Galbert Caliper Progress Report

Recent inquiries have made me think that it's time to have an update on the progress of the new Galbert Calipers. I've been working with 8 different companies here in the U.S. to produce all of the components of the tool. To be able to meet the market demands and keep the price the same, we've had to rethink, retool and retest all of the parts, and I'm happy to say that the process is nearly complete. Thanks to all of you on the wait list for your patience, I think you are going to be quite pleased with the results.

Here is an image of the cover plate of injection molded polycarbonate. My mold makers did an excellent job on the surface and edge quality. I'll be posting the first assembled model so that you can see the differences.

The Circle Widens

Last night we started seeing a few tell tale signs that Maggie was entering labor. By Six this morning, she was well under way and within an hour, she had two lovely kids, a male and a female!

Maggie was a real trooper, she lay next to me on a bed of hay and screamed her little head off while the kids came. Then she cleaned em up and let them get some milk.


Sue and I are pretty exhausted from all the excitement, but it's really Maggies day, what a lady.
Some folks have asked me "why goats, aren't they just smelly animals that eat cans?" The short answer is "No", they are clean and bright and actually picky eaters. I think of them as a blend of dog and deer, not a bad combo for a dairy.

We milked Maggie on the milking stand to get more colostrum for the kids and she was patient and calm, I guess motherhood suits her!

Seeing the Light

I can't be the only one out there to discover, too late, a little spot of glue that I missed during cleanup. When painting a chair it shows up as a spot where the paint won't stick but even worse, when working cherry it shows up as a light spot months later as the rest of the piece darkens.

I was reading the book on hide glue that I got from Tools for Working Wood and the author mentions that the glue glows under a UV light. So I went on Amazon and got a UV flashlight, and there it is.


This is the chair that my current student is working on. We don't bother to clean the glue off of the top of the seat because it will be scraped later, so it provided a perfect test case.


Apparently, the best range of nanometer is 365 for detecting a large range of light waves that fluoresce, but the 385 nm light that I got for $12 works fine.
Next I spent a minute with some warm water cleaning the surface around the joint, and sure enough, no glow.


How cool is that!
I also wanted to mention that Greg Pennington has brought my posts on handling drawknives to a new level by bending the tangs to change his knife from a bevel down to a bevel up user. Check it out. Well done Greg.

I've been spending more time on hide glue and the chair joints lately, trying to better understand some things that have been passing for assumptions. I'll be posting more on the results as they come in.