Wooden Chess Board

 Greetings friends,

I try as often as possible to make Christmas gifts for my family rather than buying things, and this year I decided that a great gift for my brother would be a wooden chess board. He has been studying chess more in recent years, and thought he would enjoy having a nice board to play on.

I didn't take any photos of my raw materials, but as you can imagine, I chose the usual maple & walnut combo for the white and black (brown) squares on the board. I cut them to the standard USCF width of 2.25" and glued them all together. When dry, I cut 2.25" strips from the striped board and alternated layers on the next glue-up to achieve the checkered pattern.

   

At this stage, I glued on the first border around the edge of the board, a thin strip of walnut. This was just an aesthetic choice to provide some more contrast on the edges. To add some thickness to the board, I used some spare pieces of maple to create a border around the bottom. I figured in addition to adding some heft to the board, this would also protect against any warping should it be subjected to higher or lower humidity.

Nearing completion, I took the board over to my brother-in-law who has a nice drum sander to flatten the top of the board and remove any irregularities. Seeing everything slowly come together was very encouraging! The final steps were to trim the edges fully flush/square and to add the final trim on the outer edge of the board.

Some years ago, I found a beautiful piece of figured maple in a "pay-per-pound" scrap lumber pile, and never did anything with it until now. I cut it into 1/4" strips and mitered the ends to the right length to line up at the corners of the board. This part was by far the most tricky as far as measuring and aligning, but the final product looks really great with no end-grain exposed.

With the assembly complete, I used my orbital sander to sand progressively to 600 grit which left a very smooth surface on the top. I only sanded the bottom to 220 since it's not visible during use and will likely wear much faster than the top anyway. Two coats of boiled linseed oil (BLO) really made the contrast between the maple and walnut pop, and brought out the figuring in the maple strips around the edges! I'm incredibly happy with the end result, and my brother really loved it too.

I hope everyone has a Happy New Year, and stays tuned for whatever I'm up to in 2023!

Thanks for reading,

Juju

Pirate Costume: The Hat

 Greetings friends,

For a number of years I thought it'd be fun to gradually assemble a pirate costume that I can wear every year for Halloween. This eliminates the need for new costumes, and with a small amount of effort I can add little details to the costume every year. Last year (2021) I went very simple, repurposing a "Where's Waldo" striped shirt for my pirate garb and sporting a matching red bandana. This year, I decided I'd have a go at making a nice pirate hat.

I ordered a felted wool hat blank from Cooperstown Trading Post, in a size XL. I forgot to take a photo of the hat when it arrived, but it's a very basic black hat with a round wide brim. The hat was incredibly stiff, but with some persuasion, it became pliable enough to shape.

I wanted to style the hat similar to the classic tricorn, so I started by bending up the brim of the hat on each side and applied some small clamps to establish a crease. I used the steam setting on my clothes iron to gently steam the hat so that the crease would set. This worked incredibly well to soften the wool and make this work much easier. At the same time, I was able to steam the crown of the hat and stretch it over my head to achieve a better fit. With the hat shaped with steam and clamps, I used some thick thread to "pin" the sides up to hold the tricorn shape.

For the trim, I wanted something ornate but not too over the top. I found a wonderful trim from Palladia Passementerie which I think has the perfect level of flair. I sewed this around the brim of the hat after shaping it, using a thumb tack to poke through the thick wool and then sewing the trim into place.

I have some future plans to add to the hat, for example some feathers and maybe decorative pins or buttons, but at this point it was ready for the debut! It fits really comfortably over my bandana and I'm sure will hold up well for quite a long time!

Arrrr!

Thanks for reading,

Juju

BMW R65/R100 Restoration - Part 7 - Brake Caliper Rebuild

Greetings friends,

This is a continuation of my series of posts documenting the restoration of my BMW R65. For the previous post in this series, click here.

I bought a Brembo brake caliper (sort of) sight unseen on Ebay. The "unseen" portion of this purchase was the condition of the inside of the caliper, as well as no part numbers being provided, only that this caliper was the correct vintage for BMW airheads. For $40, I really couldn't pass on the price and took a chance on it...

When it arrived, I was amazed at how nice the caliper was, and after opening it up I found almost no corrosion or other significant signs of wear! I hit the jackpot but decided the rebuild the caliper anyway, primarily due to the fact that I can only assumer all the seals and gaskets are 40+ years old and need replacement anyway.

Brembo provides a huge selection of repair and rebuild kits for their brakes, and I was pleased to find the exact kits I needed for this specific caliper. The caliper didn't come with the retaining pins and spring for the pads, so I had to buy those separately. The seal kit came with piston gaskets and dust covers as well as replacement bolts for holding the halves of the caliper together. I'll go into more detail below.

Cleaning the interior of the caliper was an easy process, like I said there wasn't much corrosion at all, and the surfaces just had old brake fluid on them. A thorough wiping with acetone and paper towels cleaned them right up. Some acetone-soaked Q-tips were able to reach into the small holes and remove any build-up.

The Brembo kits included some assembly lubricant which was much more viscous than brake fluid but it made the re-assembly a breeze. In a matter of about 15 minutes I installed the piston seals, dust covers, and bolted the two halves of the caliper back together. A small O-ring is sandwiched between the halves of the caliper to connect the brake fluid galleys, so both halves of the caliper receive fluid. When torqueing the big bolts holding the caliper together, I mounted the caliper back onto the forks which gave me the leverage I needed, as the torque spec for these bolts is 50 ft-lb. 

The brake pads have alignment pins as well as a retaining spring, which may look a bit clumsy in the photo below, but once around the brake rotor will be aligned well. At this point the reassembly is complete, I just need to reinstall the caliper onto the forks and bleed it with new fluid!

I hope to be able to make more posts soon for this project. Life has been busy and this project has been on the backburner, but I pretty much have most parts in place to at least have the bike moving... just gotta type out a lot more of these updates. Keep an eye out for more posts!

Thanks for reading,

Juju