Resin Art: A Cornflower for Jazzlet

This one’s an older piece. I share Jazzlet’s love for cornflowers. Not only are they one of the rare blue flowers, they are also very undemanding flowers. Just throw a handful of seeds and you have flowers for years to come. I really need to dry more flowers in summer so I can have fun in winter…

©Giliell, all rights reserved

Again, huge problems in getting the camera to focus…

Jazzlet, if you want it, just send me your address.

And here’s some more UV resin fun. I’m still very much into making matching necklaces and earrings.

©Giliell, all rights reserved

©Giliell, all rights reserved

The shape is pretty irregular, but in this case I like it, as it matches the marble/pebble design.

And I made a necklace to match the cherry blossom earrings:

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As you can see, I changed the way I made the petals. They are more regular this way and much easier to work. I’m not sure which ones I like better, I just know that I would have lost patience making all the petals the other way.

Kitchen Knives Set – Part 5: “Fun” with Resin

Somebody somewhere in the comment section (I think on Marcus’s blog) expressed dislike for resin stabilized wood along the lines that it is the same as making the handles out of plastic. I disagree. Stabilized wood is a pain to work because it behaves like plastic in that regard, but it does not look like plastic and neither does it feel like plastic in the hand – it feels like wood. And as I was working on this project, I found out that it even sounds like wood – stabilized pieces give out very nice clonk-clonk when hit against each other. I think it might be possible to make musical instruments out of it, but I won’t try.

However, before said wood reaches its desired stabilized state, I have to work with epoxy resin. Lots of it.

I hate it.

It is gluey, it sticks to absolutely everything and it is transparent, so when it drops somewhere it is difficult to see in time. Tools and surfaces need to be cleaned with paper towels soaked in denatured alcohol, which is not cheap and the fumes do not smell exactly delicious. And the work needs to be done fast, because if the epoxy gels, it won’t soak into the wood no more.

With my macgyered vacuum pump I have reached a vacuum of 0,2-0,3 bar, which was sufficient for extremely porous wood, but might not be sufficient for this. Applewood has very small pores and is very hard, even the very decomposed pieces were still harder than for example poplar or basswood. So I have decided to bite the bullet and buy a small, cheap vacuum pump in the hope that it will work better. And it does – and it does not.

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Even with my poorly sealed pickle jar, I have easily reached vacuum 0,6 bar within a minute. The wood released so many bubbles that the resin developed foam head like beer.

However, the pump also got very hot after a few minutes of running, which made me a bit worried. My macgyvered pump was a bit cumbersome and awkward, but overheating was completely a non-issue. I am not so sure about this one. I hope it does not burn out before I at least get to sell some knives.

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Overheating aside, the wood soaked up the resin very nicely and although I have only used clear resin, it developed very nice and pleasant colors. The resin would cure over time at room temperature, but it is possible to speed up the curing by heating it to 60-80°C. So I did that the next day and I baked the pieces for two hours, after which I could appreciate the nice clonk-clonk that I was talking about at the beginning.

I have also approached the issue a bit more scientifically this time and I have weighed all the pieces before and after. Here you can see the results.

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This made me very happy with the results. The relatively healthy wood has gained approx 30% in weight, the not-very-much rotten root wood doubled its weight and the more decomposed wood has almost tripled its weight. All pieces of similar size weighed approximately the same after the stabilizing process, irrespective of what wood they were made of. And finally, all pieces when put in water either sunk completely or just barely floated with 99% submerged. So even the relatively healthy wood should be soaked up with resin to sufficient depth.

Now that the wood is stabilized, the only thing that is left is to psych myself up to go into the freezing workshop and finish the knives. Which includes first a bit of grinding and drilling, and then a lot of gluing. Even more fun with epoxy awaits, hooray!

Resin Art: In the Midnight Hour, She Cried More, More, More

I hope you aren’t tired of my jewellery yet, because I’m once again firmly stuck in the crafting phase of the pandemic and I have no interest of getting out of it soon. For one thing, there are worse coping mechanisms (just don’t ask my bank account. OTOH there’s little else to spend my fun money on right now). For another, I end up with cool jewellery. I can start something and then before I notice or have time to worry, it’s midnight and I go to bed happy.

As I mentioned before, I’m currently working with UV resin, which also means I watch a lot of UV resin tutorials on Youtube. Here’s an interesting divide: Tutorials for epoxy resin, especially lamps and such are often by American guys with huge tool shops that make me constantly unhappy, because I lack the space and probably 20k to blow on the machines.

See for example this guy, who does make cool stuff:

UV resin artists OTOH tend to be female and Japanese. You can watch their videos for inspiration or pure relaxation, like this lady’s videos:

I’m wondering if it has something to do with culture, but also space, of which Americans outside the big cities seem to have more.

Anyway, I wanted to show you what I came up with:

©Giliell, all rights reserved

©Giliell, all rights reserved

These two pairs are made with nail art transfer foil. They’re not perfect yet as the transfer foil is tricky and needs some practise, but I do like them. I’m currently wearing the gold ones, which look really classy.

The next two pairs also belong together, one being trial and error the other being what I actually intended.

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Don’t get me wrong, these are perfectly lovely earrings (though the right one is a bit bubbly from the flowers). They are just not what I had planned- I first made a smaller square with the gold foil, which was then embedded in the larger square… Of course the small clear square vanished completely in the clear resin, making that extra step pretty much redundant.

Back to square one (haha). This time I mixed golden pigment in with the small square and now I get those crisp geometrical lines.

©Giliell, all rights reserved

I need to remember to dip the flowers in resin before I embed them. Too many bubbles, but I still really like the simple elegance here.

