Building a book press (part 2)

The lead screw (pronounced leed)
The lead screw has acme threads—great for transferring motion instead of fastening one thing to another. Another term is motion translation, as when we convert rotary motion (turning the screw) to linear motion (moving the platen down).

As you know if you've been attentive to this entire lesson, my acme screw came from an old automobile scissor jack. Its specs are 3/4" diameter and 6 threads per inch.

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Learning opportunity

Look, it's a diagram. Don't we all love diagrams?

Notice the flattened tops and bottoms on the acme thread?

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Connecting the lead screw to the bridge
The thoroughly cleaned (more or less) lead screw with the nut attached (right). This is the nut that you see in the picture below. See how it all comes together?














Bottom of bridge showing acme nut epoxied into a roughly hexagonal hole.
I use the term  "roughly hexagonal" because I made that hole with a chisel and hammer. Epoxy addresses and forgives a multitude of sins.

















Nothing lost in translation
Here, the lead screw is fastened to the bridge, and moves up or down as you turn it. See—rotary motion to linear motion. It's a miracle.

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Next, the finished product

Building a book press

Just as you would think, a book press is for pressing books, their covers, and their pages. This operation flattens irregularities and curling, and also also binds the book together as glue dries.

Most presses look something like this (but not red).

Cast iron book press

Let's build one
Because they are now considered collectibles, book presses are fairly expensive. Whenever you see a price tag hidden from view (above), you know it's going to be bad news.

So of course, I decided to make my own with scrap parts and a few flea-market finds.

Most presses are steel or iron, but some are wood. The one I build will use both materials.

The first parts
This is an old car jack—a flea market buy for $10. The acme screw it contains is just what I needed, and a new one would cost more than twice that amount. Of course, my labor is free.

Old car jack with acme screw and an old vacuum-tube radio

The flea-market radio will not be used for the book press project. In case you're interested, it was also $10, and its price tag was plainly visible.

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Building the book press
The picture below shows the base and two pipe columns. The pipes will support a bridge that holds the screw and platen.   

The base, bridge, and platen are made from glued-up sections of a shelf that was destined for the trash.

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Laying out and cutting some curves on the bridge
The bridge is shown here after gluing together three slabs of wood, marking the curves, and cutting with a band saw. The tangent-curve procedure was still in my brain after teaching geometric construction for about twenty years.

Arrows point to the barely visible curve construction lines

Following the curves with the band saw

The bridge after cutting but before sanding

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So far, it fits—but there is much more to be done.

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Next, installing the lead screw in the bridge

Batting .300 with radios

Blue and yellow make a happy fellow
After destroying radio after radio, I'm having a run of luck—or maybe I'm learning what I'm doing. I've now repaired three out of ten—a batting average that's good enough for the major leagues.

This is radio 1 (background) and my newly painted radio 2 in its yellow-and-blue cabinet. Best of all, they actually play.

RCA VICTOR All-American Five

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The brown Sentinel radio
I left this cabinet as I found it. Maybe I'll paint it purple sometime soon. This one also plays.

SENTINEL All-American Five Radio

More later.

World's Largest Security Light sold by Amazon

Honesty in advertising
Take a look at the advertising graphic. They're trying to let us know that the sensor reacts to motion from as far away as "26 feet."

If the shadowy man (probably an intruder) is six feet tall, the distance shown is fairly close to 26 feet if measured from the light's center to the man's feet. Oops, he has no feet, but you know what I mean.

And if that's right, then the light is 12 feet wide. That's a big light!

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Let's take a closer look
Here's the light mounted on a brick wall. A brick (plus a mortar joint) is eight inches across. It's a good construction dimension, and three bricks in a row are almost exactly 24-inches across.

I can count three bricks plus a bit more under the light, so it is about 24" wide. That seems more realistic, but it's still a big ol' light.

Please note there are no intruders brave enough to approach this behemoth.

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Shedding some light on this
Here's an actual photo from the Amazon page.

The truth
The actual dimensions for this light are "7.4 x 2.4 x 5.3 inches", making the light's face slightly larger than a dollar bill.

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I'm not the only one
As I wrote this blog, an Amazon customer posted this question and received a polite (but cryptic) reply from the seller:

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An added-value literary analysis
To me, "lum is the brithness one candel light" sounds like the Jabberwocky poem by Lewis Carroll.

۝۝۝۝۝۝۝۝۝۝۝۝۝۝۝۝۝۝۝۝۝۝۝۝۝۝۝۝

Beltline art

Self promotion:
This took seven cans of spray paint.

🔶🔶🔶🔶🔶🔶🔶🔶🔶🔶🔶🔶🔶🔶

More belt-line art:

A tribute to Boxcar Willie. Please note the happy sleeping couple showing not a bit of shyness. They are observed by a happy little cowboy and his smiling dog. Some cute little flowers wave in the breeze. Behind them are two mountain peaks—probably the Grand Tetons.

It's just rife with symbolism.

The caption reads"Safety in Vodka." Hmmm.