We’re hijacking our weekly open hack night for our anniversary party! Come hang with Node members and others in the community and enjoy some food, conversation, and a tour of our space! We’ve got a woodshop, metal shop, laser cutters, a CNC router, 3d printers, electronics, and a whole lot more!

If you are interested in learning more about our Makerspace; you are invited to join us for an informal evening where you can get a tour of the place and meet some of our members. Find out how to become involved. Come to share ideas and projects.

For those concerned or not able to join us in person we still have an online presence at https://meet.baltimorenode.org/OpenHack for a virtual evening.

You yes you can become a member of the Node and get full 24/7 access to an amazing shop and community for only $50/mo. Ask us how!

Midjourney, Dalle-2, and Stable Diffusion are software programs that allow users to generate images using artificial intelligence. Come to this jam session to learn how play with these programs, share pictures, and discuss tips and tricks. No experience needed, but to participate please bring a laptop (or smartphone if you don’t have one) with Discord installed.

There’s a limited number of seats, so please RSVP on Meetup!

I wanted to make a large frame for an old map of a Baltimore neighborhood, using wood local to it; luckily, someone had recently felled a sycamore tree and cut it into some relatively straight firewood logs, which I quartersawed to bring out the figure. Unfortunately, the logs were each only about a foot long, well short of what I actually needed for framing; to use them, I’d need to butt join the boards to combine them into a much larger one.

There’s a few ways to do that of varying degrees of strength and attractiveness; as these things go a picture frame isn’t especially structurally demanding and almost entirely ornamental, so I decided some butterfly joints in a contrasting color would help turn the limitations of the material into a feature. A scrap piece of walnut fit the bill for the joining wood.

To make the butterflies relatively standard, I used a straightedge to draw a grid, and then drew a line zig-zagging between the intersections in every other row, mirrored in opposing directions.

Cutting along these lines with the jigsaw produces a serrated wood band that alternates between one row and three rows wide. The jigsaw is ideal for jobs like this, making complex non-straight cuts on smaller pieces of wood.

Cut across the widest point, this produces a bunch of bowtie-shaped butterfly joints. Save the sawdust from this work and keep it separate from your other dust and detritus, we’ll use it later.

To fit them to the boards, set the boards end-to-end as they’ll be in the finished product, set the butterflies on top, and trace them as closely as possible with a sharp pencil

You could produce a stronger joint by shaving the butterflies down to maybe a third of the width of the main board and inlaying them with chisels but for the sake of speed and simplicity we’ll just cut the gaps all the way through with the jigsaw. Err on the inside of the lines – you can always cut away more wood, it’s harder to go back and cut out less.

The angles at the end of the butterfly slots are a little too sharp for the jigsaw to handle, so we’ll do them in four parts – cut down one side, cut starting on the other side and making a wide arc down the middle to meet the other cut in the corner, cut down the other side, and finish off the bottom of the slot.

Fit the dovetails to the board, shaving down the gaps with a hand chisel where they’re too small to fit. The end result should let your butterfly joint fit the slots as tightly as possible.

Even the tightest fit will probably leave a visible gap somewhere. We can cover this up almost completely by filling in with a thick mixture of wood glue and dark sawdust, which is where the walnut dust saved from the earlier cutting comes in. Jigsaws produce great, fine-grained, even dust for this kind of use.

We can just mix the sawdust and glue straight on the workpiece. Spread it on the joints and try to squeeze it into the cracks, and let dry. The end result will look like… kind of a mess.

Sand or plane the crust off the surface – I used the jointer here, but a belt sander, hand plane, or fistful of sandpaper will do just fine. With the top layer of mess removed, the remaining joints should be relatively seamless, and will dissappear pretty much entirely when we finish the wood.

I’m still not happy with how the seam between the butt ends of the boards look, so I cut a shallow groove over the seam and inlaid a little strip of 1/8in thick walnut. Sanded down again, this will cover up the whole thing nicely.

An oscillating palm sander with a 220 grit pad will clean up any remaining tooling marks and produce a smooth, even surface for finishing. A few layers of shellac, and we’re ready to put the picture in and hang it on the wall!

We’re also doing a collaborative build with We The Builders this night. You can come help us assemble the 9 foot tall sculpture designed by George Hart. It’s made of 193 3D printed pieces that were crowd-sourced from all over the world, plus 416 wooden dowel rods. It was assembled and disassembled once before at a conference, but Baltimore is now its home, so let’s welcome it with a group build. The part starts at 7, and the build starts around 8:00.

Baltimore Node’s 9th Birthday Celebration! OpenHack and 9′ Sculpture Build

Thursday, Nov 1, 2018, 7:00 PM

Baltimore Node
2106 N Lovegrove Street Baltimore, MD

9 Makers Attending

Hey makers, hackers, and friends! The Node turned 9 this past summer and we’re having a party! Come by our regular Open Hack on Thursday November 1st to help us celebrate. We’ll have some food, but feel free to bring a dish. We’re also doing a collaborative build with We The Builders this night. You can come help us assemble the 9 foot tall sculptu…

Check out this Meetup →

Please join us in celebrating our eighth year of being us! We’ve worked hard to bring our space together to create a supportive and collaborative environment in Baltimore city where people can hack, make, craft, and create art and tech projects. Come by the Node on Sunday, October 22nd, 2017 for our 8 year anniversary party!

