What on earth is a CNC Router, you ask? Why should my loyal and future customers care that I have one? What does this mean to them? What does this have to do with the price of tea in China? I’ll answer the last question first, since it is the easiest. Nothing. There I said it. My CNC router will have no effect on the price of tea in China, as far as I know.

Now on to the harder questions: A CNC Router is a router, which is controlled by a computer. A router is a woodworking machine which spins a small bit around, very fast, to cut through wood. The computer control enables the machine to cut out virtually any kind of complex shape. This has some interesting ramifications for us here at Crazy Monkey Creations, and by extension for our customers.

First, the CNC Router does its work in a semi-unattended way, freeing all of the Crazy Monkey employees (i.e. Me and sometimes Christy) to work on other parts of the production while waiting for the CNC to finish its part. This should hopefully more than double our production capacity, so eventually it will mean shorter lead times for our customers.

Second, the CNC Router can cut a curvy complex shape every bit as easily and quickly as a simple square boxy shape. This capacity will be put to great use in the near future and we are working hard to redesign our product line to make full use of this new capability. Our new products, which we will start announcing in Late July or early August, should be much more attractive, fluid shapes, which hopefully you will find to be as pretty as they are functional. Of course we will continue to make unsurpassed usability our primary design concern.

Third, since the CNC Router can cut complex shapes easily we can use this functionality to implement new and better features for our products. Features that have in the past been too difficult or time consuming for us to include at a practical price will now be implemented nearly for free. This will greatly increase the value of our products to our customers. One such feature will be finer graduations for the winder arm markings, making it easier for operators to set a specific skein size.

Fourth, we will be able to make more efficient use of our materials, since we will be able to cut parts out in a nested fashion. This will of course help us keep costs down, and it also help save the environment by producing less waste. We are always as efficient with out materials as we can be of course, and now we can be even more so.

Fifth, the CNC Router will enable us to make products that were simply impossible for us to make in the past. We are working hard on expanding our product line. In addition to releasing the redesigned skein winders and swifts from our current collection, we will be introducing many new products over the next few months.

So, as we learn to use our CNC Router to its fullest capability, and as I continue to rebuild it to increase its rigidity, capacity and reliability, we will be making more and better products available to you, our loyal customers.

9 Winders and 2 Swifts

If you ordered a winder or swift recently, it’s on this table.

Boards from Collectors Specialty Woods

Curly Sycamore and a Flame Walnut! Can you believe it?!  Ben found this piece of Curly Sycamore

Curly Sycamore Closeup

I walked into the room where they keep their HUGE slabs of burl and some of the offcuts along with some of the nice wood, and there was this beautiful walnut.

The board of Flame Walnut

We also picked up this lovely bocote with the light sapwood.

Bocote Board

And … a cardboard box?

Oooooh, a cardboard box. Wonder what's in it?

On the invoice, it’s a Box of Blocks. It’s a strange mixture of weird sized cuts and leftovers from other peoples’ orders. This box was rather interesting.

Contents of Box

There’s all sorts of interesting things in the box, including a chunk of teak and several offcuts from someone’s job, about a 3″ long piece of glued-up almost square random wood (of which we have several pieces), some square glue-ups, and a glue-up board which looks like maybe teak with a piece of spalted wood in the middle of it. The things that look like rocks in the picture are the real treasures, they’re pieces of burl.

An example of burl from the Box of Blocks

There’s also a piece of blue buckeye burl, which is actually BLUE. Like someone spilled a fountain pen in the tree.

Blue Buckeye Burl. Yes, it's blue wood!

What we actually drove to Gardner  for was a wee tiny bit of finish, as we were running low on the finish for the winders. You know, a wee tiny bit of finish that we drove for 4 or so hours to get.

Just a little bucket of finish

I’ve just finished a couple of drop spindles, and we’re taking them to Table Rock Llamas this morning. Here’s 7 of the 8 I’ve gotten done the last couple weeks.

7 of the 8 spindles I've turned recently

I turn the whorl (the round part), like most people. but I also turn the shaft. I turn both the top and the bottom, to make them pretty and comfortable to use.

The tops and bottoms of each spindle shaft have turned details

Off to storage for us, we’ve got to find the tags for the drop spindles and then we’re off to see the lovely ladies at TRL, then back home to sleep. My work schedule makes me awake at weird hours, as I’m working 7p-7a, and we try to keep more or less the same schedule on my 3 or 4 days off.