People avoid asking me sometimes: “Why’s this taking so long?”

That’s easy! It is because:

  • I simply do not know what I am doing
  • I am constantly alternating between designing, redesigning, and constructing the damn thing.

For instance, Here is the experiment to decide what to use for the spacer blocks:

Experimental Setup

Assuming lines occasionally get tied around the spacer block, it’d be good to know what some force will do to them. Here is why you do not bevel the spacer blocks:

(Maybe a nice way to remove inwales you don't like anymore)

Even with a more sensible shape, take a look at what’s happening to the soft wood here:

Leaves a few scars

Which led me to playing with this guy

The wood, not the peppers.

which believe it or not I salvaged along with three other nice pieces out of a free scrap bin at *name redacted*. I figured it was some offbrand mahogany but on inspection I think it’s actually brazilian walnut which is a super dense tropical hardwood that is supposed to be pretty rot resistant. and this stuff is dense. Still is pretty efficient to quickly chisel a channel along the edge and then cut out spacers…

Easy hardwood. (after stresstest)

but this endgrain orientation would be weak under flex from the inwale and also suck up ambient water at its earliest opportunity so I think I have to go to the more labor intensive approach of cutting off a spacer and then shaping the channels. For this I played around with a router bit a few times but in the end switched out to use a rasp.

Hard hardwood (after stresstest)

Looks sturdy. Now we just need thirty of them…