[CLOSED]

[renderwerks]

Hello fellow Vapers-

Absolute-Wood is back! Been gone about a year - well, not gone, but hiding out... The business was mostly idle for all of 2015. Time to jump in with both feet again.

Health problems started the "vacation", but were furthered by major construction/repairs that took nearly half a year to complete. In short, over 50 feet of plumbing below concrete had to be replaced - right through my house and shop. Two foot wide by three foot deep trenches and all the dirt from them right in the house, bedrooms and shop!

Then a roofing problem was discovered during the first heavy rain... more work, and more intrusion into the shop. It appears all the construction is over - finally!

Between a 60 hour a week job, building holders, and the maintenance of a new website, ECF became almost impossible to visit. My health began getting the best of me. In and out of the hospital more times than I care to mention.

Fixed it by getting rid of the 60 hour job! Semi-retirement! Much more time to deal with Absolute-Wood, keeping up on the website maintenance, and happy to be back at ECF again!

So, I've been busy in the shop, and just finished putting over a dozen fresh items up on the website. New items too - there are holders to fit in your cup holders of your car:

Made from Walnut & Padauk, you can see they hold a good array of items. So far, two different styles to choose from. I can make them from different woods as well.

Even a Lazy Susan that spins for your coffee table, holds PV stuff & Other stuff:

Made of Walnut & Oak, it has room for (2) PVs, (4) batteries, (2) tanks, (5) juice bottles and drip tips - also a slot for the remote control, pen and paper, cell phone, etc...

And, I finally made a wall cabinet - Holds 9 PVs & 9 RBA/RDAs:

Solid Oak with a solid Walnut stripe throughout. Sliding Lexan doors, and a mirror back. The back is removable so the shelf can be swapped out. This is the first of many. I'm more than open to custom builds... Here's a view with the cabinet filled with some of my PVs:

Circular indentations for Tube Mods, but you can see that Box Mods work as well. We could custom route a cabinet for both Tube & Box Mods.

I also have 5 more new holders on the site and 5 new Pyramid single PV holders as well. Most can be flocked (highly recommended for scratch resistance).

The website has had several of the holder types placed on their own page - Pyramids, Cup Holder, Cabinets, Various Holders... Makes the pages smaller and easier to view. Also, there are photo galleries of the previous In Stock holders, so you can look at and reorder previous holders that were once on the site.

Once again, I'm very happy to be back on ECF, back with my fellow Vapers - and especially glad I'm able to dedicate myself full time to Absolute-Wood! Way happy to be back in the shop making wood chips!

Oh yea - Absolute-Wood is on Facebook now - www.facebook.com/PVSTANDS

Rick

 

[renderwerks]

Do you have a pic of a box mod holder that fits in your car's cup holder?

My best roommate ever was a Scotsman - Tim. Great guy, funny almost to a fault. Miss him.

I've only made them for Tube Mods so far. It would depend on the size of the Box Mod.

The Cup Holder Caddys are about the size of a medium fast food drink - almost 3-1/2" diameter at the top. Anyway, because they taper down to about 2-1/4" diameter at the bottom, there is very little room to "go deep" so the PV stays put during hard braking or cornering.

If you give me the rectangular measurement of the Mod, I could check their drawing to see if it would go in a Cup Holder Caddy, and how deep. I'm sure I could come up with something

Rick

 

[renderwerks]

Hey everyone-

I wanted to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving (and a great holiday season) -

I continue to machine on the Mod III blank shown just above. A little break is coming...

We're going up to NorCal for the week - we have a new Granddaughter, can't wait to see her!

Have a great one all!

Rick

 

[renderwerks]

Hey everyone,

Hope you're doin' well - I've had a fight with a cold now for about a week - glad it's not the flu - scary crap this year! I got out in the shop for a little here and there, and got some acrylic Drip Tips made. Did all the indoors work (photos, website coding...) the last couple days. All are now on the website and ready to go.

Here's a larger version of the above image if you like.

We're starting another crazy warm trend here - about 80 all week. Funny, we had finally gotten down to the 30s just last week - LOL.

I should get back to the shop and the Mods full time again soon.

Cheers,

Rick

 

[renderwerks]

Hey Everyone-

Thought I'd post a couple pics of the few holders I did make in 2015.

I discovered a truly beautiful (but expensive) wood, Caribbean Rosewood:

Very hard but nice to work. Great depth to the wood. This holder is a sandwich lamination that also has Wenge (dark) and African Padauk. Black flocking.

Speaking of Wenge (pronounced Win Gay), I made this Crescent holder of Wenge and Padauk (Pah Duke) that featured a pull out drawer on the inside center of the Crescent. The drawer "snaps" into the holder with magnets. The magnets on the top of the holder are to hold the drawer in place on top of the holder:

It was quite a trick making the cutout for the drawer. It had to be made before the three layers were glued together... The method produced a perfect rectangular cutout that required nearly no sanding.

