Yeah, late at night, I sometimes hear Pattycake with a deep bass groove.
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Inside The Secret Underground Laboratory
- Thread starter Bruce Johnson
- Start date
Gotta say, I reckon this is the best thread on all of TB. 
Cool tools, bass building, and an engineer's sense of humor.Gotta say, I reckon this is the best thread on all of TB.
This seems like an appropriate place to share a Facebook post that just came across my feed:
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?? Does this have something to do with me or my web site? I don't understand the connection?
Personally, I like DuckDuckGo and have been using it as my search engine for the last several years. I use Brave as my browser.
I don't use or like Facebook. I strongly disagree with their censorship policies and their tracking and misuse of peoples data. And I generally am not going to waste my life yakking with people about meaningless drivel.
My social media outlet is TalkBass. On here, I'm chatting about subjects that are the focus of my life, with people who have similar interests. And we're trading useful information and helping each other improve our lives through electric basses!
I agree about Facebook and deleted my account a while back...my only regret is I had lots of video playing my aub1 and your 25 there that is sadly lost to the ether.
@Bruce Johnson Honestly? It's a notice of a bunch of antique machinery that's for sale in the L.A. area. I assumed it would be of interest to you and possibly other folks on this thread, but perhaps I was mistaken. It all looked really cool to me and I imagined this might be the only other group of people who might feel the same way. I'll delete that post and this one if you prefer...no harm, no foul. Yes, I agree, Facebook is a quagmire.
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Oh, I'm sorry Brad, I misunderstood! What I'm seeing here is a block saying that DuckDuckGo has blocked a Facebook post because bla bla. It doesn't say anything about what the Facebook post is about. So I didn't click on it.
Okay, I unblocked it and now I see why you posted it here! Arrgh! A building full of old machines available for cheap! I'm not sure if that's a dream or a nightmare!
That lathe is a nice looking LeBlond. But I already have a nice collection of LeBlonds. I really don't need any more of them.
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Exactly! It looked like there could be some treasure in there, so I thought I'd give you guys a heads up.
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My work has giant metal lathes like the one pictured above. That's some no-fooling-around stuff!
That grey lathe in the pictures is a LeBlond DualDrive from the 1950's. It looks like a 17" swing model. That's a serious "medium-size" lathe; about 6000 lbs.
I've got two older Leblond Regals in my shop, a 1949 Regal 17" x 6' bed and a 1947 Regal 13" x 7' bed. I use the Regal 17 almost every day, for machining larger (over 1" dia) parts for machines and tooling. I also thread all my truss rods on it. I use my Logan 11" lathe for all the smaller (under 1") production parts. It has a 5C collet spindle nose and a turret tailstock assembly. I have the Regal 13 set up with a small router head on the tool post, and I use it for cutting precision round wood parts, like hardwood dowels and plugs.
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Here are some pictures of my LeBlonds, from November 2013 when I was moving my shop from Burbank up to Fillmore.
Loading the Regal 13 onto the trailer for the move.
The big black Regal 17 parked in its new home in the Fillmore shop.
A row of my machines temporarily parked in one of my bays in Fillmore, right off the trailers. Second from the left is my 1937 LeBlond #2 Tool & Cutter Grinder. In the middle is the LeBlond Regal 13. The fifth machine down is the prize of my LeBlond collection, a 1907 LeBlond No. 0 Horizontal Mill. The only one known to still exist.
Oh, man. Looking back, I don't know how I had the physical strength to make that move. I couldn't do it today. It was a total of 54 truck loads over 3 months. About 25 loads with trailers to move the machines. And I actually did almost all of it by myself, loading and unloading all those machines and stuff.
The only run where I got some help was when I brought the big LeBlond Regal 17 up on the hydraulic trailer. About 3400 lbs. Keith Horne rode along and helped me roll it off the trailer and into place.
Loading the Regal 13 onto the trailer for the move.
The big black Regal 17 parked in its new home in the Fillmore shop.
A row of my machines temporarily parked in one of my bays in Fillmore, right off the trailers. Second from the left is my 1937 LeBlond #2 Tool & Cutter Grinder. In the middle is the LeBlond Regal 13. The fifth machine down is the prize of my LeBlond collection, a 1907 LeBlond No. 0 Horizontal Mill. The only one known to still exist.
