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January 31, 2007

Martin Mars Flying Boat

Via a circuitous route, I found this article on the NYT last night: Flying Behemoth May Find Its Way Home. Some background:

Glenn L. Martin was an early aviation pioneer, a contemporary (and one-time partner of) the Wright Brothers, who started out building trainers for the US Army Air Corps, and later several successful bomber designs used by the Army and the US Postal Service. Starting out in Cleveland, he bought a huge parcel of land in Middle River, Maryland, and moved the company there in 1929. The Martin company became known for its bombers, and, more visibly, its flying boats, including one version of the famous China Clipper, which flew the San Francisco to Manila route before World War Two.

During the war, they designed and built several medium bombers (the infamous B-26 and its lesser-known British-used cousin, the Baltimore) and flying boats (the PBM Mariner, and the JRM Mars), and after the war the company enjoyed fewer successes in a consolidating marketplace. After Martin's death in 1955, the company ended production of airplanes in 1960 to focus on missiles, and after few mergers in the 60's, the company became Lockheed Martin. Production on missiles was already happening elsewhere, and employment at the Baltimore aircraft plants was scaled back dramatically from a wartime high of 53,000.

This story circles back to a famous plane Martin built during the war, though: The JRM Mars, originally conceived in 1935 as a "battleship of the sky", was designed with a 200' wingspan—greater than a 747. The first model was built and flown through the early years of the war until the Navy realized that huge armed seaplanes were more of a target than an offensive weapon. However, they recognized a need for a long distance cargo carrier, and in 1944 they requested 20 Mars flying boats. The Martin company redesigned the plane for its new role and began production. After the surrender of Japan in 1945, they scaled back the order and six planes were eventually built. They were christened with exotic names: Two Hawaiis (the first was destroyed in a fire in 1945), the Caroline, the Marianas, the Phillippine, and the Marshall. The Marshall was lost off Hawaii in 1950, but the remaining Mars boats served the Navy until 1954, when they were retired and sold for scrap metal.

They were then bought by an enterprising Canadian pilot in 1959, who converted them for use as water bombers on the Pacific coast. The Marianas Mars was converted first, and had a few successful months before it was crashed by an overzealous pilot in 1960. The Caroline Mars was converted next, but unfortunately was lost in a winter storm in 1962. The remaining two boats have remained in trouble-free service in British Columbia since then.

However, the 60-year-old planes have gotten more expensive to run, and their owner has put them up for sale. Several interested parties have expressed interest, including the National Museum of Naval Aviation in Pensacola, and a consortium of Baltimore businessmen and avaition historians.

Personally, I'd love it if they were able to exhibit one here in Maryland, but I'd be afraid they'd have to keep it outside in the elements where it could decay in the weather. Pensacola is too far away but much more temperate, and the scope of the museum down there ensures the plane's future preservation. A happy middle ground: The Udvar-Hazy museum out by Dulles—there's plenty of room there, and the Smithsonian takes good care of its planes.

More reading:
Glenn L. Martin Aircraft Company, from the Maryland Online Encyclopedia
Martin Aircraft History, The Maryland Aviation Museum
The Martin Flying Boats, Vectorsite

Posted on January 31, 2007 11:01 AM | link to this entry

January 30, 2007

Birthday boy!

And before I forget, let me throw out some birthday props to my Pops, who just turned four today. Happy Birthday, Dad.

Posted on January 30, 2007 4:19 PM | link to this entry

David's TV

My brain sort of resembles this storefront today. A little worn down, a little faded. I have a to-do list about a mile long and nothing completed on it yet. It's one of those kind of days where in order to do Task A, I first must complete Task B. But Task B requires Tasks C, D, and E, and the methods of completing those tasks are foiled by technology (or my lack of understanding the technology.)

Anybody else having a day like this?

Posted on January 30, 2007 2:57 PM | link to this entry | Comments (3)

January 28, 2007

Houseblog Update, 1.28.07

Well, several weeks of farting around have resulted in the first of a series of howidunit articles about the fireplace mantel, which you can see here. Comments are open and welcomed.

Posted on January 28, 2007 11:58 PM | link to this entry

How To: Fireplace Mantel, Part One.