This holder will soon be the "star" of a new feature I plan to add to the website - "The Making of a Holder". It will be a pictorial and verbiage look at how it was made. From the gluing of the three pieces that make the top, to how the drawer cutout was made, finishing, and finally to the mixing of the custom color flocking and it's application.

Well, I'm heading back to the shop to make some more wood chips! I'm going to start on another batch of holders - this time concentrating on the inexpensive strip holders, and perhaps a couple of few from the charger line. Also thinking of another Vape Cabinet or two!

Vape on-

Rick

 

[renderwerks]

UPDATE: All the items are now up on the website for sale - The drawings are complete and uploaded. The charger cutout is sized for a Nitecore D4 or i4; it is 4" x 5-3/4", and about 1-5/16" deep.

Hey all,

Long time with the photos - got them done - remaining coding should be done tonight. Ahhh, computer stuff...

Made this to look similar to flocking, for demo:

Soon!

Rick

 

[bacc.vap]

Nice work!

 

[renderwerks]

Hey everyone -

I just wanted to wish everyone a safe and happy holiday & New Year -

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah from Chell & I to all of our vape family!

Hope everyone has a great year end - and I'll see you right after the first of the year!​

Rick

 

[renderwerks]

Happy Independence Day Vapers!

Have a great day - enjoy some fireworks tonight

Be responsible and don't let children play with fireworks

Leave that to the adults - that have been drinking all day



C Ya-

Rick​

 

[renderwerks]

Hey Guys,

I've done lots of laminations with our Vape Stands and decided to do it on a smaller scale for drip tips.

To see if multiple thin pieces could be used - I prepared some thin pieces left from the Dragon blank and used 16ga (.051") brass sheet to alternate when gluing. Cut them into 3'4" squares.

Mixed up some black epoxy and started the messy job of coating, stacking and putting some light pressure on the groups. Very thin coats of glue squeezed tightly by hand then rubber banded for an hour or so until the epoxy thickened.

Later, more pressure was provided with pipe clamps.

Final prep was to glue the individual laminations atop oak pieces for clamping in the lathe.

Into pipe clamps after an hour or so:

After turning the assembly to a cylinder shape on the lathe -

The brass heats up very quickly, and must be taken in steps slowly to prevent melting or catching the stabwood on fire! The orange nozzle provides cool air under pressure to cool the brass while spinning. The cylinder is 17-18mm in diameter - just under 3/4" and just under an inch in length. They will be bored for SS cores with dual o-rings. 5.5mm for a standard 510 insert, or 12.5mm for the bigger bore.

I'll probably take this further and put a drip tip section on the website and add tips when I can. Different exotic woods, brass, copper and Nickel-Silver laminations. Let's see what I can think up...

Talk to you guys soon - Later!

Rick

 

[renderwerks]

Hey -

Well, the brass laminated tips didn't go too well. They had a tendency to break at the brass joint while being turned down to size. I'll have to rethink this method to see if an alternate adhesive is worth a try, or pinning them with small brass or stainless dowels through all the layers. Hmmm...

I have made a few from Caribbean Rosewood though -

On a side note, I'm dedicating some days to a 3D modeling job I was asked to do for a friend and former colleague. He now has his own company and produces technical publications for the aerospace industry, and wanted my help to make the illustration for a tear down manual for a valve in a rocket engine. I couldn't say no - sounded too cool.

Have a great week veeps (vape peeps?),

Rick

 

[renderwerks]

Well, the 3D rocket valve model for NASA went well - the brass drip tip adventure ended badly:

There was a problem with the glue separating at the brass. All broke at least twice before I said - "no more" - move on. I may revisit the design by adding small brass "dowels" through the layers before turning them on the lathe.

But, I got a new polishing rig for my lathe, and was able to quickly polish all the brass and the body of a DNA75 Mod in production, the Sleeping Dragon; so so pics, shot with my phone:

Standing up showing the polished solid brass faceplate and connector - the faceplate has yet to be assembled:

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Laying on it's face - you can see the chandelier reflection in the tube and a little more reflection on the body to the left of the tube:

There is very little left to do before the final assembly will begin

Let's keep all our family members in Texas in our prayers - and above water!

Take care,

Rick

 

[renderwerks]

Hey Everyone -

Going to jump ahead a little. The Sleeping Dragon Mod is complete, it's finally in the mail. A few interesting notes and occurrences are worth mentioning -

I reduced the size of this Mod slightly to make it more friendly to smaller hands. The space was so tight that the rubbery cement used to attach the Faceplate would allow it to push away from it's recess because of increased tension from the wiring because of the reduced space behind the Faceplate. So it had to come apart to try and get a little stronger adhesion by adding some epoxy at the corners of the Faceplate. It worked, but the body might be damaged if we ever have to take it apart again. Oh well, do what you have to - a new body might have to go with any removal of the Faceplate.

