BIG WEEKEND: PART 1

Kids getting messy in the clay.

A cute little one playing on a pottery wheel.

The cool plasma cutter.

Stewie, made with the plasma cutter.

Cindi, using the brake.

Stamping.

Powder coat demo.

Melting the powder coat.

The mighty drill press.

Cindi, hanging our "art" up in a student exhibit.

It was a busy weekend.  On Friday, Cindi and I went to the Art Festival/Open House at the Studio Arts building.  It was so interesting and fun.  Art students are so creative and expressive (sometimes maybe too expressive!).  It was fun to be back in that environment after so many years.  There were a lot of demos and exhibitions of work.  Cindi and I played with foil prints and we made business card holders in the Jewelry/Metal Arts classroom.  My favorite, of course!  I was coveting all of their tools.  They had the biggest rolling mill and angle brake that I have ever seen.  The brake is for bending sheet metal at an angle (duh!).  What I would do with a vise and a rawhide mallet takes literally 10 seconds and almost no effort with the brake.  I want one.  The industrial sized rolling mill was amazing and I could imagine how happy it would have made my tool obsessed, metal smith friend, Anne Mitchell.  For some reason, my favorite thing in the metals area was the drill press that was sized for a Goliath.  I have no idea why, but I want that too. 

Next we went to the sculpture area.  We watched a plasma cutter demonstration.  That was one of the coolest things I've ever seen!  They were cutting detailed shapes from 16 gauge sheet steel that had been programmed into the computer.  The machine is capable of cutting sheet up to a couple of inches thick.  The instructor told us that they have another machine that can cut metals up to 8 inches thick.  This particular machine was quickly disassembled during the flood and the motors were hung from the ceiling for protection.  The flood waters, however were much worse than expected and reached the motors and knocked them around and filled them with filthy water and mud.  The students are cleaning them up and reassembling the cutter and almost a year later, expect it to be running soon.  Cool.

After the festival, Cindi and I met Paul for yummy Mexican dinner.  Paul was dead tired and needed to go home and sleep.  Cindi wasn't ready to go home yet and suggested we head to Riverside (about 12 miles away) to the casino to blow 20 bucks.  She and I have a tradition the last few years of going to a bead show in Marshalltown every year and leaving a few buck with the Mesquaki Nation on our way home.  Very fun, but I'm WAY too cheap to lose more than that.  Anyway, we went to Riverside and honestly people, if you've never been to a casino, it's the best people watching place, ever!  We had fun playing video poker and slot machines when suddenly my machine started making noises and in the end I won $882 dollars.  How completely random is that?!  Cindi won a hundred dollars, so that was good.   I decided that it's found money, so I'm giving half of it to our animal shelter that got flooded last June and I'm not sure what I'll do with the rest, but I'll find something good.  The thing that amazes me about gambling is how many people would have just kept going when that happens.  There was a woman at a machine next to me when I won who told me," That machine is hot, you're not going to stop now are you?".  Yikes!