Disclaimer: I don't claim to be a professional carpenter. I don't even claim to be an amateur carpenter, because that would mean I might have read a book about carpentry at some point. This narrative is in no way the recommended method of completing this project; I'm just documenting my experience so that others can learn from my mistakes. All the materials here were purchased at my neighborhood Home Improvement Warehouse(s) and tool rental centers, which kept my costs way down.

In a recent copy of This Old House, I found a gatefold article titled "Installing A Mantel", with diagrams, instructions, and a few prefab examples with links to manufacturers. What amazed me was not the simplistic, breezy instruction list, but the cost of the prefabbed examples-all of them were over $1,000, and none of the featured models matched the simple woodwork in my house.

A year before I found the article, I'd decided to build my own mantel to match the woodwork in our house, a 1925 foursquare. When we bought the house, my wife and I inherited a brick fireplace with a simple slab of oak as a mantel. The brick, from what I can gather, was originally a dark color, and the mortar was set back from the edges by 1/4", an aesthetic I wouldn't have appreciated in any decade. To top it off, it had been covered in successive coats of white paint and left to absorb years of cigarette smoke, so that it became a shade of what she dubbed "Phillip Morris White." The brick hearth was painted black, and a square brass surround was installed (poorly), which kept the heat in the house when the fireplace was not in use.

The first thing I did was to build a simple skeleton around the existing brick, anchoring two support studs into the wall on their sides to reach out past the brickwork. To this framing, I added studs going across the front of the brickwork and down to the hearth, forming feet, and then built out a box for the mantel at the top.

To this skeleton, I stapled some cardboard and whitewashed it as well as possible so that we could get a feel for how large the finished box would be. And there it sat for about eight months, while we worked on the room around it-installing new electric wiring, recessed lighting, and putting in drywall to shore up the old plaster and lathe ceiling, etc.)

When the baseboards were finally ready to go back in permanently, I started to work out how the mantel would look in my head, and how I wanted the diferent elements to look in relation to one another.

Our woodworking is done in a simple style; the doors and windows are framed in 5" boards with round beveled edges, topped with a 1/2" beveled cap. Above the cap is another 5" square-finished board, and on the top edge of this board is a cap molding in a size no longer mass-manufactured. The bottoms are finished off with a beveled "foot" which is a true 1" thick board, at a height of 4". (Finding wood to recreate this foot has been lots of fun, but I've found that better Lowe's locations carry 1" thick pine these days.)

Pic of woodworking here

For the face of the mantel, I started by selecting the best sheet of wood I could find in a 4x8' size, which turned out to be 3/4" sanded birch plywood. Later, on a return trip to the same store, I found a sheet of 5/8" MDF for half the cost, hidden around the corner-oh, well. I've never worked with MDF before, but I imagine it's a lot more forgiving than plywood. The moral of the story: Keep your eyes open.

For each of the sidewalls I used poplar, which comes in many of the same sizes as pine, but is usually a better grade and free of knots. It's a harder wood, which can be more difficult to cut, but the flip side is that it's usually dry and straight at the store (something the standard-grade pine is usually not.) Wood with knots is harder to smooth and paint, and often sap will drool out of the holes.

I first shimmed out the original frame I'd built to be as square and level as possible. The mantel is actually 3/4" further from the wall on the left side than the right, so I knew milling the sidewalls was going to be difficult. Once everything was level, I measured off the front of the brickwork (figuring it had been put up level and square, and the house had settled around it) to make sure the front of my mantel wouldn't stick farther out on one side than the other.

My first step was to cut the sidewalls so that I had square, leveled edges to work from. My original plan was to cut them shaped like an upside-down L so that the leg would form a box for the mantel itself. I measured off the brick once again so that the forward edges were both equally distant from the brick face, and cut two pieces on my table saw down to the right depth. Then I cranked the blade to a 45° angle and cut the bevels on the forward edges. Upstairs, after checking each side for fit, I used a hand planer to shape the backside of the planks to fit the, um, peculiar shape of the wall. After about eight hundred test fits, I got each side to fit the wall correctly and then tacked them into place with some 2" nails. (Let me just take a moment to preach The Gospel of predrilling any nail holes used to construct anything serious. It's almost important enough to warrant buying a second drill specifically for predrilling, so that a primary drill can be freed up for other tasks.)

