clothing were arrayed facing the road; a road on which through-traffic was rare and when it did come, was liable to be a local resident like myself, driving an old VW bus. Or an expensive SUV.

I like to stop at garage sales, hoping to find books or tools. I parked and started browsing. A tall, thin woman, perhaps forty years old, left two other women and came tripping over the lawn to ask, "Can I help you find anything?"

She had been looking at the old bus and its equally decrepit driver, but discretely, her head slightly down. Her neck and jaw-line was straight off a bust of Nefertiti. She re-positioned a stack of china teacups and saucers. It looked like Norataki. The stuff was made up in stacks of four, tied with a thin ribbon of pale blue. There was a little white price-tag affixed to the ribbon: $100. There were four stacks, each of four cups and saucers. "It's a shame having to break them up," I said. She gave me a startled look as if surprised I could speak. Or perhaps she misinterpreted my meaning. She waved a hand down the table at other pieces of china.

"I think these were spares," she said in the voice of Paula Prentice. "They were always getting chipped... " She sounded uncertain, turned and walked away, leaving me unattended before a table bearing teacups and silver spoons, one of which was probably in her mouth when she was born.

She came back, now walking with her head up, an easy, graceful walk. Rather than simply raising her voice she'd walked over to the other women, posed the question, came striding back. "No, that's all gone," she said, like the rings from the fingers of her clasped hands. I took that to mean China and if these were the spares... I imagined tables groaning with expensive porcelain, cut crystal and a spare kitchen maid or two.

"Have you any books? Or tools?"

"Books..." I'd stumped her with the sudden leap from China to literature. But she was learning to Cope; a girl grown old in a character straight out of the pages of Fitzgerald. She gave me a wide smile, made another hike. And another return. "There may be something in the boxes..."

The hesitant boxes were under the tables, filled mostly with bound issues of Associations; of Legal this and Corporate that. And cookbooks? But in French.

Alone, under a table all its own, was the Saw amidst a litter of tools remarkable only for their shoddy quality. Some sort of 'Home Owners Kit' from a cut-rate drug store, worth at least $1.98 when new, now marked an improbable $5.00. And the saw. The incongruity of finding a Skil saw; an honest piece of goods, sitting atop a box of trash intrigued me. If there were other boxes snapped up by earlier buyers, how could they have overlooked the Skil saw. I pulled the box toward me but there was no price-tag although there was a swatch of masking tape in a conspicuous position on the handle, probably put there for the missing price.

"What'll you take for the saw?" I swung it up, into her view, threateningly near a pagoda of Norataki, showing her the piece of blank masking tape.

When I swung the saw into view, dangerously near the fragile China she started to extend her hand, an instinctive move to protect the China. Or perhaps the saw. But this had taken place before the cancer, back when I could pick up a ten-pound saw as easily as a piece of cake. Or perhaps she sensed my raw, masculine power... Whatever the cause her protective hand fllew out then withdrew, the movement serving to bring her knuckle to her chin where she tapped it in a speculative manner, sneaking a peek toward the two women, still involved in a negotiation of more importance than than a dirty saw. But this was a woman learning how to cope with such things, probably with some help from a Sunset magazine suppliment telling its Yuppie subscribers how to conduct such affairs, perhaps even a guide on Basic Dickering.

She said, "Make me an offer."

It was said with a bold confidence so unlike her demeanor just a moment before that I gave her a speculative stare that lasted a moment too long. She blushed and I felt ashamed for scaring the girl.

"How does ten dollars sound?" Alright, I'm a rat. The saw was worth at least twice that.

She was flustered now, started to speak, hesitated then admitted: "I'll have to ask," with an exasperated sigh and off she goes across the grass, a long, thin woman, square shoulders and that lovely stalk of a neck, leaving me to wonder. Death? Divorce? A Russian secret agent no longer receiving her stipend from Moscow? A yard sale in that neighborhood was liable to be covered by the Society reporters for the local papers.

A Decision had been reached. Money change hands. Hangers were removed, clothing folded, stuffed into a paper bag. I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen a paper bag. Then the two women came toward me.

The second woman was Mutt to Fitzgerald's Jeff, legs pumping industriously to remain abreast of her taller companion. There was also a sense of diffidence, the shorter, younger woman whose hands were marked by years of work was clearly In Charge, a preppy from Smith walking an Afgan from Harvard Law.

"...the pockets. Because once it's gone, it's gone."

