Golden Section or Golden Mean Gauge

I have been reading the excellent book By Hand And Eye by Jim Tolpin and George R. Walker recently.
For those of you how might not have read this yet it "introduces us to the language of pre-industrial artisans" and "how period work is based upon how we relate to our own bodies and the world around us in terms of proportion, ratio and scale". It really is an interesting read and I encourage people to have a look at it.

I was speaking to a friend the other day and she mentioned the "Golden Ratio" and "Fibonacci Numbers"
I know from my time in engineering that when something "looks right" it invariably is right. It turns out that since ancient times people having been making use of the "Golden Ration" to design furniture, bridges, buildings so that they are pleasing to the eye.

Freely available books (Not just woodworking) on the internet

I was tasked by my wife Elly recently to find a copy of Ernest Hemingway's "Farewall to Arms". I saw the Kindle edition on Amazon for a few £s. I then thought as this is a classic it may be free somewhere else.

It is :)

I found the scanned 1929 version on archive.org it was freely available to download on PDF, kindle and many other formats.
Looking around on the site I searched for "woodwork" or "woodworking" and there is a mountain of books in there, both old and new, that are freely available for everyone to download and read. I'm currently reading "Elementary Woodworking" by Edwin Foster a 1903 tome. Everything in there is just as relevant in 2014 as it was in 1903.

Here is a link to the book

Have a look at the archive as it is superb.

My current cross cut sled

The crosscut sled is a very simple but (I believe) essential addition to a table saw. I have made many of these over the years but this is my latest incarnation. It won't be my last.
Essentially it comprises a 3/4" plywood base with two 4" x 2" softwood fences. I won't go into the details of how this is made as there are many tutorials on the internet.

The overall dimensions of the base are 16" wide x 23-1/2" long. The saw kerf slot is at 5" in from one edge. There is only one mahogany runner on the base as European saws with sliding tables only have one mitre slot to the left of the saw blade when viewed from the operator perspective. I don't believe that you actually need to have two runners as they are prone to binding if the mitre slots are not precisely parallel.

You may also notice the piece of blue tape on the fence. This is just to micro adjust the fence so the cut is exactly square. This saves having to mess around with unscrewing the screws underneath and readjusting. That is just a waste of time and tape works just as well if the fence is slightly out of whack.
If I had one improvement to this it would be making the cutoff side slightly deeper probably 12" instead of the stated 5" making the overall sizes of the sled 23" x 23-1/2" long. I find that cutoff pieces fall when the are cut off instead of staying on the sled. You can scale your crosscut sled up or down accordingly but I find (even at the current relatively small size) it works very well and does not take up much storage space.

I also attach sacrificial 1/4" thick ply to the fence as the kerf slot wears (they do) with some double sided tape. When that wears I take it off and attach another or just put another on the existing as currently shown. When the entire sled is worn out just make another.

Single mahogany quarter sawn runner
on the underside

16" wide - note the blue tape micro adjuster

23 1/2" long x 3/4" thick plywood

4x2 softwood jointed fence
either end

Not one of my stringed instruments

My wife Elly and I recently went to see Pat Metheny and his Unity Band live in concert at Salford's Lowry Theatre. We were lucky enough to get almost front row tickets but were situated 6 feet away from Pat as the position of the seats were right in front of him. I had been following him since 1977 and I have always been a big fan.
The concert started with him playing a derivative of the guitar shown below.

The one he was playing only had two necks but still had 4 separate runs of strings making up 42 strings in total. Elly and I thought he would just strum it and call it done. How wrong we were. He played every part of the instrument including the wood and it blew every-bodies mind in the theatre.

I did a little research and found out that it was made by Linda Manzer a luthier based in Toronto see here. It gives me food for thought (not that I would be able to play it like Pat does) but I could have a go at making something similar.

Hmm a project maybe for the future.