After shimming and fitting the sides so that they were level and equidistant (measure from side to side and then in an X shape from each corner), I moved on to the face of the mantel. First, I set up a straight jig for a circular saw along a short edge of the board and cut down the length with the blade at 45°. Measuring the width of the front face one last time, I set the jig up on the other side and cut it down, making sure I made a straight line with the saw.

Next, measuring the opening, I marked up the back of the plywood for the cutout on the inside. I've read in various places about minimum firebox clearances (essentially, keeping anything flammable away from what is called "heat and glow") and several places mentioned 16" as a firm number. The This Old House article says "The National Fire Code says that all combustible material must be 1 inch away from the firebox opening for every 1/8 inch it protrudes from the surface, with a minimum 6-inch clearance all around." I had to contend with the damper handle above the opening, so I used that as my point of reference and measured the sides to fit aesthetically with it. My sidewalls are a little inside 6", but I found that anything thinner on the sides began to look spindly and weak. (Please don't rat me out.) The inside walls of the mantel were also going to be beveled so that I could fit it snug to the edge of the brick, but I knew this would get tricky quickly. For the left side of the mantel, the job was easy. I made another jig and ran the saw up to my line.

I clamped a fence for a jigsaw along the top edge, adding 1/2" to the final measurement so that I'd have some excess on my finished board. Then, I drilled a pilot hole on one side and cut the top edge out. My scrollsaw has a very thin, pliable blade, so it can't be counted on for a straight 90° cut. I'll come back to this in a little while.

But here's where the fun starts. The circular saw will do a 45° angle going one way, but won't adjust to go the other way, even if the board is flipped on its back. I had to be creative here. Looking through the tools at the store, I found a bit for my router which cut a 45° angle at a depth slightly more than 1/2", which wasn't deep enough to go through the entire board.

However, when I thought about it a little while longer, I found a straight bit which cut a square groove at a width of 1/2", which was exactly what I needed.

What I finally worked out on a scrap plank was this: First, I made a straight 90° cut along the edge so that I could take the entire interior piece out. Then, I flipped the board and routed two parallel grooves along the interior of the cut so that the depth of the remaining board was less than the depth of the 45° router bit. Next, I measured the distance between the edge of the angled router bit and the edge of the router deck, and made a fence for the router to guide it in a straight line. Finally, I cut the edge of the board with the router slowly and carefully, stopping the router about 1/2" before the 90° angle at the top of the mantel.

Finally, I clamped a fence on the top horizontal cut to clean it up—this is where I used the jigsaw with the flexible blade, remember—and cut as much as I could going one way with the circular saw, then measured, realigned the fence, and cut it to the edge going the other way. Cleaning the edges up with a handsaw, I had both the beveled cuts completed and the face ready to go.

With the mantel and its sidewalls cut, it was time for the first test-fitting. I pulled out the level and tape measure, and tacked the sidewalls into place on the framework. Then, I fitted the mantel face up to the sidewalls and made sure everything aligned and leveled correctly. With some minor trimming to the bottom of the face, the board fit up almost exactly to the sidewalls.

Yeah, I know—I'm as surprised as you are. But it actually worked.

Next: Building the box on the top, take one.

Posted on January 28, 2007 10:05 PM | link to this entry

Enchanted Forest

On the way back from Dave's house yesterday afternoon, I stopped to shoot a few pictures of the Enchanted Forest through the gate that surrounds the old park. I love this guy.

Posted on January 28, 2007 10:28 AM | link to this entry

January 26, 2007

Entrance

There's a hamburger joint out on Rt. 40 with a huge sign that used to be red neon, the last of the old-skool signage left on that stretch of roadway. It's been painted and the patina is gone now, but for years it was a lovely peeling white and black, just waiting for a long lens to capture its beauty. In the back of the parking lot, almost hidden by bushes, sits this entrance sign, equally as retro and time-worn, but ignored by the march of progress.

Posted on January 26, 2007 2:13 PM | link to this entry

January 24, 2007

Scattershot.

This morning at 7:45, on our way out to the gym, Jen mentioned that someone had parked their car in front of the house, and that there was nobody inside. We packed up the Jeep and sat at the head of our driveway for a minute, contemplating the idiocy: this person had stopped their Subaru on the road half in front of our driveway at a point where making a left turn would have been impossible. All manner of scenarios crossed my mind, but the top on the list was an empty gas tank and a dead motor. OK, fine; park on the side of the road and hike to the gas station. But to leave a car obviously blocking a driveway is a big what the fuck?

