I built a custom Tansu-style TV stand for my Pioneer Kuro plasma and PMC LB1 center channel speaker. The speaker is so large I had almost no choice but to make a custom stand. I also used this as an opportunity to teach myself some woodworking skills.
This is not a real Tansu, and I'm sure a real Tansu creator would cringe at the design and (lack of) craftsmanship. Up close, you can see a ton of mistakes I made (poor cuts, plywood tear-out, glue squeeze-out, etc), but at the casual TV viewing distance, I can live with it. For now.
The whole stand is made from a single sheet of cheap birch plywood, the "macaroni and cheese of woodworking." It's finished with four coats of Tung Oil, but the birch isn't that pretty, so I'll likely make it darker at some point.
Side note: AOL shut down their member homepages a couple of years ago. So where can I find the invaluable "Allan's Wood Miser's Workshop" site now besides on archive.org?
Soon after buying my Breedlove acoustic guitar, I decided to buy a clip-on tuner. There are many clip-on tuners available at all price ranges, and they all basically work the same way. They pick up the vibration of the strings through the guitar body and neck, and display the current pitch in a way that shows you the current tuning.
I opted for a cheap tuner, the Intelli IMT500 ![[B002Q0WSO8]](http://www.mikeyp.com/css/external.gif)
. While it worked reasonably well, I noticed that the display would occasionally swing wildly to inaccurate values.
I also noticed that I could hear a slight buzzing sound when playing some notes on the guitar. At first I assumed this was an intonation issue, but after setting up the guitar and trying several types of strings, I ruled out intonation as a cause. Then it hit me: I removed the clip-on tuner, and the buzzing stopped.
If I shook the tuner a little in my hand, I could hear a slight rattling from inside the device. It struck me that this was the cause of the buzzing while I played. And I realized that this must also affect the accuracy of the tuner. If the tuner relies on vibrations to show the pitch, extra vibrations from the device itself would explain the wild swings I saw on the display.
This was easy to fix.
The tuner is held together with just two screws, and inside, the small circuit board is held in place with two more screws. There is some “play” where the edge of the board touches the housing, and that’s what causes the buzzing and extra vibrations. I grabbed a small bit of foam and cut it into bits that I wedged in between the circuit board and the housing. I reassembled the tuner, and that was that – no more buzzing, and much better tuning accuracy.
After years of sweeping and dusting and dozens of disposable air filter masks, I’m finally taking dust control seriously in my garage workshop.
Dust control starts at the tool with a vacuum system, but it ends in the air. No matter how well I gathered chips and dust while working on a piece of wood, I would inevitably find a film of dust on everything in the garage by the end of the day.
No more.
I bought and installed a Jet Air Filtration System in the garage, and my days of pervasive dust are history. There are several air filter systems available. I picked the Jet because of a good review in Fine Woodworking and a good price plus “free” Prime shipping on Amazon.com.
You simply turn it on via a remote control, set the speed, set the number of hours it should run, and forget about it. It works like a home furnace, with a reasonably quiet impeller that cycles air through two sets of filters. The results are quickly noticeable.
$300 is cheap insurance against emphysema and lung cancer, eh?
(Why yes, I did in fact mount this sucker to the ceiling joists all by myself. Not recommended…)
There are many tales of garden gnomes who have mysteriously traveled the world.
But there are far fewer tales of gnomes that have traveled from a galaxy far, far away.
For the past five years I’ve been using Etymotic ER6i Isolator earphones. I’ve used them with my original 2nd gen iPod, my iPod nano, and now my iPhone 3G. Unlike the standard Apple earbuds, the Etys are in-ear earphones, which means that they also act as earplugs, isolating outside noise (like terrible coffee shop music). In fact, the tighter the outside noise isolation, the better the fidelity and bass response of the Etys. I love these things.
Etymotic has a long history of making high-end earphones as well as superior hearing protection. I bring a pair of Etymotic ER-20 earplugs with me to every concert, and I end up using them about half the time. They do an outstanding job of lowering volumes by about 15db without any of the muffling effect you get from regular foam earplugs. Wearing them is a great way to enjoy a concert and avoid damaging your hearing or aggravating evil tinnitus.
Both the earplugs and ER6i earphones use a triple flanged eartip to isolate noise. However, ear canal shapes vary widely among people, so Etymotic offers several eartip options. In my case, I found that the beige foam eartips did the best job of isolating sound by expanding to the shape of my ear canal. Compared to the flange eartip, I hear much deeper bass with the foam eartips installed.
I hope my Etys last another five years. And if they don’t, I’ll buy another set in an instant.
