Sacked by the "downturn", an unemployed architect touring the country in a bus...




I used to live in New York City. I designed homes for the tycoons of Wall Street; Park Avenue, Scarsdale, Greenwich. It was great fun. And, after years of saving up for a down payment, I was just about to buy my own little place in Fleetwood, half an hour north of the city, when the economy fell apart. Architects are like canaries in a coal mine when the economy slows, and true to form, there were massive layoffs in firms all over the country. Devastation of the profession. So, I decided to try to find something else to do for a while. I bought a 23' school bus and I'm on the road to see if I can figure out what that might be.

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Tapering the pieces...

A few shots from today.  First, one leg in the tapering jig I built.  This holds the piece at a very precise incline as it runs through the thickness planer, which results in a piece that has more wood removed on one end.  Flip it over, adjust the incline (double the angle), run through the planer again, and voila, a tapered piece!  (Working out the fine points took some time, like getting the angles just right for the different lengths, adding the sacrificial blocks at the ends so that the machine's start and stop dips did not ruin the piece, and so forth.)




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