Really, what I wanted to do was go bumper-to-bumper with the Jeep in 4lo and push the fucker back ten feet, but Jen's cooler head prevailed. "Why don't you wait, and if it's here when we get back, you can move it," she suggested. Of course, it was gone when we returned, ruining any chance I had at automotive payback. The whole thing makes me wish I'd had one of these to stick under his windshield wiper.

* * *

Yesterday I rose at 7 to feed the cats and noticed a spectacular sunrise out the window as I checked my email. I put the G3 on my mini tripod and set the intervalometer to 1 minute, and left it for a 100-shot sequence (there's no way to increase the number of shots past 100, unfortunately; otherwise I'd leave it there all day and burn through a memory card). The sky was overcast and wound up killing most of the colors as the morning wore on, so the results are pretty dull.

This got me thinking, though, and I thought I'd revisit a project I did last year, where I shot one picture each day at roughly the same time for a month to see what the changes brought. (I have a particular fascination with time-lapse photography.) I've got an old Kodak DC-3400 that's been gathering dust for years now, and I decided to put it to use for a new project: one shot each day for the rest of the year (and maybe beyond) to compare the changes. We'll see what happens.

* * *

I sent an email to a new contact the other day, highlighting my illustration work, and I got a very favorable response back which made the brain start thinking of new assignments. I have one series that I'm going to start as soon as I get a little downtime (it's very busy around here right now) and I think I'm going to continue the Alphabet Project with some substitutions and a new A-Z series, as well as a focus on editorial work to build out my portfolio. I'm lucky enough to have a benefactor who made a sizable contribution to the Get-The-Idiot's-Promotional-Work-Out-There fund, and I aim to make that work as soon as I've got my book where I want it (I estimate another couple of months.)

* * *

I got a long-awaited check in the mail Saturday which should ease a little of the financial pinching I've been feeling lately; after some bills get paid and I sock a bunch away for taxes, I have a bunch of things I need to look at purchasing, in not so particular order:

• A Powerbook Sleeve - This machine is too valuable to get dinged up.
• A new iPod holder - for the gym. Mine disappeared the week I got my iPod. It's most likely still in the center console of the rental car I was driving at the time.
• New headphones - Again, for the gym. This pair is one hair away from falling apart.
• An LLC for my design business (as yet unnamed.) - Time to get serious.
• A camera bag - I was lucky enough to receive a HUGE zoom lens for X-mas this year, and I'd like to be able to protect it if at all possible.
• A smaller lens - The zoom is FANTASTIC but not for short to medium-length shots, something I wasn't counting on (at normal range, without zoom, it's still strong enough to view other planets.)
• Lens filters - To protect the investment.

Posted on January 24, 2007 10:51 AM | link to this entry | Comments (2)

January 21, 2007

Emmett and First Snow

I stopped over to the Cauzzis this afternoon to say hello and peep out the new porch addition. While his brother and sister slept, Emmett got his mother, father and I all to himself, and checked out his first snowfall in the bargain.

Posted on January 21, 2007 11:28 PM | link to this entry

January 20, 2007

Rollover

Posted on January 20, 2007 2:03 PM | link to this entry

January 19, 2007

Checking In.

Yeah, I'm alive. Very busy with work and house, so this space is being neglected. However, I had some spare time a few weeks ago and tackled a long-neglected chore: standardizing and cleaning up my old weblog archives, which were creaky and busted. I got all the way back to mid-2002, but I've hit the point where I was doing a different layout each month (hand coded old-skool, baby) and the process takes a little longer. I have dreams of importing it all into MT here, but that's a task for a month where I have absolutely nothing else to do.

Posted on January 19, 2007 12:15 PM | link to this entry

January 17, 2007

Beetle Butt

For sale up the road from my house. Too expensive for my pocketbook, but I've always wanted to own one.

Posted on January 17, 2007 11:40 AM | link to this entry | Comments (1)

January 16, 2007

Blast From The Past.

