Author Archives: Brian Lawler

About Brian Lawler

Brian Lawler is an Emeritus Professor of Graphic Communication at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo and was a Guest Professor at Hochschule München from September, 2021 to September, 2022. He writes about graphic arts processes and technologies for various industry publications, and on his blog, The Blognosticator.

Designing and building a trailer for Burning Man

I will be attending Burning Man again this year, my fifth. The event was canceled in 2020 and 2021, and I was in Germany in 2022, so I have missed three years. I will be going out onto the Black … Continue reading

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Making Panoramas
and not getting lost in White Sands National Park

My wife and I recently returned from a three-week adventure to Arizona and New Mexico. We stopped at a number of places en route, including Tucson, where I attended the annual summit of the North American Nature Photographers Association. It … Continue reading

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Adirondack chairs – delivered!

You can read the previous chapter of this story here. Late last year I decided to make a couple of Adirondack chairs for our upstairs balcony. These were designed to replace two chairs that we bought at a garden store. … Continue reading

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Chair-man of the board

This is part 2 of a series on my new Adirondack chairs. Click here to read the first part. After a month in the kiln, I picked up my Monterey Cypress lumber at the mill in Paso Robles and drove … Continue reading

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A new Adirondack chair for 2023

In the summer of 2014 I built a couple of Adirondack chairs for our back deck. I wrote about it here. These were made of oak, painted with primer, then assembled and painted again to make them as weatherproof as … Continue reading

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Dancing in the laser light fantastic

This is part 2 of my article about building a fixed positioning laser on the CNC machine. To read the first part, click here. I had decided to make the final fixed laser with a bracket made of aluminum. In … Continue reading

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Affixing a laser to the CNC machine

My friend Bryn and I own a CNC router. We have had it for years, and it has undergone a couple of upgrades. It started life as a CNC Machine with a DeWalt router motor mounted on it, providing adequate, … Continue reading

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Gliding into a saw restoration

This is Part 2 of my story about restoring an antique Hammond Glider “TrimOsaw” for the Shakespeare Press Museum at Cal Poly. To read the first part, click here. I got to the point of removing the aluminum nameplate from … Continue reading

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Restoring that ol’ saw – a Hammond Glider

Now that the Smyth machine is working, I decided to take on a new project. Last fall I offered to restore a 1960s era Hammond Glider TrimOsaw for the Shakespeare Press Museum at Cal Poly. This machine is best described … Continue reading

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The Smyth book sewing machine is now running!

Some of you may recall my obsession with a 1935 Smyth book sewing machine and all of the steps it took to restore it and get it running again. After my return from Germany last September, I worked a lot … Continue reading

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