hand powered scroll saw

 

hand powered scroll saw

table saw

 

Another good one...

foot powered saw

 

Ooh this is a good one; so simple...

velocipede in action

 

This is the kind of saw that my velocipede jewelers saw is based on.

treadle bandsaw

 

I came across this and thought it was interesting.

pizza

I made a few pizzas last night. The cheese sticks were pretty amazing. 

The last inch and half up to the crust on the cheese pizza was incredible in terms of flavor, but the dough up to that point was undercooked. 

Then the pepperoni pizza was overcooked as a result of me trying to make sure the dough was good. 

Lesson learned: cast iron cooks a pizza like this WAY better than my steel pan (at least in my oven). I still can't get my dough quite right. I think it may be the altitude messing with the recipe I'm using. The dough is not rising as much as it should and it's a bit too heavy. I think I need a higher water content too as this dough was dry and then I didn't get the pockets of air that I should have gotten inside the dough. The dough is going to take some tweaking. I do however like the addition of the wheat flour to my usual bread flour. It just gives it a little more flavor.

 

velocipede big wheel bore

Yesterday afternoon I was able to get the velocipede legs bored, a 3D printed bushing designed and made (that will be made in bronze), and the big cast wheel bored to the shaft size. I also made a "stand in/mock up" shaft that I could use to put things together. The bronze wheel is a hefty beast but the big diameter shaft supports it well. I think the big wheel should still be mounted on the rotary table on the Bridgeport and the outside trued slightly. I think it would just help the piece to function a bit more smoothly. I'd like to machine the small wheel this weekend if I can finalize the design.

It's interesting how an object like this requires so many different parts that have to come together for the object to function. For some reason, when I make things I need the piece to be capable of mock up stage, so I can see everything and then evaluate the design and "look" of things. I have the entire model in CAD, but my brain requires to be able to see the parts all fixed together to then make changes or additions to. This is the area where I think a piece gets better. This is why I just need to see the piece together regardless of everything being resolved. I also think this is why I like modifying existing objects so much. I'm not sure why, but I have had that desire from the time I was a kid. I always had this desire to stick an engine from one motorcycle into a different frame, or I wanted to combine different bicycle parts to build a completely unique bike. Where does that impulse come from? I need to think about this more...

It's like I need to see something as a complete unit so I can then modify it. This mock up stage is critical for me and I need to see this piece come together as a whole with all it's parts, regardless if they are going to be the final design or not. I just need to see this together as a whole as soon as possible. As I build things I feel like I get to a point where I have built all of these parts, I assemble them, and then I tear it all apart and restore it to final finish. This is the part of making that I enjoy and always have. 

Why can't CAD suffice for this "mock up" stage and then I'm just building parts and assembling them? I hate having to figure out details in CAD I guess. I want to do that part in the physical world instead. Seeing something, touching it, handling it, having a visceral response feels necessary to me. I would love to be a fly on the wall when iconic things were being built to see how the ideas developed. Have all of these iconic things been built from engineering plans/drawings on paper and then just emerged as a direct one to one of that object or did people have a chance to respond to the physical parts and let the object evolve as more parts were created? It's probably not really all that important, but I think about the call and response to making a lot more these days. This piece is reminding me of how I like to work and that IS important...to me. It's not fast nor is it efficient, but it's just the time it takes for me to be happy with what I'm making.

 

benelli

Most of these are some stills taken from a videos of a Benelli collection. These Montgomery Wards Riverside Benellis have the right stance and they still have that classic Italian style of some of the early Italian brands. I have one these that has been waiting in the wings for a restoration except I've taken the later 360 Mojavi engine and stuffed it into the older style frame. It's a tight fit but it works. I picked up the front suspension a few years ago, and I just need to get some wheels for it, I have the hubs, just need the wheels. It looks like these have had wider rims laced so the owner can run wider rubber. I think the early rims were pretty thin like all of the Italian small boy racers of the day. They also all have shouldered aluminum rims; probably Borranis (but could be Akronts). It's funny how shouldered/flanged rims can make such a difference in the look of a bike. These are all good references for what I need to build though.

 

velocipede cranks

I got up early this morning and walked down to the shop. Yesterday I had programmed the CAM file for the crank design for my velocipede so I wanted to get an early start on cutting them out. I had made a 3D printed model of the crank a week ago, but there's always something special about seeing a design in metal. I used some leftover aluminum plate from when we were cutting parts for Austin's electric motorcycle. The first crank was looking good right up to the point where my parallel finishing op was almost done and then there was a weird toolpath that caused the ball endmill to get pulled out of the collet and it screwed up the z location. Live and learn. I ran the file a second time and this time was ready for the issue. Then I turned around and ran the second finished crank. I was able to clean and do a little organization in the shop while this was running. I have a few more pieces to program like the pedals that will connect to the cranks and a small drive wheel. Hopefully I can cut the small drivewheel tomorrow. The pedals are double sides and I'm doing some texture on these so they will take a bit more set-up and time. I still need to decide on the table design and the saw frame arms, pivots and tensioner so there's still a lot to do.

I ran into town with the girls in the afternoon to stop in and check on a student (who is doing some work for me in the campus studio; painting exhaust hoods) on campus, and to take the girls to the library. We got some groceries afterwards and then we came home and I made dinner for us. We'll watch a movie tonight and chill out on the couch.