I had my iPod on shuffle this morning on the way home to the gym, and one of my favorite tunes by XTC came on. Because of the wonderfulness of the internets, I can share with you an acoustic version of that song, taped back in the days when MTV still played music, by a band notorious for its stagefright.

WARNING: Mullet alert.

Posted on January 16, 2007 12:53 PM | link to this entry

January 15, 2007

Jen, listening to her father

We stopped down to Jen's father's house this weekend to install his new DSL modem and get his laptop set up to be on the internets. Afterward, we sat around in the kitchen and swapped stories.

Posted on January 15, 2007 10:52 AM | link to this entry

News From The Hospital

My father seemed to be doing much better during the first half of last week, until early Wednesday morning when he was found wandering the hall pushing his drip tree, unable to remember why he was in the hospital. After some new testing, it was found that his C0² levels were still high and that he was not exhaling hard enough while sleeping, thus starving his bloodstream of oxygen.

A new breathing machine was rustled up and prescribed for the following night, and the change was dramatic. The other bit of good news is that the chest tube will (hopefully) be coming out today and he can heal up completely. Now, the only problem will be braving the ice storms to get him home.

Posted on January 15, 2007 10:19 AM | link to this entry | Comments (1)

January 10, 2007

Pinkerton's Sticker

At an undisclosed location in upstate New York. There's a For Sale sign in the window, but the number is blacked out, which leads me to believe it's not on the market anymore. The fins on this car are HUGE.

Posted on January 10, 2007 11:25 AM | link to this entry

January 9, 2007

Apple's New iPhone

Oh, thank GOD we stuck with Cingular Wireless. I am going to buy myself an iPhone as soon as I can afford one and ditch my thankless Motorola 551, and it will be a Good Day. OSX (Safari on a phone!) Touchscreen dialing, bluetooth, improved contacts, syncing with my Mac and more. I only hope the reception is better than a RAZR. This sounds too good to be true, honestly.

Posted on January 9, 2007 1:14 PM | link to this entry | Comments (2)

January 7, 2007

The Camera Ate My Homework.

Well, I'd have a ton of nice photos to share of my father, the spooky house across the street from my parents', and some artsy-fartsy TTL shots of the family, but the memory card in my Canon up and died this afternoon with a mysterious "Card Format Error" message and the dreaded Yellow Questionmark Of Death. So, you'll have to settle for some family photos.

My Dad is doing very well; when last we left him, he was sitting upright in a chair, surveying the wreckage of his turkey dinner, and waiting for the nurse to decide it was time to move him back to the bed. All signs point to "better", including his lung capacity, appetite, skin color, and personality. This whole excercise has been nervous-making but he seems to be coming through fine, and we're hoping it will lead to a serious improvement in quality of life for him. So keep your fingers crossed.

In the meantime, before the memory card blew up, I found a feature of my Canon I hadn't noticed previously, and started experimenting again with through-the-lens shots with my Duoflex II. The manual focus feature seems to fix on the very closest of the details in the picture plane, while leaving the distant ones blurry. I have to do a lot more experimenting with it to refine the technique.

Posted on January 7, 2007 10:30 PM | link to this entry

January 6, 2007

My Pops

Over a tray of clear liquids, which is a good sign. His appetite is strong and he's looking much better.

Posted on January 6, 2007 10:21 PM | link to this entry

Fergus

Through the lens of my Duoflex II.

Posted on January 6, 2007 12:56 PM | link to this entry | Comments (2)

January 5, 2007

Dateline: St. Joe's Hospital, Syracuse.

We're in the admitting ward of St. Joe's, waiting for my Dad's surgeon to pass the word so that they can wheel his tired hungry ass down to the OR and get this show on the road. My father hasn't eaten since dinner last night, and I can hear his stomach groaning and gnashing and constricting from across the room. He's being very calm about the whole thing, but I know the section of his brain that controls his appetite has swollen to four times its normal size, and it's releasing chemicals into his bloodstream which are making the voices tell him to EAT THE CHAIR, EAT THE CHAIR, I DON'T FUCKING CARE, JUST EAT THE CHAIR. My father going without food for 12 hours is as common as a bear using a bidet; unfortunately this misfortune has been compounded by the omittance of a remote control in our waiting room. The benefit to this, however, is that we don't need to sit through this episode of "Charmed" at a volume setting of 96.