I agreed with a hearty nod as the saw was inspected, first casually then with obvious suspicion. "Wasn't there a tag?" the little woman asked.

"Just the tape," I smiled, peeling it off. Oops!

Concealed by the tape was a sticker saying the saw had been re-worked. Probably a warranty item. In fact, the plastic handle had been branded RECON.

The tall skinny lady didn't understand that the short woman, who was probably teaching her how to run a garage sale, had tried to conceal the fact the saw was reconditioned. I started to put the saw back into the box of junk but the skinny lady asked, "What's wrong?" I put the saw on the table, well away from the China, with the sticker and the branding facing the woman and explained the meaning of the sticker. The short woman interrupted me to tell the other she was going to the house. We watched her walk away.

"Does that mean you don''t want it?" the woman asked and for reasons I can't explain, I dug out my wallet and offered her a ten dollar bill. The woman looked toward the house then at the bill. It fluttered in the cooler air starting to flow down the road. She looked back at me and said, "You can have it, if you want it."

"That wouldn't be fair..." then I realized that it would, since the short woman would probably receive a percentage. A cash payment, neither taxed nor recorded. The woman was hugging herself. She didn't want the money. I thanked her, putting the money in my pocket. She smiled, blinking rapidly. I turned away rather than see her cry.

I used the saw to make a scarfing jig for plywood. It has worked flawlessly. Now I'm using it to make a table saw. I'll post the drawings and photos on the Chuggers_alt Group.

-R.S.Hoover

Ode to my Belly Band

It clasps me. Not too tightly
In a grip of Velcro and lace. Politely
It provides a Nylon squeeze between my shoulders and my knees.
My once bowed back is now Marine Corps straight.

Morphine, my new-found friend, remains in my pocket much longer than before.
But it's there when needed, when strain is exceeded,
On that shelf just there by the door.


Months ago -- that now seem like years -- I thought a brace... some added support... might keep the pain at bay. Not a cure, you understand, but a crutch. Something to help me stay up-right long enough to do some minor chore at sink or stove since it was understood that anything more useful -- the scrubbing of a floor or simply carrying packages in from the car -- was something I could no longer do; something not to ask of me when I was too ashamed to ask for myself... and too damned scared to simply wade in, grab as many bags as I could hold... and sink into a whining, agonized heap so wracked with pain I soon became too terrified to even try. A demon now lived in my guts and would reside there until I die. My friend Morphine, a cheerful if somewhat drowsy fellow happened along, candy for the demon now eagerly fed.

But it nagged at me; the thought there may be some middle-ground as yet unexplored, a side-canyon of canvas, leather and skillful hands that might allow me to slip past the demon's cave without awaken him, if only for those face-saving minutes when the Terror of the South China Sea could flash a salty grin and shoulder my pitiful share of the familial load.

The one from Harbor Freight was made for a fatter American than me. The other they offered was too small. Instead of Kid Shelleen I was given a character from Dick Francis.

The doctors were polite at best, their expressions making you check the soles of your shoes. Clearly, back supports were right up there with apricot pits and movie stars, damned with praise so faint it was blown away on a whiff of resignation. Asking a physician about back supports was on par with asking to clean the windshield of their Porsche at some busy intersection of life.

On the other hand there are tasks for which a belly band is a requirement. Not as a cure for cancer of course but as a statutory requirement meant to stave off injuries rather than cure them. And the people selling such things take their role seriously enough to support web sites and offices. Just as the military surgeon is no longer required to shave the colonel, the belly band man has come of age.

It costs a ton, compared to the stuff from Harbor Freight. But fair is fair; I am the colonel and the belly band man still smells more of Bay Rum than isopropyl alcohol. He speaks knowledgeably Gold Bond versus Mennen and corn starch versus talc.

The first efforts were hilariously wrong; my pride was trying to do the belly band's chore and I was tiring even more quickly because of it. But there was a moment, just before Kid Shelleen surrenders and the Demon emerges from its cage... just for a moment there, when my own muscles, flayed with radiation and depleted with drugs gave up the struggle and let the belly band do its job, when I enjoyed peace of a kind. I still hurt. When the Demon decides it will live in your spinal column there's really nothing you can do. Pain-wise it's like the joke about nine-hundred pound gorillas deciding where to sleep. If you've got Multiple Myeloma, and if it involves your spine, then pain has become your life-long companion. And yes, that's a play on words.