Oh, man. Looking back, I don't know how I had the physical strength to make that move. I couldn't do it today. It was a total of 54 truck loads over 3 months. About 25 loads with trailers to move the machines. And I actually did almost all of it by myself, loading and unloading all those machines and stuff.
The only run where I got some help was when I brought the big LeBlond Regal 17 up on the hydraulic trailer. About 3400 lbs. Keith Horne rode along and helped me roll it off the trailer and into place.
If I remember correctly, the longest lathe bed in our machine shop is around 12 feet. They turn large shafts, mostly for pumps, on these lathes. We can make replacement shafts for a quarter of what OEM parts cost with no loss in performance.
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I spent my high school summers working in a mom and pop shop making baroque and renaissance flutes and recorders. Lots of cool lathe work, but the funkiest machine was something Pop had cobbled together early in his career to be able to turn contrabass recorders. The body of the instrument is ~6' long. The bed of the lathe had to be double that to accommodate the blank plus the (custom) borer and reamers to clear out the interior. He'd essentially cannibalized the beds from a couple different lathes and bodged them end-to-end. The whole thing bucked like a bronco when you started with a rough log.
Wow. I keep re-reading these two paragraphs and imagining how I might have managed through this. I think I would have quit after 10 truckloads, maybe fewer. I really hate moving, and I especially hate moving heavy stuff.
The main thing was pacing myself, not trying to scramble too hard for long. I made 4 or 5 trips per week. It was 45 miles each way, up the 5 and west on the 126. On a moving day, I'd spend the afternoon in Burbank loading up the truck and trailer with machines and stuff. Catch some sleep in the evening. Get on the road at 11 pm to miss all the traffic. Drive slow and easy and safely. Arrive at the Fillmore shop around midnight. Unload till 2 am. Catch a quick nap in Fillmore, drive back down to Burbank around 5 am to miss the traffic. Sleep till noon. Repeat.
Moving the big machines was all about having the right equipment. Most of my machines over 400 lbs are on wooden bases that a pallet jack rolls under. That's how I move them around in the shop to work on them. During the move, I rented a hydraulic-lift trailer that lowers its bed flat down on the ground. I used a portable electric winch to pull each machine, riding on the pallet jack, up onto the trailer. The trailer was rated at 4000 lbs, and most trips were 2-3 machines.
For the big lathes, I made up dollies from steel channel with big casters bolted to them. So, the lathes were up on wheels. I used the winch plus my gantry crane to pull them onto the trailer. I was able to load and unload both big lathes by myself. Keith helped me unloading the Regal 17, 3400 lbs, just for safety. The Regal 13 is about 2400 lbs.
Smaller machines, workbenches, cabinets under 400 lbs were moved with hand trucks and pallet jacks. Some of them are already on casters. Most of them I did in 4 loads renting a larger stake-bed truck with a lift gate.
Material handling equipment: pallet jacks, winches, gantry crane, hand trucks. I rented pickup trucks, big box trucks and a few trailers from U-Haul. The stake bed truck from Ryder, and the hydraulic lift trailer from a large industrial rental place.
A few updates in the Lab;
This spring and summer, I've been doing a lot of shuffling and rearranging in my shop spaces. Moving machines and furniture and stuff around from here to there. Making it all cleaner and better organized. More efficient for me to crank out basses. I've been in here 8 years now. The dust and debris is starting to pile up on top of things. After the initial jam of moving in here, now I see what I really need and use.
I recently acquired this cool old green drill cabinet. It was shop-made by someone and left here by the aerospace company that was in this building in the '90's. I'm guessing it's from the '50's. All made from plywood, with drawers with dividers for holding drill bits and tooling. Vintage machinery coolness.
I shuffled some furniture around and wheeled it in right next to my big beautiful Royersford 21 drill press. The appropriate place. It's going to be my central storage for metalworking drills and cutters.
It's got the big angled rack on top for big drill bits. I've got my MT (Morse Taper Shank) drills from 1" to 1 1/2" loaded in there. I'm thinking of adding a similar divided shelf for the smaller MT drills just above it.
The drawers are simple construction of plywood and masonite dividers.
This is a style of tooling cabinets that you'd see in factories everywhere from the '30's to the '50's. I may make up some more drawers, just like these, to fill in the whole bottom area.
