Waypoint-Catcher

I’ve just released Waypoint-Catcher into the world wild web. It’s a very basic application for the NOkia N810. It just allows to set a waypoint and to tag it with a name and comment. It helped me a lot with occasional mapping, so I hope it is useful for others, too.

However, fine pored timber like fir, beech, cherry, or maple, will benefit from such a treatment. The result is a silk-mat finish, which resists most of the common conditions and allows for vapor diffusion. I even use it for counter and table tops. I have a table with a 50mm plate which has seen many parties. Of course it has some scratches. But it forgave all cigarettes, beer bottles and red wine remains so far. A lacquer surely had given up already.

Unfortunately there are many joiners who do not know how to do it right. They treat linseed oil just like a lacquer and afterwards complain that it just sucks.

There are two key points you need to respect.

Firstly, the oil does not build a thick film (compared to the lacquer). Instead, it penetrates the surface of the wood. Thus it is not that much of a coating, but more a “hardening” of the material itself. Unlike oil, a lacquer is coating the wood, levelling smaller scratches and roughnesses of the material. As a consequence, it is absolutely essential to sand the wood with a grit size of at least P150, better P180, when you intend to use oil. In the past, I was often surprised that joiners had only P120 sanding paper on stock.

Secondly, a lacquer gets applied with an airbrush. It almost does not make a difference how much material gets applied. The lacquer dries and gives you a nice coating. If you try the same with linseed oil, you will get a finish which will not dry for years, giving you a sticky surface which renders your workpiece almost useless (this is at least true for chairs ;-) .

So here’s a small step-by-step receipt which hopefully helps you to get the best out of an oiled piece of wood:

• Sand your workpiece carefully. Use a sanding paper of at least P150 grit size, better P180. Do not sand across the wood grain, and do not use rotary sanding machines. Better use band grinders. The oil will otherwise show any scratches which damaged the grains.
• Mix linseed oil with turpentine in a ratio of 1:1. Apply the mixture to the workpiece with a brush. Wait for about half an hour. Repeat the procedure until the oil stops sinking into the wood. This process depends on the actual wood used. Beech, for example, is known to be very greedy.
• After that, use a lint-free cloth to remove the rest of the material from the surface. Only a wee small film may remain. Yes, that’s true: most of the material gets wasted. The method is not efficient when it comes to the rate of yield.
• Take care about the cloth, as the oil in it made it pyrophoric; dry it outside or burn it in the fireplace.
• Wait the oil to be dried. The amount of time needed heavily depends on some factors. The process is a polymerization. It needs light and oxygen. Summer weather and temperature is a plus, air humidity a minus. Under good conditions the oil will dry in a couple of hours, but it also can last several days.
• After the oil is dry, use a fine-grained sanding paper of a grit size of at least P180, better P220. Gently sand the “primer”, without applying much pressure. If the sanding paper gets stuck quite often, the primer is not dry enough yet. Finally, remove the dust.
• Now repeate the steps mentioned above. Apply the oil mixture, wait a couple of minutes, then remove the remaining oil with a cloth. Remember that it is crucial that you do not leave a thick film. Let the oil dry again. Repeat the steps of sanding and oiling until you are pleased. For basic protection (e.g. carcase parts of a unit), one primer and one finish may be enough. For better results, you may want to repeat more often.
• Some use wax as the final finishing. The wax is anti-static, so the furniture will suck less dust. But I would avoid the wax for sitting furniture like benches and chairs or tables.
• Ensure to put all tools and cloths into hermetically sealed boxes or burn them in a chimney. Otherwise you may be surprised of the wonders of chemistry, especially the oxidation, an exothermal reaction.

Linseed oil is an amazing natural product with many uses. I hope this short tutorial helps you to get a positive experience with oiled wooden surfaces and you enjoy them as I do.

Flax

Did you ever think there are things where noone can beat you? Where you will never fail? Where you exactly know what you are doing? I doubt that you are right, as I learned my lesson these days.

I have lots of experience in doing furniture finishings using linseed oil. If you do it right, you get silk-mat surfaces which resist most of the common conditions. It even resists many solvents and thus is superior to nitro lacquers. The only thing I know that it won’t resist is green tea with lemon juice :) .

From time to time, however, you might want to refresh the surface. That’s not a big deal at all. Use a solvent to remove dust and dirt from the surface. Then use a fine-grained sanding paper of a grit size of at least P180, better P220, and gently sand the existing finish. Remove the dust.

