Melbourne Wood Show

Just in case you’ve missed the publicity (of which there has not been a great deal, at least in the mainstream), the Melbourne Timber and Working with Wood Show is this weekend, and is at Caulfield.

Free parking (yay)
$16 entry fee (boo)
I’m not demonstrating this year (yay?)
But not sure how many will be anyway (boo)
Lots of usual suspects (yay)
Many, many others missing (boo)
43 exhibitors (yay)
down from about 70 in 2013 (boo)
Timbecon is back (yay)
Carrolls is MIA (boo)

So it will be interesting to see what it is all like, I really hope it goes well. But for those who have read my thoughts about the woodshow in previous years will remember, this is the direction I was sadly predicting.  And you can’t blame the GFC this time around.

Map and Exhibitor List

Busy work

Haven’t posted anything for a while – longer than I realised it seems!  Not that I haven’t been working in the shed, but sometimes I just need to get my head down and power through to make some progress.

The latest work that I have been doing is for the next issue of The Shed magazine – those deadline come around so quickly!

For a bit of a sneak peek, I am working on a water wheel – will end up being a garden feature, but I am trying to make it with some thought behind the design, and not just a basic layout.  You may well ask, just how many ways can you actually make a water wheel, and the more I think about it, and the more research I do on the topic, the more surprised I become about the breadth of the topic.

I found a particularly interesting reference, quite the authority on the topic.  It is The Engineer’s and Mechanic’s Encyclopædia: Comprehending Practical Illustrations of the Machinery and Processes Employed in Every Description of Manufacuture of the British Empire, Volumes 1-2

by Luke Herbert, and the title is quite the mouthful!  Interesting to find a book that has such a strong understanding of the science of water wheels.  Of course, that it was written in 1836 might have something to do with it!  I found some of the relevant text online so was able to glean what I could from that, and I have the book on order from Amazon – looking forward to seeing what other gems it contains!

I’ve been playing around with fin design, with this as an early model

This was with a fin angle of 22.5^o.  I’ve since refined the angle to 30^o, and the result is a lot better, with the inner circle now having a much greater diameter.

I am designing it as an overshot water wheel, so the turning moment of the water is important – the further away from the point of rotation that the water is maintained, the greater turning force it exerts due to gravity.  In any respect, it is quite a fun evolution!

I’ve also been making a number of models on the CNC while all this has been going on, in preparation for an upcoming school fête fundraiser.

So as I said, I might have been a bit quiet on here, but that doesn’t mean that it has been so in the shed! Bags and bags of sawdust coming out (especially now I have the new collector, and the cyclone separator makes removing the full bags a breeze).