This spring and summer, I've been doing a lot of shuffling and rearranging in my shop spaces. Moving machines and furniture and stuff around from here to there. Making it all cleaner and better organized. More efficient for me to crank out basses. I've been in here 8 years now. The dust and debris is starting to pile up on top of things. After the initial jam of moving in here, now I see what I really need and use.
I recently acquired this cool old green drill cabinet. It was shop-made by someone and left here by the aerospace company that was in this building in the '90's. I'm guessing it's from the '50's. All made from plywood, with drawers with dividers for holding drill bits and tooling. Vintage machinery coolness.
I shuffled some furniture around and wheeled it in right next to my big beautiful Royersford 21 drill press. The appropriate place. It's going to be my central storage for metalworking drills and cutters.
It's got the big angled rack on top for big drill bits. I've got my MT (Morse Taper Shank) drills from 1" to 1 1/2" loaded in there. I'm thinking of adding a similar divided shelf for the smaller MT drills just above it.
The drawers are simple construction of plywood and masonite dividers.
This is a style of tooling cabinets that you'd see in factories everywhere from the '30's to the '50's. I may make up some more drawers, just like these, to fill in the whole bottom area.
My auxiliary shop, Unit 2, is also taking shape. This is the 500 sf space across the hall from me that Keith Horne used to be in. It's evolved as I've been experimenting with renting it out to several other Luthiers. It's turning into....the Routing Room. A shop set up for doing all kinds of routing, with templates and fixtures. All except the big green pin router, which remains over in my main shop.
Since U2 is closed up and well lighted, I've moved my special routing bench, racks of routers, and most-used router fixtures in there. In the center is a large rolling general work bench (with a bunch of old junk on it right now). From the left are the router racks, my custom routing bench, a small Rigid belt sander, the Super Router Planer, and my main neck radiusing fixture. The upcoming Neck Shaping Router Machine will eventually be in here too.
This is the place to make a mess of sawdust. The plan is to keep the room sparse, and not pile up stuff everywhere. So it's easy to keep swept and vacuumed up.
Here are the router racks. I made these racks many years ago to hold audio, video and computer equipment in my office in my Burbank shop. But they gradually became more useful out in the shop. The rack on the left holds router bits, custom router bases, frequently-used fixtures, and accessories. The rack on the right holds the routers themselves. I count 10 routers that I have all set up and use regularly. Plus maybe 6 spares and leftovers.
Here's my router bench. I built it back in 1992, and it has served me very well since then. I had to take it all apart to get it through the doorway of U2. This is its new home. To the left is the small Grizzly dust collector that hooks up to many of the router bases, and is used for general cleanup of the router bench.
And here's the Super Router Planer, which I built this spring. Jeremy has been giving it a workout lately.
Also in this room (for now) is my Fret Slotting Saw. Racks of fret scale rulers are on the wall behind it. Underneath it (for now) are some of the classic fixtures that you've seen on the Router Planing Fixtures thread.
I've moved the other machines back over into my main Unit 14 shop. That will have almost all of my woodworking machines: tablesaws, chopsaw bench, pin routers, jointers, planers, bandsaws, drill presses, edge sander, etc.
I've realized that most of the sawdust that ends up floating around and covering everything comes from the routers. The sawdust and wood chips from the machines is easier to control with hookups to dust collectors, and sweeping up under them. So, I'm separating out the routing and putting it into Unit 2, where it will be easier to keep cleaned up.
I'm also finding out that what the other Luthiers really want to rent from me is.....a place to do noisy messy routing! And occasional use of the big machines. Right now, I have 5 Luthiers renting occasional time in Unit 2 from me.
Since U2 is closed up and well lighted, I've moved my special routing bench, racks of routers, and most-used router fixtures in there. In the center is a large rolling general work bench (with a bunch of old junk on it right now). From the left are the router racks, my custom routing bench, a small Rigid belt sander, the Super Router Planer, and my main neck radiusing fixture. The upcoming Neck Shaping Router Machine will eventually be in here too.
This is the place to make a mess of sawdust. The plan is to keep the room sparse, and not pile up stuff everywhere. So it's easy to keep swept and vacuumed up.
Here are the router racks. I made these racks many years ago to hold audio, video and computer equipment in my office in my Burbank shop. But they gradually became more useful out in the shop. The rack on the left holds router bits, custom router bases, frequently-used fixtures, and accessories. The rack on the right holds the routers themselves. I count 10 routers that I have all set up and use regularly. Plus maybe 6 spares and leftovers.