Mix linseed oil with turpentine in a ratio of 1:1. Apply the mixture with a brush. Wait for about half an hour. Then use a lint-free cloth to remove the rest of the material from the surface. Only a wee small film may remain (and take care about the cloth, as the oil in it made it pyrophoric; dry it outside or burn it in the fireplace).

This time something went wrong. The oil only dried partly. Other parts remained wet and further parts became sticky. Really a precarious situation.

I had, however, very good luck. I decided to use turpentine in the hope it will solve and remove the applied oil (and I was pretty sure it would not work). It was a painful job, but luckily (and surprisingly) I got almost all of the oil removed. The rest will hopefully dry as expected.

Frankly, I have no clue what went wrong. Maybe the linseed oil I used was too old. It resided in the cellar for several years now, so chances are given it got a cold or something like this. I will get some new tomorrow and try my luck again.

The next picture should give you a better clue how I mounted the RAM mount:

It is possible to fix the Otterbox in various positions, even in unusual ones :) :

The whole thing weights about 700 gramms (including the N810):

Here’s a closeup:

The box protects the N810 perfectly. OTOH, all controls are inaccessible when the N810 is in the box. It would be interesting to place some buttons on the Otterbox to control the pan and zoom of Maemo Mapper (an excellent application, BTW).

The part in the middle is a fastener. The silver part will be fixed on the handlebar, the rhombus like part will be applied to the bottom of the Otterbox 2000. Combined, the mount looks like this:

Thanks to the rubber balls, the mount can be adjusted to a variety of positions:

Though the workmanship especially of the rubber balls IMO was not state of the art (at least compared to the price of almost 30€ I paid for it), all other parts are well manufactured. The overall robustness of the mount seems to be excellent. I’m pleased that I spent the money.

Applying the bottom part to the handlebar was easy. Applying the top part to the Otterbox requires some craftsmanship:

• Complete the second hole of the rhombus. For some reason (seemed to be intentionally) only one hole was drilled through completely (in the above pic, you can see the front hole but no back hole at all). Chamfer it.
• Drill two holes of 5.5 millimeters in diameter into the bottom of the Otterbox. Chamfer the holes.
• The top and bottom of the Otterbox is slightly curved. To avoid stress cracks, apply some shims (at least at the inner side of the box) and rubber or foam between the metal parts and the box.
• Use two 5mm screws and nuts to fix the mount to the box. Depending on the smoothness of your rubber inlays, it shouldn’t be necessary to tighten them to much. Self-locking nuts would be great.

I just used some rather dated hardware I found in my stock. Need to get new ones tomorrow. That’s how it looks today:

As it’s currently raining, I will share pics about the box mounted on the bike later this week.

I purchased a transparent Otterbox 2000. Unfortunately, there’s some imprint in the lid, even one containing an Otterbox sticker. I had good luck, as there was an air bubble under it. I pulled it out and removed the remaining glue with some dissolvent liquid (which fortunately did not harm the plastic). The lid is not exactly transparent but a bit “anti-glare”, but it is transparent enough to read the display of the N810 through it.

Next I needed some inlay to fix the N810. As the Otterbox is thick enough, there’s even room for a battery or headphone compartment. Short tutorial:

• Get a block of semi-hard foam of 154mm×86mm×38mm.
• On top of it, draw a centered rectangle of 128mm×72mm, the size of the N810.
• Draw a second rectangle within the first one, just offset by 5mm. This is for the second compartment.
• Draw two lines at the top side, at a distance of 100mm. Through this cut-out, the buttons of the N810 will be accessible.
• Draw two lines at the bottom side, at a distance of 40mm. This is for the thumb when taking out the device.
• Use a (very sharp) carpet cutter and cut the outer rectangle, but only 16mm in depth. Care about your fingers.
• Cut both the button and thumb notches, also 16mm in depth.
• Cut the inner rectangle through the whole block and remove this block.
• Now the tricky part. Cut around the inner edge at a distance of 16mm, but without cutting through the outer lip.
• Cut a chamfer of about 5mm to all 10 outer edges to fit the rounded edges of the Otterbox.
• Put it in the Otterbox and check if it closes without deforming the block. The block should not stick in the lid when opening the box.
• Place the N810 in the Otterbox.

ToDo:

• Glue some 2mm rubber pads into the lid to hold the device down.
• Place some thin foam or rubber in the lower compartment to avoid rattling of its contents.
• Mount the box on the bike. I already ordered a 60mm RAM mount.
• I’m considering to drill a wee small hole into the Otterbox to connect some earphones through it. I could also use bluetooth, but the N810 only talks mono then. That’s out of the discussionl :) .

The whole solution looks clumpsy compared to the elegant N810. But it will provide excellent protection against rain, dust and shocks.