Up-to-date

Well Bob was moving offices yesterday, so he couldn't come over to film, but I've been busy. Despite having only one eye this week, I've managed to clear the backlog of footage.

I've come across a couple of problems though. One of the jigs I'm making is for creating accurate tenons on the router table. I've filmed the actual making, and then filmed the introduction and wind-up afterwards. I've discovered that the MDF baseboard is not quite as rigid as it needs to be, so I'm going to remake it using birch ply, and then re-film the top and tail. Viewers can then play Spot the Difference!

The other problem is... no prizes for guessing... sound quality. This is a real pain. I have a good mic, and yet I'm getting too much variation in sound. I had some friends round for dinner last night. One of them is a sound engineer (or rather an electronics engineer who specializes in sound equipment) and I showed him what we had filmed. His opinion was that the mic is too close to my mouth, and that the camera overrides the signal when it is overloaded. It makes sense. This is all because of my choice of shirt at the beginning!

Fortunately it is possible (but not terribly easy) to cleanup the sound in software, but it is time consuming, and still not the same as a proper "clean" recording. I asked him if the quality was publishable, and fortunately his reply was, "Oh certainly, I regularly hear worse than that". He's a straight-talking guy, so if he says its OK, I'm happy to believe him. So, with all its imperfections, I think I'm OK. I just wish I didn't have to do quite so much work to it.

I think I'll carry on with this for the rest of the DVD, and then review the position. I could use a head-mic, but it always looks ugly to me, and I wouldn't want to spoil my looks.....

Another option is to cover the front of my shirt with button-holes so that I can change the position of the mic.

I've fitted the new rails to my Xcalibur saw today. When I took them to be sprayed I forgot to take the fence with me so I could tell them the colour I wanted, so I just chose 1310 (I think) a generic and standard cream colour. The saw is grey..... I just need to attach a scale to it, but I've run out of sticky scales. The cheap ones are in imperial only, and the metric ones are expensive. I could drive for an hour and get one over the counter, but I've located the UK importer and asked for a quote on buying bulk. I'd have to buy a case of 80, but I reckon I could sell that many and still be cheaper than the like of Axminster.

I've also found a source of good-quality Bristol Levers at a reasonable price, so I'm thinking of offering hardware packs to make the jigs. All the specialist hardware that it is difficult to get in the sheds, enough to make all the jigs in the DVD. What do you think?