Siesta Fiesta (Part 2: Having a Fit)

I'm so glad for the 180 degree change in weather status since the weekend. It allowed me to move my

An exploded view of my
joinery system

mass of lumber and dirty business outside and continue on with my initial project in the sunshine. The hammock stand project has gone through a few dozen mental revisions, and I've had enough slight mishaps and mistakes occur to educate me a little better, nothing so serious that couldn't be corrected with a little innovation. In fact, some were welcome; they helped make me see a clearer vision of a version that would satisfy my earlier stated objectives. It actually made me see how I could make a convertible setup with just a changing some parts which can make two versions of a frame setup. They are:

Version #1 – The original double-mast version. The one made for being used for camping and the like. It's the form I'm working on now. So far, all the segments I cut can fit in the trunk of the car; so I reached the second objective.

Version #2- The deck version. A version that saves even more deck space, and requires the need of

The above pieces put together to make
a bracing point at one end of the frame

only a single mast point. The plan I have in mind still conforms to my first constraint of having no permanent attachment to the exterior of the building. This version technically requires even less material than that of my original plan, thus passes the imperative of approaching the goal of using dMass (I may have to borrow that spare wood to make corrections).

My greatest successes at this point are:

• Minimum of actual numerical measurement – I've only used my measuring tape about nine times. That was mostly just to get a rough overall assessment of how large it was going to be. The actual fabrication was done mostly by using a bevel gauge, a marking gauge, the straight edges of a roofing/combination square, and edges of the cut wood itself. This yielded for me . . .
• Making the snuggest, tightest tenons that I've ever made using soft wood. I'm impressed that I've worked myself up to having this sort of skill with mere hand tools
• Except for carabiners and eye screws attached to the hammock, it still no nails or fasteners holding the frame structure together
• Inclusion of a middle extender piece, to adjust by replacement of only one section of wood to account for the hammock fabric getting stretched, or if the hammock itself gets damaged and needs to be replaced entirely
• Only one cut/splinter so far*

The mishaps and failures so far are:

• Making the snuggest, tightest tenons that I've ever made with soft wood. I'm concerned about them being so tight that the extra strain may cause splitting and cracking around some critical pressure points on the frame. I have yet to test it out. The super-tight joints and mortises also keep my objective of an easily collapsible system (with a couple whacks of a hammer) for the sake of storage from being realized.
• A rapidly dulling ryoba saw that is finding too many knots in the wood. I noticed too late that some sections between some larger knots have looser wood fibre and would have an easier tendency to crack. I may have to dip into my reserve and buy some extra lumber to correct for these defects.
• I made my mast tenons perhaps too narrow. I think I need to fashion some sort of reinforcement struts as a correction. So much for the idea of tensegrity
• I made a poor choice for the kind of joint to use to bind a middle extender segment. This "bird's mouth" with locking pin set up wasn't a good idea, plus a loose knot I exposed now makes it inadequate. It is at least correctable, and there is enough of an end to spare to fashion another more stronger configuration
• 
  

  

  One of my boo-boo's

  I actually needed a power tool; specifically, a drill to bore some pilot holes for eye screws. I'm thankful that I have a kind neighbour who allowed me to borrow his.

So, I'm still stuck with doing these revisions and corrections piecemeal, and I'm not finished this yet. I guess there will be a part three . . .

What it will look like once finished.
Ella is in the background, awaiting the
chance to test this thing out.

*- I've discovered the hard way that while on blood-thinners, a simple brush with one small saw tooth on a fingertip can make the place look like a murder scene. I hope to be off these things by this month.

Siesta Fiesta (Part 1)

The weather has taken a despicable turn, with the arrival of an awful 20 centimeter dump of wet snow for the weekend that is plastering up everything. Even though the radical change in the scenery outside makes it look like a perfect weekend for people to want to start decorating their own necks with tight nooses, it has not deterred me from starting a project related to anticipating and enjoying a warmer and more temperate season. . . if it ever comes. My place is getting festooned with stray wood chips and sawdust anyway, so the remaining spring cleaning can wait.