Here's my router bench. I built it back in 1992, and it has served me very well since then. I had to take it all apart to get it through the doorway of U2. This is its new home. To the left is the small Grizzly dust collector that hooks up to many of the router bases, and is used for general cleanup of the router bench.
And here's the Super Router Planer, which I built this spring. Jeremy has been giving it a workout lately.
Also in this room (for now) is my Fret Slotting Saw. Racks of fret scale rulers are on the wall behind it. Underneath it (for now) are some of the classic fixtures that you've seen on the Router Planing Fixtures thread.
I've moved the other machines back over into my main Unit 14 shop. That will have almost all of my woodworking machines: tablesaws, chopsaw bench, pin routers, jointers, planers, bandsaws, drill presses, edge sander, etc.
I've realized that most of the sawdust that ends up floating around and covering everything comes from the routers. The sawdust and wood chips from the machines is easier to control with hookups to dust collectors, and sweeping up under them. So, I'm separating out the routing and putting it into Unit 2, where it will be easier to keep cleaned up.
I'm also finding out that what the other Luthiers really want to rent from me is.....a place to do noisy messy routing! And occasional use of the big machines. Right now, I have 5 Luthiers renting occasional time in Unit 2 from me.
By the way, we have a new tenant here in the Lab.....A Great Horned Owl! Whooo? He flew in a few days ago, and has been hanging around. He flies around my shop, perches various places, and stares at me. I've tried to start a conversation with him, but he doesn't say much. He's not particularly afraid of me. I can walk within a few feet of him. Sitting perched, he's about a foot tall. About a 24" wingspan. The literature says that they can grow to 4' wingspan!!! It appears to be a young male.
Kind of startling to turn around and he suddenly swoops by! He flies silently, except for banging into things. He doesn't do any real damage, except knocking lightweight things off of the tops of shelves and cabinets. I'm careful to put instruments in progress away, in case he should try to land on one.
During the day he mostly flies over into Unit 13, next to me. It's a storage warehouse space, and the tenant is hardly ever here. I presume the owl finds a dark corner to perch in there, and sleeps. He doesn't appear to be doing any damage or making a nest or anything. Supposedly, the males don't really make nests. They just find a comfortable quiet spot to rest and sleep. I'm okay with that.
At night, he heads out hunting, sometimes gone for a day or two. Their preferred food is birds, particularly crows. We've got lots of crows around this neighborhood. Yum! I'm sure that's why he picked our building to operate from. They also eat mice, rats and sometimes lizards. But their main mission in life is hunting crows.
They say not to try and give them food or water; they take care of themselves. They don't make good pets that you can snuggle with and dress in cute costumes. Their beaks and claws are very strong, almost equal to eagles! They are rarely dangerous to humans, but you have to respect their strength and fighting skill. I have no intention of trying to touch him. I'm okay with him hanging around, if he's not damaging anything. A quiet friend, watching over me.
I haven't given him a name yet. I asked him, but he just gave me that silent glare. Scott suggested Oliver.
Kind of startling to turn around and he suddenly swoops by! He flies silently, except for banging into things. He doesn't do any real damage, except knocking lightweight things off of the tops of shelves and cabinets. I'm careful to put instruments in progress away, in case he should try to land on one.
During the day he mostly flies over into Unit 13, next to me. It's a storage warehouse space, and the tenant is hardly ever here. I presume the owl finds a dark corner to perch in there, and sleeps. He doesn't appear to be doing any damage or making a nest or anything. Supposedly, the males don't really make nests. They just find a comfortable quiet spot to rest and sleep. I'm okay with that.
At night, he heads out hunting, sometimes gone for a day or two. Their preferred food is birds, particularly crows. We've got lots of crows around this neighborhood. Yum! I'm sure that's why he picked our building to operate from. They also eat mice, rats and sometimes lizards. But their main mission in life is hunting crows.
They say not to try and give them food or water; they take care of themselves. They don't make good pets that you can snuggle with and dress in cute costumes. Their beaks and claws are very strong, almost equal to eagles! They are rarely dangerous to humans, but you have to respect their strength and fighting skill. I have no intention of trying to touch him. I'm okay with him hanging around, if he's not damaging anything. A quiet friend, watching over me.
I haven't given him a name yet. I asked him, but he just gave me that silent glare. Scott suggested Oliver.