Update: He's out of the surgery and recovering without a breathing tube.

Posted on January 5, 2007 4:54 PM | link to this entry

January 2, 2007

Unclassified

In order to pay for this nice shiny MacBook, I put my iBook on Craigslist for sale a few weeks ago. Since then, I've had a lot of responses ranging from "I'll come over tonight" to "Can you give me a better offer". This, after the ad clearly stated that my price was firm and fair. I had the usual "Can you ship it to me overseas" bullshit, the "I'll pay for it with a postal money order" bullshit, and the "I'll give you $350 for it," none of which got a response back from me. I got a bunch of nice folks who claimed they were serious, and then they never showed to look at it. I figured it was the holidays intruding on plans, and I guessed that some people may have come up short on cash towards the end of the month.

I hadn't gotten anyone serious enough to actually stop by until New Year's Eve, when a kid with a high-pitched voice set up an appointment to look at it. I asked how he was going to pay, and he cheerfully replied, "cash," which was fine by me. So he shows up at the right time, looks over the machine, and happily says, "OK, I'll take it," and then tries to give me $250 in cash and a checking balance receipt, claiming he couldn't get the money out of an ATM on the holiday, and can he take it and come back and give me the rest?

Get back in your Dad's new Honda and get out of my driveway until you come back with the full amount, hippy. Do people really think that shit works? That because one claims to be a student, I'm going to believe that line of crap? I'm sure your dealer doesn't front you a dime when you're trying to score dope before the Widespread Panic show, does he? Oh, and no, I'm not installing Microsoft Office on it for you for free, Jerry Garcia.

Posted on January 2, 2007 10:10 AM | link to this entry | Comments (1)

January 1, 2007

We're not as drunk as this picture makes it seem

Taken on the roof of R&K's house, Canton, Baltimore. Happy New Year!

Posted on January 1, 2007 1:54 PM | link to this entry

Recipe: Steamed Italian Mussels

2 lbs. of live mussels are $3 at our local Korean grocery, and that's just too cheap not to take advantage of. Most of the recipes we've found have been very bland and tasteless, so I went looking for something with some flavor to make for our holiday party. After some experimentation and testing, here's a home-brewed recipe for steamed mussels which has great flavor and tasty broth:

• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1/4 cup butter
• 2 cups of white wine
• 1/4 teaspoon dried red pepper flakes
• 6 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1/4 cup chopped basil
• 3 tablespoons of fresh chopped parsley
• 6-8 chopped vine tomatoes
• 1 onion, chopped
• 4 shallots, chopped
• 1 red pepper, chopped
• 4 lbs. mussels, scrubbed and cleaned (use a vegetable scrubber; clean off any of the "beard"-the stringy stuff that may be still attached to the shell. Cut or pull that off.) Dump any with broken shells or that don't close when they're run under water or tapped with a fingernail.

In a big lobster pot, heat the butter and olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion, garlic, peppers and shallots and stir until the onion is cooked, about 4-5 minutes.

Add the tomatoes, parsley, basil and pepper flakes. Reduce the heat and simmer for about 25 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add the wine and put a steamer into the pot, and add the mussels, discarding any that don't clamp shut when tapped. Cover and bring to a boil. Cook them for 3-5 minutes, making sure you toss the mussels so that they all get steamed, and remove once they've all opened (throw out the ones that aren't open.)

Here's the tricky part: Move the mussels into a holding bowl, and scoop out as much of the tomato mixture as you can into a serving bowl, until there's just broth left in the bottom of the pot. Put the mussels in the serving bowl over the tomato mixture, then pour the broth over the mussels so they get a nice warm bath. Serve immediately, with some good Italian bread for dipping. (Alternatively, I just put the mussels into one bowl and dumped the tomato broth over them, and had to toss them to get the tomato to mix evenly—it's really your call.) Have a few empty bowls on hand for discarded shells.

Make sure your guests who are unfamiliar with shellfish know not to eat any mussels that haven't opened or that aren't cooked completely! You'll probably miss one or two of these.

I'd guess you could add a little more butter and white wine for a looser broth—better for dipping with bread. Serve with some good red wine and plenty of napkins. This recipe was enough for 6-8 people, in our experience.

Enjoy!

Posted on January 1, 2007 1:23 PM | link to this entry