Join us for games, food, music, and show and tell. Relax with friends, meet new ones, and talk about what you like to make. Have a project you’ve made in the last 8 years? Bring it by and set it up somewhere to show it to others!

Where at?

Baltimore Node
2106 N Lovegrove Street
Baltimore, MD. 21218

When?

12-5 PM Tabletop/Board games & Open house
3-5PM Laser cutting and 3D printing demo
2-5PM Show and Tell
6-7PM Metal casting demo
5-9PM Food! Music!

Food?

We’ll be firing up the grill in the late afternoon to have a cookout. We’ll probably light it with a flame thrower. We’re also running this as a potluck, so here’s your chance to show us what you’ve got! Cook something and bring it along, or pick up something.

Please add what you’re contributing to our google doc linked below:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1993aE8Oqzmtdm6ldvFNbkSpump4xWGAIhfLA4z03ax0/

Music!

Did you know our landlord repairs player pianos? If we’re nice, he’ll probably turn one of them on for us to enjoy. There’s also some speakers in the space hooked to an aux cable/Chromecast.

RSVP!

Let us know you’re coming by RSVPing here on Meetup. We’ve got a Facebook event up too. Bring a friend too if you’d like.

Who are we?

The Baltimore Node is a 501(c)(3) member-run nonprofit that organizes a space where people can hack, craft, and make interesting things in a supportive and collaborative environment. Membership dues are typically $50 per month and provide a member with 24/7 access to tools, the space, a key, a vote, and the ability to run workshops. Learn more at Baltimorenode.org

We look forward to seeing you there! After all, you only get to host an anniversary party once a year.

Thanks,

Todd Blatt

You’ll leave this class with a keyfob you designed and made yourself using our 80w 3’x2′ laser driven by the LaserCut 5.3 software. Completing this class is a requirement for using the laser-cutter on your future projects.

Metal casting using laser-cut molds – Make a Pewter Keychain or necklace
You’ll leave this class with a lead-free pewter keychain or necklace you designed and made yourself.

Make your own Kubb set (Viking lawn game) Our basic woodworking tools class

This workshop will teach you how to use basic woodworking tools like the band saw, miter saw, and table saw, as well as a brief intro to the laser cutter to customize the king. You’ll also leave this workshop with your very own Kubb set to play with at home with your friends!

Intro to Mold Making – Making Silicone Molds and Resin Casts

You’ll leave this class with a plastic resin copy of your original object, and a mold to make more at home.

The first step was to create the design on the computer. The trick is to make sure each piece is connected, and sprued and vented properly. When we pour metal into the mold the air inside the mold has to have a way to escape. We added vent lines on either side and a big pour spout in the middle.

The shape had some internal features like the hole in the top of the R, the piece between the R and the U, and the big piece between the U and the T, so those pieces of acrylic were cut loose. The vent lines and pour spout also made some separate pieces, so they had to be attached carefully. We cut a second rectangle and glued the loose pieces to the rectangle using acrylic welder.

We then sanded a small pour spout into the top of a piece of wood and clamped the mold in between to wooden pieces.

The metal was melted and at around 550 degrees. A ladle was used to scoop up and pour a little bit of metal into the opening. The metal flowed down into the mold, displacing the air which flowed out the side vents.

After the mold cooled, the clamps were removed, the wood blocks were separated, and the acrylic mold was snapped apart to remove the cast pewter. The vent lines and sprues were removed with pliers and the final piece still has to be sanded and polished.

You can learn how to do this too and make one for yourself in an upcoming “The More You Node” workshop! Stay tuned for details.

Members, you’ll be able to pick up your keys if you haven’t got a set yet. Don’t forget to submit your mugshot for the picture frame! Come try out our actual working Internet too!

Non-members, you’re totally welcome to come meet us, share food, and lend a helping hand. Our membership dues are only $50 a month and as we continue to get our space more organized, who wouldn’t want to join?

If you’re coming, please RSVP here!

Bring some food to share (extra points if it’s DIY of course) and show up at 11:30am and stay til ~5 and we’ll be there! We’re focusing on improving and cleaning up and organizing the space as well as eating, so bring some helping hands too.

There’s a lot of things to move out of the space which don’t belong there, there is also a lot of organizing to do, laying out final placement of tools, tables, arranging areas, etc. We’ve assembled a list of a few key things which need doing, and would love to see your face.

Please RSVP by clicking here  and spread the word by posting this to social media and telling your friends!

See you at our new location at 2106 N. Lovegrove Street at 11:30 am on Sunday, August 23rd!