Tuesday, December 31, 2013

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Photo by the Cassini Spacecraft 2013 (NASA)

On the cusp of the new year, here's something to ponder. We're alone out here floating in the darkness of our corner of the Universe. Anyone else who may be out here is very far away. So for now, at least, we're all there is. Please take a few minutes to watch Carl Sagan say this far better than anyone else in the Universe could.  Happy New Year everyone!



Monday, December 30, 2013

TOOL MAKING


Before and after

I got a bunch of old 5 1/2 inch square cut nails a while back at a junk sale. I had to buy them because they were cool and pretty cheap. They're so enormous, that I can't even imagine what these were originally used for, fences or barn beams, I suppose. At any rate, they're pretty awesome. I've been interested in tool making for a long time now. A couple of years ago I took a forging workshop with Tim McCreight (who makes a lot of his own tools) and I had the opportunity to sit down with him an ask him a few questions about tool steel and how to harden it, etc. I bought some tool steel but haven't taken the time to work with it. I ran across these nails the other day while I was reorganizing my studio space (still not done, by the way). I was looking for a reason to procrastinate the job, so I had the idea to see if I could make a tool out of one of the nails. It worked really well. It turns out that, at least to my untrained eye, that these old babies are made from really good steel. I thought I'd make a scribe first as the fabrication is pretty straight forward, in that the goal is to make it as pointy as possible. It took a lot of heat and force to make it malleable enough to twist, so I got a good workout. Since I don't know exactly what type of steel it is, I didn't know exactly how to temper it. After I finished the forging, filing and finishing, I heated it back up, not quite as hot as I initially did when forging it. Again, since I'm using an old piece of steel, I wasn't sure whether to quench in oil or in water. From what I could learn from blacksmithing articles on the Internet, it seems like unknown steel is most safely quenched in oil, so that's what I did. I cleaned the scribe back up and used it tonight to mark a sheet of bronze for sawing. It worked great! The tip stayed intact with no chipping, so I'm assuming that I tempered correctly. If anyone reading this has any experience with old steel that they'd be willing to share with me I'd really appreciate it. The nail makes a very nice scribe that's the perfect weight and length, at least for me. I tried to place the twist so that it'd make the tool easy and secure to grip. plus, it's pretty and I think tools should be nice looking if possible. Next, I'm going to try to make a curved burnishing tool, but only AFTER the studio reorganization is done. I got a new piece of equipment for Christmas that I'm dying to try out and I have to make some room for it. More on that later!

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

HAPPY HOLIDAYS




I got in my car last night while we were running last minute errands for Christmas. It was so cold that there was frost on the inside of the windows.  As I was waiting impatiently for the defroster to kick in I glanced up and saw this beautiful heart-shaped bit of snow on the outside of my windshield. It gave me pause. It reminded me of how important it is to stop and notice things, because they don't last. There is beauty all around us, all the time. We're all so busy, so focused on what we have to do, on our first-world problems that sometimes it's hard to see it. But it's there, if we choose to see it.
I wish you all, near and far the happiest of holidays. I hope you all will take the time for yourselves to find the beauty in everyday. I know I will.