Repairing a Vintage Hohner Harmonica Case

My Grandfather bought a Hohner Chromonika while serving in World War II (ironically, a German brand). When I was a child I had my own little blues harp, and seeing that I had an interest in it, he gave me his harmonica, in a lovely finger-jointed wood box.

Being a child at the time, I was a bit rough on the whole kit, and the box ended up broken with a couple of the pieces lost. I took the time recently to fabricate new finger-jointed pieces, and attach a new pair of hinges. Here's how the build went:



The Harmonica Case and the blank I cut from scrap stock.



I used the dremel to cut out the finger joints, after scrolling the existing joints on the box. Some adjustments were necessary to get a tight fit.



The joints were attached with wood glue, and clamped for drying.



I jacked these hinges off a box that I hardly use. They're pretty weathered, and a decent fit.





I'm happy with the results, and glad I was able to try this detail work with the dremel.

Maker Faire Day 2 - Moonisphere is Too Big to Fail

After a sweltering day building the Moonisphere on day one, so far we have merely a Moonicircle, but fear not! We were able to do a lot of prep work in the shade, cutting massive amounts of cardboard into appropriately sized strips to lay down.

Once the framework is made, we'll cut slots with a jigsaw, and fit it all together like an old-fashioned barn raising.

The crew from the New York Hall of Science has been great at redirecting all of their waste cardboard to our pile, and there will be plenty of cardboard from wolphram-alpha swag integrated into the Moonisphere.

If you find yourself passing by our tent, give a hand in constructing a wicked cool piece of temporary art! We're right by the 3d printers at Maker Faire, all day today.

Wedding Ring Geek Out

At ITP I have already met many kindred spirits, one of whom is Nelson Ramon, a longboarding, computer hacking, Colombian uber-geek. This is a photo of him, doing what he does:

He congratulated me on my recent wedding, and it turns out that he also got hitched just a couple of months ago. So of course, we compared wedding rings. I explained that mine was hand-hammered out of titanium by a local artist and New School professor, Paul DeBlassie. But I knew I had been bested when he showed me his white gold ring, also handmade, but with his anniversary engraved on the inside in binary!!! I definitely lost that geek fight, but am proud to have been there. Congratulations Ramon!

My Studio in the Throes of Music Production

As some of you may know, I am a musician when I'm not being a geek. I played for many years in New York City with lots of different groups, mainly the band Kinetic.

I was recently hired to write and compose music for a video game that's in development, so it was time to convert what is normally my hacker studio into my music studio.

I work fast and messy, so here are some pics of my 20 hour audio tirade. Funny how after all that, you can still see tools and materials poking out of the shadows...

Report from the Cold Spring Craft Fair

For it being our first craft fair, it went very well. We weren't concerned with making money, so much as observing people's reactions to our creations.


The scrapwood shelves turned a lot of heads, but a lot of the time there would be a man being interested in them and his wife pulling him away. :) But I did sell one piece, to a happy Martin W (who works for a NYC design firm, and is keeping my card on file - yippee!) pictured here. When he bought it he said he won't "ruin it by putting knick-knacks on it."



Does this make me an artist? One woman said my shelves reminded her of Louise Nevelson, and when I admitted to not knowing who that was, she said "shame on you!" I tried explaining to her that I'm not an artist - this was just something I like to do, but this didn't seem to quell her agitation. All the same I take it as a compliment. It led me to check out Nevelson's work, which I really dig! And read this quote from her:


"When you put together things that other people have thrown out, you’re really bringing them to life – a spiritual life that surpasses the life for which they were originally created."


I can run with that...

The Story of My Sockets

People come into tools for all different reasons - you might have the $40,000 super precision Snap-On Set, or the Chinese plastic molded toolkit you bought in Bushwick when you were scraping by as a college student. Maybe you've inherited some tools - maybe you've bought some specifically for a job, and even today when digging around you can still recall the exact circumstances in which you were made to acquire it.


For most of us it's a combination of all these things, and probably more. This motley set of sockets has come into my possession through many miles and at least a couple of generations. It was always my father's habit to throw his sockets into a box and go hunting for the right one when necessary. But I had just organized my drill bit collection (just as motley, and organized just the same way-back-when by my father) and wanted to put it to use.


I dumped out all the sockets and separated them by metric (aqua) and English (natural) units, then organized by size. After drilling the right sized holes for each piece, I had fashioned my very own socket organizer, perfectly tailored for my needs. It cost nothing but the few pieces of scrap wood I had, and if I ever acquire more sockets I can just cut out the parts I need to change - keep it ever-evolving. And by the way, I'll always remember that the aqua bits were from the picket gate I rescued from the trash to make tomato stakes with.


The easy route would have been to go to sears and buy the super-duper socket set and make sure to keep it organized, but this way I can append some pride to the whole matter - make do with my own design, and come to find that I'm actually the better for it. Now these sockets rest in a drawer in a dentist's cabinet in my basement (scored that gem with the marble base for 50 bucks at a barn sale). Again, it's a matter of seeking the alternative for the better, not just to settle for less, but to push for more! This is what "pushing the other button" is all about. When something seems too easy, or you're not quite getting the satisfaction from your work or yourself you think you should, go ahead and try the other thing - push the other button. You could surprise yourself with what happens...

Evaporative Cooler Update!

Methinks the evaporative cooling set-up did it's job just fine! Between 11:00 to 1:20 the inside temperature creeped from 85 F to 90 F and has held steady since then (writing this at 3:30). I'm calling this a not-too-shabby success, since the outdoor temperature climbed from 91 to 97 in the same amount of time.

So I didn't quite reach the wet-bulb temperature of 84, but here I am writing this entry - a bit balmy, but if it were 97 indoors I'd probably have passed out before finishing this paragraph :)


Lots of thanks to Make: Magazine for featuring this project!

Using the Internet to Get Free Stuff in the Mail

     In an earlier post, I mentioned how much I love sending and receiving mail through the good ole USPS. One of the ways I ensure that my mailbox periodically contains treasure when I open it, is by taking a few minutes every once in a while to fill out forms online to get free stuff sent to me. I'll do a bigger post soon showing the bounty I've gleaned in the past couple of years since I started doing this, but today I received two free magazine subscriptions with a juxtaposition that just made me chuckle.

Papercraft (Cardboard Craft?) Pizza Box Robot Monster