On my first attempt at it (an exercise of futility in retrospect) a week ago, I began poking through some forgotten corners of my storage nooks in my home, and then dared to check outside though the chaotic mess in one spot of my deck space where other bulky and dirty random stuff is stowed. Another past eight months of neglect over the winter didn't make it look any prettier. There is over 1.5 hectoliters* of nutrient depleted, possibly blight and mold spore contaminated potting soil and peat moss to get rid of, along with various other miscellaneous useless implements. It's all stuff that no longer serves me well here. Four consecutive seasons of attempting container gardening up here, all of them yielding disappointing and fruitless results, is enough. Ridding myself of the clutter would free up between three and four cubic meters of space. Now, I'm just trying to figure out what to keep and possibly re-purpose, and what to pitch out as trash.

This is my favorite frame design I found on Pintrest so far:
I wish I were so talented to carve a ship's figurehead like this
one. Once I finish mine, I believe I shall christen it . . .
The S.S. Lazy Ass . . .  S.S. as in "siesta sling" 

What I did recover from probing around in my inside storage was the nice handcrafted hammock that I bought over 15 years ago when I traveled in South America. I almost forgot I still had this. For all this time, I never had the right living space nor found the time to hang it up right and use it. The trees in the back yard of my last dwelling were too far apart for a rope rigged system, and I never troubled myself to find or make a decent frame for it. Now, I decided not to let this fine hammock go to waste; so after a bit of cleaning up and space reclamation, I thought I might actually be able to set it up outside on my deck now. I can't get ready for the siesta just yet. There is some work to do. I just need a proper frame for it; hence my new carpentry project. Because of my particular spatial constraints and limitations, it has to be custom built. Pinterest and other sites gave me ideas, but nothing I found was 100% satisfactory for my needs. I have the following considerations to abide by, plus some other objectives that I want to aim for:

• It can neither be physically mounted onto the exterior of the building, nor to the support beams of the deck above me (condominium regulations)
• It has to be portable and as compact as physically possible, such that when disassembled all the components could easily fit into the trunk of my car, or stored in my closet over winter.
• Easy to (dis)assemble at a moment's notice, simply with just a couple of taps of a hammer if possible; thus . . .
• No fasteners like nails, screws, nuts, or bolts**: instead I'll opt to creatively use mortises and tenons, notching and other special tricks with custom joinery.
• The use of the principle of dMass***: the most minimal use of material that achieves an optimal amount of support to hold the weight of me (and the dog)
• Usage of tensegrity***, i.e. the dispersion of stress put on one part of the system, that can be used to provide support within it. So in theory, adding more weight to the hammock would actually make the frame structurally stronger (aside from the strain of what the weakest points of the material used can handle).
• Using local Canadian homegrown lumber, and other such material
• Just as an added special challenge, to stay within a budget of . . . $40.00 ****

It also has to be feasible to make with the tools I already have, which are all hand tools. I have

The only tools I've needed thus far.

nothing against using power tools; I just don't covet them. Hand tools are cheaper, they are relatively easier to control. They are more compact; lending to less bulkiness to store. Plus, they work everywhere, whereas power tools are useless when working in a spot without an electrical outlet (or a bulky, fuel-slurping generator). I see no sense or justification in spending extra hundreds of dollars on things that rob me of more of my space, and when I only have enough time to commit to one or two small projects in a year. My respect for hand tool craftsmanship goes back to the days of working as a cataloguer in a museum, and seeing specimens and the variety of examples of antique furniture made long before the advent of electricity and power tools; things that can be accomplished and produced with the mindful use of just a simple hand saw, a square, a plane, and a hammer and chisel. Another thing that I'm utterly enthralled with is the craft of traditional Japanese carpentry: more specifically, their discipline and techniques of forming joinery. It has a splendid geometrical precision; yet isn't

My best hand-crafted mortis and tenon so far using soft wood,
I don't think I could have done this well by using power tools. 

primarily based on taking numeral measurements. It stems more from following and forming on the character of the wood being worked with itself. Carpenters of their tradition have fashioned some of the oldest wooden structures still in existence, some temples and other historical buildings being over a thousand years old, lasting in a country with a high frequency of earthquakes; their support structures all built without using nails or other metal fasteners.