But that wasn't the end of it - after reassembly, I put a battery in to test it again, and when turned on, the watt setting immediately began to drop as if the down control button was being pushed. The Faceplate button looked fine, but would not "click" when pushed and I couldn't stop the behavior. Great, it needs to be opened up again... I wrapped a screwdriver with a little piece of leather to protect the polished brass and took the bottom plate off (rubbery attachment still works there). It was the positive wire from the battery pushing up just the corner of the DNA board and depressing the down button on the board. I moved the wire as much as possible and placed a small epoxy "bridge" between the body and board to hold it in place. After putting it back together, everything worked as designed when tested again. Finally!

Without further adieu -



And, a few images made with "the good stuff", Canon DSLR, L series lens, Strobes & Umbrellas - enjoy

And, there you have it! I'm quite proud of it - awesome materials make an awesome looking Mod. For those wondering - The Mod V is $259 base price. The stabwood block was $74, and the cast polished brass option is $179. The standard is an Oak or Walnut body, and black plastic parts instead of brass. Other materials like stainless are available at a lesser cost than brass.

I'll add more Mod news occasionally as I work on the next five that are on the production schedule - well, four plus another customer trying to decide what options to get! Check the home page of our website for more places to learn about our Mods.

A couple interesting notes:

I might have a Mod coming up that will have Damascus Steel - at least a Faceplate! I'm going to attempt a couple drip tips first.

I will be designing a DNA Mod to look similar to the Augvape Gragas - that should be kewl -


Give someone a thumbs up and a smile today, it'll improve their face value, and yours -

Rick

 

[Proudshamrock]

Do you have a pic of a box mod holder that fits in your car's cup holder?

Ruadh gu brath! (Scots Gaelic for Red heads forever!)

 

[Proudshamrock]

My best roommate ever was a Scotsman - Tim. Great guy, funny almost to a fault. Miss him.

I've only made them for Tube Mods so far. It would depend on the size of the Box Mod.

The Cup Holder Caddys are about the size of a medium fast food drink - almost 3-1/2" diameter at the top. Anyway, because they taper down to about 2-1/4" diameter at the bottom, there is very little room to "go deep" so the PV stays put during hard braking or cornering.

If you give me the rectangular measurement of the Mod, I could check their drawing to see if it would go in a Cup Holder Caddy, and how deep. I'm sure I could come up with something

Rick

Thanks. I'll get back to you!

Ruadh gu brath! (Scots Gaelic for Red heads forever!)

 

[renderwerks]

Hi everyone,

Quick update - I've decided to run a "flash sale". Several of the new items on the website have been discounted; look for the prices in red.

I've got several lamination blanks prepared and have about a dozen new designs ready to work on. Included are One Off over-sized Pyramids & matching strip holders made from a four layer sandwich of Zebra/Wenge/Zebra/Wenge.

Should be close to finished in a couple weeks!

Rick

 

[renderwerks]

Quick update - I have several Walnut & Padauk strip holders in various configurations currently in Clear Coat, sanding in-between coats right now. Also in finishing: A Purple Heart with a Wenge stripe holder as well as the two oversize Zebra/Wenge holders with matching Pyramids. All should be done and ready for their photography session in a day or two. Then I'll post pics-

Talk to 'yall soon,

Rick

 

[renderwerks]

As they say... the best laid plans-
Storms have moved in, and spray finishing no worky in this weather!

Got about 2" of rain yesterday, and look to get about twice that today. Hopefully, we'll be ready to spray by tomorrow when the humidity drops and the temps rise.

Using the opportunity to rough out some $20-30 Oak & Walnut holders.

Rick

 

[renderwerks]

Good Morning Vapers!

Quick check in before I head out to the shop.

Most the items mentioned a couple posts up that were in Clear Coat have been finished. One set of the Zebra/Wenge need more sanding and clear, then done.

The second batch of Oak & Walnut strips include a 3 step Walnut holder. They just had their oil baths last night, and should be ready for clear coat in a couple more days.

Plan to shoot photos of the first batch tonight or tomorrow, then Photoshop & website coding. I'll post pics here first before I put them up.

Ready, Set... Vape!

Rick

 

[renderwerks]

Good morning (well, it is here on the Left Coast...)

The second Zebra/Wenge set have been finished. The second set of strip holders (& step) are in Clear Coat & awaiting sanding before final coat.

A Walnut/Santos Mahogany Charger Holder and it's magnetic add on battery holder are machined and through oil soak. Ready for start of Clear Coat.

I've decided to photograph everything at once so I don't have to setup & teardown twice-

My Production Progress page on absolute-wood.com usually contains the earliest mention of where I am in production.

Y'all still get pics first

Light 'em up! (the LEDs that is)

Rick