Projects of James Swedberg

James Swedberg swedbug@aloha.net of Kailua, Hawaii, sends his attractive and uniqely designed garden bench, which he describes below.

"Here's a garden bench that I made.  I saw something similar and based my design on it.  The beauty of the design is that the materials are all 2x4's that were scrap from an addition that some friends made to their home.  I painted  one with the trim paint from the new addition and it always gets praise from their visitors.  I prefer the natural wood look.  I have made three benches from the scraps I collected and have enough for at least one more bench.  The design is adjustable to almost any size."

Jim and I share an interest in astronomy and optics: me as an amateur and Jim as a real expert in optics! He tells his story here, of the making of this quite unique woodworking/optical project.

"I wanted to build a telescope when I was in high school, but never found the time.  I went to the University of Arizona in 1979 to get my MS in optics.  One of the classes, Optical shop Practices, required that I grind a 6" mirror.  Since they wanted to be sure it was properly parabolized, it had to be a fairly short focal length and is f/4.5.  I kept it, had a friend aluminize and overcoat it, and have waited all this time for a chance to build the telescope.  Now that I am retired I finally got a chance to work on it.  The body and supports are all mahogany, and the eyepiece tube is brass, as is all of the hardware.  It is probably prettier than it is a good telescope, but it was fun and it is a good rich field instrument.

The wood is Philippine Mahogany, some ply and some solid.  I used the strips that are used around a door inside the door jamb.  The mahogany was available at the local hardware store and I noticed there were some light and some dark, so I alternated them around the telescope. The tube is made of strips beveled to the correct angle and edge glued.  I was somewhat amazed when it actually rolled up into a cylinder.

The trick in making a tube is to cut the bevel on each strip to the right angle.  After all, to make a box you can cut each of the four pieces at 45 degrees.  So there are four pieces, eight edges, at 45 deg.  8x45=360   I have 20 strips so each strip has edges beveled at 9 degrees   40x9=360  I laid them all out side by side on a couple strips of duct tape, put the glue on the edges and then just rolled it up. Actually I was as surprised as anyone when it worked as well as it did.  Strap clamps around the tube in a couple places held it together until the glue dried.  I cut a groove on the insides of the strips before I glued it up and put a plywood ring in which helped hold it cylindrical and which became the place to mount the mirror. You might try it on some short pieces as I did.  It made a pretty flower pot!"

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