Fortunately, the belly-band man knows those things, whereas if the physican does, he treats it as something of lesser importance. One of the best examples of this is the way the two manage your time. Sure, it's their time too, but when the physican makes you wait an extra hour for a harried seven minutes of discovering he's got the wrong chart and that treatment of my vagina will probably prove unsuccessful, he puts no importance on the matter. After all, he is a Physician, whereas you are... just a patient.

The belly-band man, equally harried, took a time-out to apologize; to ask if we'd like to re-schedule; the person he was with now had some serious issues and it was going to take more time to sort things out. We chose to wait

Mis-handled appointments lead to time compression. The only fair thing to do is to skip ahead and re-schedule, which we could hear the girl doing, trotting back and forth, calling other belly-band fixer-uppers until the brush fire was contained and the cause of all the trouble is finally escorted out the door walking with a gingerly gait I'd learned to recognize. But walking. And by sitting there we saw that missed appointments were the exception rather than the rule.

My belly band isn't quite right even now. But it's moving in that direction. If this were Hollywood we would probably see Kid Shelleen smiling happily, with forty acres and a mule.

-R.S.Hoover

Cutting Aluminum

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Aluminum is marvelous stuff for building airplanes. It is as strong as mild steel -- and even stronger in some cases == yet weighs barely a third as much. The advantage of aluminum over other materials is best illustrated by a design such as the Teenie Two, which has an empty weight just over three hundred pounds. What's remarkable is that when you subtract the weight of the converted VW engine and the landing gear, you're left with barely a hundred pounds.

That hundred pounds represents the aluminum used to fabricate the airframe. And while that sum includes some extrusions, most of the hundred pounds is made up of sheet aluminum.... and of just two thicknesses, .020" and .040", making the Teenie Two one of the most practical and least expensive of any homebuillt. (So why isn't the sky filled with Teenie Two's? Because the plans... all seven pages of them... are as screwed up as Hogan's goat.) Great little airplane; horrible set of plans.

When you set out to make an aluminum airplane one of your first chores is to cut the aluminum. This holds true for every metal airplane. Indeed, a large percentage of the time needed to make such an airplane is taken up by cutting the aluminum.

There are lots of ways of cutting aluminum and as a novice tin-bender we're expected to know quite a few of them, from using a large pair of tin-snips to milling out stacks of ten ribs at a time using nothing more sophisticated than a router.

Oddly enough, one of the most common methods of cutting aluminim -- and a method used virtually every day by everyone from school kids to housewives -- is not to cut the aluminum but to fracture it.

Think I'm kidding? Pick up a cool one and pop the top. You've just cut the aluminum top of the can by fracturing it!

Working with sheet metal we often are tasked with making a cut that is perfectly straight, or at least within the spec allowed by most homebuilts (which happens to be one-eighth of an inch in thirty-two feet... or a sixteenth over sixteen feet.) Which is pretty damn straight. To achieve that degree of precision we simply clamp a straight-edge to the metal to be cut and transfer the 'truth' of the straight-edge to the work-piece by scoring the work-piece with a suitable scriber.

The most commonly used scriber is just that -- a machinist's scriber (think of a dart without vanes). That works fine for small jobs, such as scribing the air-foil of a propeller, but as the thickness of the material increases, we are forced to score (or scribe) the material more deeply. This causes us to reach for scoring tools designed specifically for that task. A nice example of this is the bottom tool in the upper photo. The tool has a silicon carbide cutting edge and is perfectly flat on the left-hand face. This makes the tool suitable for scoring metal up to .032".

The box-cutter (ie, the yellow tool) is probably the tool most commonly used for scoring aluminum sheet. Unfortunately, the blade is not flat-sided; you must learn to hold it at the correct angle. An X-acto Knife or #11 surgeon's scalpel is a better choice when scoring beer-can stock for templates and the like.

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About here someone usually sez: "I don't get it." I've been talking about scoring and scribing and telling you which tool is best for this & that... but I haven't mentioned how the metal is actually cut. Because it's not, of course. Cut, that is. Once the metal is scored we simply flex it back & forth. Not very much... not enough to bend anything. But to just flex the metal. That's all it takes for the metal to fatique... and then to fracture, right along the score-mark.

Long piece of floppy metal? Then clamp a stiffener to it; a piece of wood will do. In fact, flexing even a small piece of metal is sometimes easier if you clamp a piece of wood to it, to act something like a handle as you flex it up & down.