Chakram Progress, Sunday afternoon

After lunch, we decided that we might as well start cutting the chackram. It was going to be tricky: there are several sections in which the chackam blades have whorls and wierdness, which we wounldn´t be able to completely cut with the saw.

So we quickly got started. Needless to say, I´m kinda scared of saws.

My father was mainly here in this part of the process to help me cut. I was (and still am, somewhat) scared of saws--not just because if something went wrong, it could cut my finger off: no, what really worried me was the fact that I could essentially ruin what we´d been drawing the whole morning, as well as damage the wood.

My Dad started the cutting. But in the end, I joined too. It´s actually quite fun, once you get past the initial fear of killing your future chackram by accident.

Smiiiiile! I´ve got a saw and I don´t really know how to use it!! Well, maybe you should run.......

We ended up cutting both giant wheels, since setting up the tools again later would have been quite a hassle.

 

 

They look, amazingly, like tabletops. wierd, spiky tabletops that´ll poke you in the stomach as soon as you try to lean forward to eat your spoonful of soup.

When we looked at the watch, we realized it was only 18:20!! We still had over two hours or time left before our neighbors could actually start complaining about the noise in the garden. What to do, what to do.....???

 START SANDING, BABY!!!

Gosh, but how I do love sanding machines. Nice, pretty, efficient electrical ones. You get stuff done "over 9,000!!" times faster than with manual sanding....and the end result usually looks better too. Not that you don´t have to manually sand sometimes, but I definitely didn´t want to be sanding (p= 2πr times two) 628cm worth of wood by hand. Just thinking about it makes me dizzy. I finished one in about an hour and a bit ( had to sand both sides of the "table" to make the "blade"), so I decided to finish the other one up before 20:30 as well. In the end, I finished at 21 on the dot, but most of the neighbors were still at the pool, so I´m guessing that the noise wasn´t particularly bothersome. Or maybe it was--but they were feeling guilty about their loud parties/shrieking children/both and decided to let me make a racket for once. 

 Safety is important. The goggles were a given--my glasses don´t protect me from flying dust much better than...well....not wearing them. By the middle of the first wheel, I realized the vast quantity of sawdust I was inhaling. Luckily, I had a mask to wear. yay for being able to breathe!!

Sorry for the wobbly picture. my grandma took it. It´s the two "finished" wheels; now the only cuttting left to do is the center. We decided to leave that for after sanding due to the fact that the electric sander sends a lot of vibrations thorugh the wood--and the wood could split/snap/whatever if it´s subjected to too much (and weakened by having a hole through its center). 

Yeah, I look horrible. But I wear those clothes on purpose, because if they die, I won´t regret tossing them.  That´s why they´re "work-clothes"! An old too-short spaghetti strap and some gym shorts from when I was in middle school.

Chackram progress, Friday and Sunday morning

The Friday before last, I  finally went out with my father to buy wood for making my chakram/wheels for lady Sun. It was hard to find (Leroy Merlin, why did you fail me?!?) but we ended up at a rather nice and professional store. To our great sadness, we found out that they didn´t cut circles (or rather "crowns/halos")--we had to end up ordering square cuts, to later cut into circles ourselves. it was a bit discouraging, but not too much.

We already had the design for the chakram, so we knew what the thickness (of the board) and measurements and such we wanted to cut the board into. In case you can´t see it too well, it´s a circle with a diameter of 1m. The inner corona should have a radius of 37cm: my Dad and I calculated (from looking at pictures) that the blades must be around 7cm and the inner "support" 6cm, making it a mere 13 cm of wood before you reach "empty circle space" as I like to call it.We estimate that the thickness should be of 12-15mm.

 

Our oh-so-professional-looking weapon design.

We ended up buying a 2.55m x 1.22m piece, and had it cut into two 1.02x1.02m pieces, with the rest of it saved as well. Unfortunately, the "lighter" version of the wood that we needed came at 10mm thickness at the most, so we ended up buying a thinner peice than we had planned as well. It´ll be easier to cut, i suppose, but I still would have liked it thicker. As soon as the pieces were cut, we took my babies home!!

The leftover pieces will work quite nicely for swordmaking, naginatamaking or just about any wooden weapon-making. Which makes me happy. I have enough for more than 2 swords, probably.

On Sunday, we got down to work. The first thing we did was draw the design onto the wooden squares.

 We used a chain (and a nail driven into the center of the board) to draw the arcs and circumferences in the design. Why a chain and not string? Chain has no give, while string and yarn does, leading to imperfect circles.

One of my (rather, LoL) original ways of  tracing everything so that all the designs ended up being symmetrical. I was too lazy to go get a clean sheet, so we used one which we´d scribbled calculations on.

We finished everything before lunch. I thought that that would be that--it was a lot of progress, frankly, for a couple of hours in the morning--but in the end, my Dad got really pumped and we decided to go for it and advance while we could later in the afternoon.