Based

(Monday, 4/18)

  I haven't done this in a long time. I never had to work a stone this heavy, and I don't have the juice I did seventeen years ago. And once I start the process, I can't turn around and go back. You get only one shot at everything in this game. Nothing done can be undone. So, it has been slow going.

Today, I went to buy a 12 inch sanding disc.  Five different stores didn't have what I wanted. Harbor Freight had a deal on some 80 grit sanding belts, so I bought them, and figured I'll make do. It turned out to be a good buy.

I spent the rest of the day  wrestling that rock all over the table, trying to figure just how to set it up, and build a jig for the base cut. I got a start on the jig, but I never did get anything set up. My buddy, John came over in the late afternoon. His day had gone like mine. He started the morning wanting to do a quick repair on his nail gun. The quick repair took all day, and the nail gun still wouldn't work. We were both frustrated, tired, and discouraged. So I lit a fire.

My wife, Mary, poured wine, and made a salad and some rice. I cleaned myself up a little, and got the meat on the coals. Beer, bud, and a barbecue chicken dinner did wonders for restoring our spirits.

And, as it turned out, the day wasn't wasted at all. A good part of this job is just sitting and looking. I didn't get the base cut, but I did figure out how to do it, and I was able to show John just what we'd need to do to get it done. So John came back over with his Skill Saw Tuesday morning, and we got to work. 

(Tuesday, 4/19, Bicycle Day)

I know where I want to go, but I'm still not entirely sure how to get there.  (And no, I'm not celebrating Bicycle Day this year.) It's all backyard engineering with scrap plywood, lumber, and a length of conduit that I had lying around the garage. We got started early, but (what a surprise!) the job took much longer than I thought it would.

 John is an old-school home builder. His weapon of choice is the Skill Saw, sans guard. It scares the crap out of me, but he wields the thing like a samurai.  

  I spent most of the day looking, measuring, and making little tweaks until I was satisfied that the stone sat level and square. John cut the needed wedges, blocks, and shims. We got the rock framed up, and wedged in straight, tight, stable, and solid. Here's where John gets the award for patience. It took about six hours to set up the cut.

 I took some fine pictures, of the set-up, except I, uh, took them without a card in the camera.  Crap. 

 Like I said, you get one shot... And yes, that's a regular bow saw; it's the same blade that trims branches off of your trees. Alabaster is a soft stone, and the big sharp teeth tear right through it. It takes more effort than cutting through a piece of  lumber, but not a lot more.  The rock sat tight in the cradle. I ran the blade flat across the rails, and cut the bottom out from under the stone. Here's how it all came out:

 

I wanted to cut about five inches off the bottom of the stone. The scrap piece, if set it on the flat side, is just a shade over five and a quarter inches high. Bingo.  It weighs around 18 pounds. 

(4/21) The next part is finishing the bottom cut. Even with the the conduit rails as a saw guide, there was still some unevenness across the bottom of the big piece. 

Trying to get it perfectly flat with a hand tool is all kinds of tricky. You can end up with a lot of powdered rock trying to get it just right. You can mess it up even faster with a grinder.

But I had five heavy duty,  eight inch wide sanding belts. I had some fine pieces of 3/4 inch plywood. I went out and bought a can of contact cement. 

I secured the board to the table top with some scraps of 2X4, then slowly shoved, and dragged the big rock across the 80 grit, and let gravity take care of the rest. It takes a sort of walking effort: push the right side; push the left side; right, left, right, from one end of the table to the other until the high spots and low spots are gone. It's a primitive, tedious, labor intensive way of doing it, but it works. It took about a half hour of walking it back and forth before  the streaks in the sand paper were solid. I penciled  a fine grid across the bottom of the base, and sent it down the runway one more time. I tipped the rock up to check. All clean.

 

The stone is based. 

Now, back to the part where nothing happens.

JWM