The old things I repaired have become fine

Chapter 93: Senior, your obsessive-compulsive disorder is killing me!
Shen Le confidently threw all his demands over.

"Are you there? ... Do you know a reliable local renovation team? I want to redecorate the last row of servants' rooms in my old house..."

"By the way, if possible, can you entrust part of the project to the carpenter named Zheng Xiaohua? I bought a set of carpentry tools from them before...

Oh, by the way, please help me put a circle of barbed wire on the wall. Okay, okay, I'll leave it to you...Okay, I'll post the task on the bureau's website..."

Anyway, I have money. With money and official connections to help me, everything will be easy!
That afternoon, a decoration team arrived at the scene at lightning speed. Zheng Xiaohua took the lead, carrying a table from the servants' room, and asked Shen Le with a smile:
"Mr. Shen, where are we moving to?"

"Come with me!"

Shen Le asked them to go to the east road and temporarily put the old furniture in the servants' room into the pavilion in the second courtyard of the east road. As they walked, they looked around and thought, "Well, this middle-aged carpenter has been doing pretty well recently!"
His face was healthy and rosy, his expression was relaxed, and his previous sad and uneasy look had completely disappeared.

Apparently, he recovered quite well after the cardiac arrest and was living a happy life. Shen Le looked behind him, glanced at his colleagues, and asked with a smile:
"Where's your son? Didn't he come with you this time?"

"I sent him to school!" Zheng Xiaohua raised his head and smiled even more proudly:

"I sent him to a technical school! Even though it's a technical school, the teacher there won the world championship in woodworking competition! Then he stayed on to teach at the school. Now he's less than 25 years old and is already an associate professor!"

Ah, that's great. Shen Le couldn't help but laugh.

The country now attaches more importance to technology, promotes great craftsmen, and organizes many technical competitions and contests to provide upward channels for technical talents.

Go to a technical school and study woodworking, which is what my child likes. For me, I can inherit the craftsmanship of the older generation. For myself, I can learn a craft and make a living anywhere in the future.

If I could win a world-class championship like my teacher, or even a national or provincial championship, I would even be able to eat comfortably.

Shen Le was also happy for him:
"That's great! - By the way, is the tuition enough?"

"That's enough!" Zheng Xiaohua smiled with a red face:

"Tuition is cheap to begin with, 4,000 per semester, and 600 for books. The child's mother has a rural hukou, so according to the policy, these can be waived. Just give him living expenses!"

This is great. The parents can still work, the children don't have to pay for school fees, and they will be able to finish their studies and work soon. The family's life will get better and better...

This small renovation team worked very quickly. After clearing out the furniture in the servants' quarters, they cleaned it up, filled the brick walls with fireproof material, and then built another brick wall.

The ground is covered with cement flooring, waterproofing is done well, drainage is done well, and special sinks are used to handle flammable organic solvents...

All wooden structures in the house are coated with fire-retardant paint, and it is an intumescent transparent fire-retardant paint specially used for ancient buildings;

Then, directly below the roof, a fireproof gypsum board ceiling was installed to isolate the fire...

"All done! Great!"

Shen Le walked around the new workshop with his hands behind his back, stretching his body comfortably. The 5-meter-long and -meter-wide bungalow was generously divided into three rooms:

The little ink fountain and its woodworking tools use the room on the far right, and you can hear constant squeaking sounds every day;

One of the rooms is temporarily vacant and is used to store various tools, reagents, and parts. A large open space is also left to accommodate a two- to three-meter-long processing machine tool.
The room on the far left is Shen Le's own workshop. There is a two-meter-long and one-meter-wide workbench by the window. A high-power industrial exhaust fan is working hard above the head, so there is no need to worry about choking by dust.

Behind the desk, a giant 5-horsepower vertical air conditioner strives to make its presence felt by making the entire workshop cool.

In the corner of the room, the doll cabinet has been completely opened. The dolls, furniture, and decorations in each "room" are divided into trays and placed on different levels of wooden shelves:
"Let's do it!"

Shen Le's gaze swept across the empty doll cabinet and the mottled and peeling paint on the cabinet surface, and turned to the various small odds and ends in the tray.

Repairing the cabinet is a familiar job. With just one look, he can roughly estimate how much raw materials are needed, what steps are involved, and how long it will take.

But those dolls, those miniature furniture, those miniature pots and pans, those miniature stoves, chandeliers, carpets, incense burners, buckets...

He has no experience with these things!
Shen Le tentatively picked up a chair. As soon as he picked it up, he closed his eyes tightly, and after a while, he opened them reluctantly:

The chair was about the height of his palm, and when the four legs were lowered, they just filled up the entire palm. From the backrest to the armrests, it formed a gentle arc, with a simple shape and beautiful appearance:
It turned out to be a Ming-style armchair, with a miniature scale of about 1:6.