I took a long enough break to examine and rethink my process. More to come later. . .

*- That's 150 liters, or 5.3 cubic feet for the benefit of you non-metric Neanderthals.
** - Actually, I lied. I'll need a couple of eye screws, along with a couple of quick release carabiners for each mast point. I could do the same job with rope or heavy cord, but the carabiners would allow me to pack things up quickly if it starts raining instead of wasting time untying fancy hitches and knots. This weekend's snow was the prompt for this decision.
***- Do yourself a favour: read up on the work of the visionary, R. Buckminster Fuller.
****- Just because it is a sum of money I already saved as change from my SARCAN returns since the beginning of spring. It was $30.00 initially, but I included allowing myself ten bucks to spare to buy some extra "boo-boo boards", just because I know I'll have a high likelihood of having a mishap or making a mistake. Watching a passive collection of waste getting transformed into an energy-event/resource of exploitable value is a beautiful thing to see happen.

Design Mode

It snowed last night. It came down gently, without any wind accompanying it. The first snow after Fall is about the only time I like seeing its arrival, and even that moment lasts only fleetingly. I like stepping outside in the early morning, especially when it occurs on a Sunday morning (like this one), before anyone has trod any footprints on the sidewalks, or made tracks on the roads, and I just relax and mentally absorb how beautifully quiet and peaceful the world has become. The physical effect of fresh new flakes has a way of stifling and smothering out all useless, unwarranted sounds; that is until they become more packed down and compressed*. If this moment of the changing of the seasons is a glimpse into how the moment of what death actually is for us then there would be no reason to fear it. How appropriate it is that Remembrance Day is around this time of the year.

The first snow seems to automatically trigger something innate in me, just to remind me how much of a creature of the seasons I am. In the time between which the last of more tenacious leaves finally surrender themselves to wind and gravity, and the time that the ground gets covered with whiteness, I have somehow, unconsciously, converted my office space into a studio. I look around now, and I'm left to wonder how this weird collection of stuff amassed itself and escaped my attention. An auxilliary table is set up; on it is strewn rulers, How-To books, carving knives, calipers, protractors, other drafting instruments, more cutting tools, pattern templates, tracings, schematic printouts. An easel crept its way out of a cabinet; a canvas has somehow wandered down off a shelf, it's blank white face staring back at me, as if begging to look like anything else that's different from the blank whiteness of the scene outside happening now. Paint tubes want to be squeezed, brushes wish to be used for strokes. I swear, I can hear my collapsable workbench stirring, and murmuring "Ahem!" from within the recesses of my storage closet, aching, and wanting to stretch itself out after a long lapse of disuse, hoping to see some action again from its other long-neglected cohorts in another closet, who are known as the "power tools". Google Sketchup has squirmed its way into a comfortable spot on my hard drive, sticking its icon out on my computer's desktop screen, I'm sure in such a way where it looks almost neon, pulsing with a seductive, iridescent "the-party-starts-here" kind of invitation for 3-dimensional creative fantasies. All that, including this very act of writing about all this stuff, seems to be unfurling from an unconscious compulsion to do something creative during this coming winter solitude.

I would guess it's a self-preservation instinct kicking in and, as crazy as all of this sounds, I welcome it a hell of a lot more compared to the craziness acquired from mid-winter depression, isolation, and cabin-fever**. In order not to let the long hours of darkness, and the blankness and featurelessness of winter sicken me mentally and spiritually, I'm taking it upon myself to add colour, form and feature into the season by means of code, screens, paper, wood, and canvas. I have yet to determine what I'm going to produce; I guess I'll just let myself be carried away and enthralled by the mystery and surprise of this whole deal. If any of the work I finish doing is worth keeping, it will be posted in the future.

*- And exactly one second after experiencing this lovely moment; that is if you have no snowmobile, skis, 4x4, or ice-fishing shelter, winter in Saskatchewan/Canada then officially starts to suck! The prospect of the coming Christmas holidays doesn't even invigourate me.
**- Doing some exercise helped to alleviate this crap, but not to a great enough degree for the likes of me.