 

official land rover series 2A bushing install/extract tool

I ordered new chassis bushings for the Land Rover from Rovers North this week, and they arrived yesterday. I ordered the original style because everything I've read says that replacement poly bushings are junk. That said, I was not looking forward to installing these. Getting the old bushings out of the frame were a pain and I tried making a tool that would pull them but ended up using a hacksaw to split the outer steel sleeve so that I could remove them. As I was dreading this, I decided that I would need a new approach to installing these. Since I had stripped multiple piece of threaded rod trying to remove the old ones, I decided that I was gong to need a stronger thread. 

Enter the scissor jack - I had an old scissor jack floating around that sacrificed it's square threaded rod for the purposes of a dedicated Land Rover busing installer/extractor. I ground the rivets down and popped the threaded rod and nuts out of the jack. It was the perfect diameter to fit through the new bushings. 

I wire brushed the hole good, and then lubed everything up with wheel bearing grease and then used the air impact gun to pull the bushing into place. I've heard of this process taking an hour per bushing but my set-up and new tool worked like a charm and I installed one bushing in less than 30 seconds...

...only to find out that the front chassis bushings are different from all the rest. They are slightly longer that the rest of the bushings that go in the rear of the frame and all of the leaf springs. Oh well, I'll order the correct ones for the front of the chassis and install the others in the leaf springs and the rear of the chassis. I'm just glad my fancy new tool works.

 

chris bathgate latest

The work above is from Chris Bathgate. I've been aware of Chris's work for quite sometime. I have been a subscriber to his newsletter and so I was aware of his recent MIT gig. A few newsletters ago he talked of his experience at MIT and was so thrilled to know that he had this opportunity. With a more recent newsletter it seems his MIT gig is getting even sweeter. Good for him! 

Well I read his newsletter sans photos because I was with my girls in a remote hiking area when I read his newsletter. Today I decided to check out my blog reading list and low and behold Chris has updated his blog. It's interesting that he popped up in my blog feed recently and that I have taken to the blog-o-sphere again. Anyway, I really enjoyed his latest posts. I think Eric might be interested in his 5 axis discussion.

 

snag slide library - mark rooker

I came across an interesting find today. I was going through some of the content from the SNAG archive. SNAG is the Society of North American Goldsmiths. It is the professional organization of academic and professional metalsmiths in the country and an organization which I am a member of. I became a member of the organization when I was getting ready to start graduate school. 

When I was a graduate student at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, one of my jobs was working in the SNAG slide library. Our school housed the collection for SNAG and we would receive collections of slides from artists and then we would have duplicate sets made, and then we would label the dups and create sets of slides that would be loaned out to individuals who requested specific slide sets. We would mail and receive slides from people who requested these slides, and we would catalogue and keep the library organized. I can't exactly remember the specifics of my appointment, but I think this was part of my assistantship duties. Again, I can't remember exactly, but I think there were of a few of us grads that worked in the library. If Ian happens to read this maybe he will remember.

Anyway, we had a small room in the Art Annex building that the Metals Department was located in and I remember it being a great resource for me when I was starting to teach. Of course this would be a time in which you would prepare carousels of slides to show to current and historical work to students in class. Since we housed the library, I had free reign to show the latest work that was coming into the library. Anytime I started a new assignment in class I could pull slides to show students to serve as inspiration or to demonstrate how a technique was used. It's crazy to think that this was one of the only ways to see contemporary metalwork at the time. 

Apparently in 2004, SNAG donated a slide archive to The Metal Museum. It contained the portfolios of over 330 metalsmiths of national and international significance. The Metal Museum then partnered with the American Craft Council Library to make the collection available online. The complete 16,000-slide archive was digitized for long-term preservation through grants from the John and Robyn Horn Foundation and an ArtsFirst grant from the First Tennessee Bank Foundation and the collection is now hosted online at the Center for Craft.

Well it was fun looking through the collection today. The work you see above is by Mark Rooker. Mark was a graduate student in the U of I program a few years before me, so this work was highly influential to me. I used to look at these slides a lot when i was working and if my memory serves me correctly, Billie had framed postcards of the teapot rocket and maybe one of Mark's brooches in the hallway as you walked toward the BFA studio. Again, Ian or Eric might remember this better than me. These images set the bar for the caliber of work that I needed to be making in the program and it probably helped that my best friend, Ian, had been taught by Mark when Ian was getting his undergraduate Industrial Design degree before being in the same cohort with me in graduate school. I remember Ian talking about these pieces so they made an impact on me.

It's funny to use these images as a representation of how much our world has changed. First, slides are a thing of the past. The quality of these images is horrible, but they were the best we had at the time. The images don't come close to the quality of the actual pieces. You only had a limited number of shots to get a good image and once you did, having dups made was expensive. You had to be selective and intentional. Teaching and how I expose students to work has changed so much as well. Students can access videos of people making actual work and speak directly to the person making the work and this can all happen in real time. 

All of that said, there is something romantic and nostalgic about the thought of sending a physical catalog of your work to represent what you've been doing for the last year or two. There is also something romantic about a physical postcard along with a handwritten note that you send to people that represents something you are proud of. Now everything is relegated to the same level of minutia because we just scroll past image after image and it all gets lost in our overcrowded minds or the pace of life. 

It was magic to pick up a full sheet of slides and realize that it represented that person's work and effort for the last year or so; even the sheet of slides were precious to me. I remember being so careful with the sheet of slides. Even the room that we kept the collection in was clean and particular; almost sterile. There was a reverence to that room (which was kept locked) and the contents of the room was something to be protected. A sense of purpose is an idea that I am left with after thinking about this. The work having purpose, the act of choosing what image best represents the work.

Maybe I need to think about making some postcards again...