Shen Le tried to shake it, then tugged it, and sighed helplessly:

This is still a mortise and tenon structure!
I knew it, I knew it. If the ancients didn't make such a miniature Ming-style furniture, it would be fine. But if they did, how could they not use their obsessive-compulsive disorder to the extreme and make a mortise and tenon structure? !

However, after years of trials and tribulations, the structure of this chair no longer seems to be very solid and it really needs to be disassembled and repaired.

Now here comes the problem:
How do I fix it?!

The woodworking tools I have are all for normal-sized furniture. Can I make miniature furniture like this with the tools I have on hand?

Shen Le looked at his hands, then at the miniature furniture in front of him, then walked to the next room to look at the small inkstone waving the ink line and directing the set of tools.

Pick up a chisel and try it out; pick up a plane and try it out again…

Can we use existing tools to make miniature furniture?
He had no idea. The records of the ink fountain and woodworking tools used over the past decades that the copper sheet had instilled in him did not give him an answer.

emmm...the code of conduct for modern graduate students: when in doubt, check information first.

Shen Le searched CNKI and found an article titled "The Practical Significance and Implementation Methods of Innovative Design of Ming and Qing Furniture with Miniature Mortise and Tenon Structures".

Unfortunately, this paper lists a lot of meanings, puts a few formulas, and talks about a few principles. However, it does not talk about making tools or something like that;

I bowed to Wanfang and VIP again. Sorry, big brother, don't laugh at the second brother. If CNKI doesn't have the papers, other websites are unlikely to have them either. In short, there is no progress.

Then turn around and visit Bilibili... got it!
There is an interview video of a senior master, in which he mentioned that because the furniture they are making is extremely small, all the tools have to be made by themselves!
Thank you, Station B, you are so reliable.

In terms of these manual skills and techniques, you are more reliable than the monographs in schools and major paper websites!

There are videos too, and live demos too!
Shen Le bowed sincerely to the computer screen and immediately fell into a dilemma. Is it too late for me to order the tools now?

Who should I contact to order it, what style should I order, how big should I order, what kind of steel should be used, and how much will it cost?

No, these are easy to solve. At worst, I can go back to ask my master. There are so many strange directions in the field of cultural relics restoration, and there are always people who need some very small tools.

But first I need to figure out, how long will it take me to order these tools?
A month?

Three months?
Half a year? !
The staff who entrusted this toy cabinet said that its owner has Alzheimer's disease and won't be awake much longer... I have to hurry!

Shen Le hesitated for a moment, then picked up Taobao again and started searching on it.

He wants ready-made goods that can be used immediately. Even if they are not very convenient to use, at least they have to be useful.

It's not always the case that two months later, people come to ask me how the repair is going, and I answer "I'm sorry, the tools are still being customized, and they will probably be ready in a few months..."

Even if they don't beat me to death, I'd feel embarrassed to treat a senior like this!

After searching for a long time, my eyes lit up:
Got it!

There are a full set of micro-carving tools, a full set of walnut carving tools, and a full set of seal engraving tools!
The smallest chisel, the round chisel head can be as small as 0.7 mm, and the flat chisel head can be as small as 0.5 mm!

With such a small blade, he could easily make mortise and tenon joints on the miniature furniture!
Thanks to the industrial development over the years, and thanks to the almighty Taobao... the predecessors had to find ways to customize various tools themselves, but I can just buy them!
Although these standard tools may not be able to complete every task, they can at least last you through the early stages, giving you time to slowly adapt and try out new tools!
Decision made, I will first get a set of micro engraving knives, and then see if I can get a CNC machine!
After placing the order and waiting for the goods to arrive, there is still work to be done. First, they need to be disassembled and cleaned up.

Of course, it is impossible to start dismantling things right away. Shen Le adheres to the principle of cultural relics restoration and collects data and conducts research on each one:
Photograph!

Take photos from every angle!
Capture every angle and every detail!

Record a video!
Taking photos alone cannot present the whole picture. A complete video is required to facilitate later comparison!

After taking photos and recording videos, Shen Le started drawing CAD. While drawing, he lamented:
It would be nice to have the Leica 360D laser scanner from RTC.

Put it in front of the scanner, scan it once, and the 80D structure will appear immediately, with the size of every detail, so he doesn't have to work so hard to draw it. What a pity, 80, !
That scanner costs 80 yuan each!
Although he now has 10 million in his hands, the amount of money he receives each month is still not enough to keep up with the amount that Xiao Youdeng spends freely.

Before he could find a stable and large way to make money, Shen Le felt that he should spend frugally...

(End of this chapter)