Than goodness they came out fine, because the third project for that night surely didn’t.

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I was using up some UV resin that I still had, and I still had it for a good reason: it’s horrible. I have no idea how something can be that thick and runny at the same time. As a result there are tons of irremovable bubbles but it also kept flowing over the sides, making the whole piece clunky. I was looking for some delicate elegance, I got this. I tried again yesterday and this time the results are much more what I was looking for:

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Pendant with matching earrings. The colour is a bit dark in the pic, they’re the same midnight blue as above, a pigment that I absofuckinglutely love. These pieces also show one of the great advantages of using UV resin: precise control. I can add the wire and the pearls and the beads and place them exactly where I want them.

And last but not least, a completely different technique: Cherry blossom earrings

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I like earrings where it#s clearly a pair, but two different designs. These are made by forming the wire into petals and then adding a thin layer of resin. Here you really have to get the consistence right. I first tried with the above mentioned blue pigment, but adding pigment made the resin too thick, so I had to try again with clear ink for resin. I’m not completely happy with how the flowers are dangling on the chain and might try to change that again. I also think I need a matching necklace.

Still more Resin Fun

Two more pendants.

I also finished some more shakers, but I didn’t take pics. I really hope that this year the little Christmas market in my friends’ village can take place so we can put up a craft stall again, or my house will burst with finished trinkets.

©Giliell, all rights reserved

I got myself a small set with “everything for UV resin jewellery projects” (except a lamp, I have one already), because I wanted to have some inspiration/ a challenge to work with (and needed new UV resin) and I was not disappointed. Sadly those monthly subscription boxes you can get in the US haven’t caught on here. I’d really enjoy those.

©Giliell, all rights reserved

The pic doesn’t show the snowflake background, which makes it a true winter accessory.

Resin Art: Just some fun

Now, one of the good things last year was that we finally installed a “work bench”, i.e. my grandma’s old kitchen cupboards, giving me space to work on and where I can leave my stuff over night. The downside is that it’s in the unheated cellar room. Being fully underground, that’s the coolest room in the house, as it also doesn’t get any “spare heat” from that fucking huge wood pellet furnace. This makes working with epoxy resin in winter difficult. The epoxy is not really runny, and while curing you’re prone to “Kawaii sheen”: the surface gets matte and has some dots, much like the “soft, softer, do I need glasses” blurry filters you sometimes get in Mangas or animes. That’s not a problem when you cast something in silicone: the top surface is in the silicone and thus comes out shiny, but it is a problem when you want to topcoat something.

To solve the issue I dragged a gas heater we bought during renovations from the garage to the cellar and got a new gas bottle. This worked well the first time, but apparently there’s something wrong with the switch, so I can’t actually turn it to any setting apart from “starting” anymore. But I really, really, really wanted to do some resin, so I took the UV resin upstairs. You generally only work with small amounts and little stuff, so that’s ok to do in the kitchen. I just hope that the safety googles aren’t just labelled as “UV filter”, but actually are, or my eyes are fucked.

So here’s some less artsy and more cutesy projects.

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A seashell shaker. The shaker form is epoxy resin. No reason to waste lots of expensive UV resin on it. Also: white UV resin doesn’t actually cure well, because the white pigment of course blocks the UV light from reaching everything below the surface.

©Giliell, all rights reserved

A seashell charm. This didn’t turn out quite as well. I should have coloured the first blue layer a lot darker, but it’s still nice.

©Giliell, all rights reserved

©Giliell, all rights reserved

Look who didn’t mix her resin and her dye well enough… But I actually love how the dye separated from the resin. I sealed both sides well with clear resin to make sure nothing stains or sticks.

And now my favourite: the galaxy fox:

©Giliell, all rights reserved

©Giliell, all rights reserved

©Giliell, all rights reserved

©Giliell, all rights reserved

It’s got so much sparkle, and that’s sometimes the thing you really need.

Kitchen Knives Set – Part 4: Getting Some Serious Wood

Since I have spent more time making the blades than I originally intended, I have decided to go the full hog and NOT make the handles out of some plain wood. Instead, I have decided to kill two birds with one stone – to get some fancy wood for this project and to reduce the clutter in my raw material storage. I have decided to use the apple stumps that my neighbor gave me.

First I had to cut the stumps into smaller logs of course.

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That was not fun. Like, at all. I hate working with a chainsaw because the work quickly exhausts my meager strengths. Luckily the battery in this small saw gets drained after about half an hour of serious work, so with two batteries, I can get in about one hour of work before having to take a long break. Which is about the duration that I can do this without trouble.

Even so, before I was done it did actually happen once that the batteries held longer than I did and I got unpleasant mild hypoglycemia. That did not happen to me for a long time, but it was a reminder that absolutely must not skip or delay meal breaks.

I also blunted and had to sharpen the chain at least three times because there were small stones embedded in the wood.

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Next came cutting the logs to a smaller size on a circular saw. Another not-favorite work of mine, since my circular saw is small and not exactly up to the task. I am also afraid of it most of all my tools. But I managed it mostly, although I too blunted the blade again by hitting an invisible stone inside the wood. That was not a happy week at work. I can tell you that. This I cannot sharpen myself, I have to pay for it and it ain’t cheap.

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Aaand more cutting! This time on my Crappola bandsaw. I “only” broke three saw blades before cutting most of the wood down to workable size and shape. And whilst these are cheap on an individual basis, three at once cheap ain’t no more.

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And these are the pieces that I have decided to use for the actual project – there is plenty more for future projects, including some smaller pieces of burl. So I did get some value for the destroyed sawblades, only not as much as I would like to.

On the left is some partially rotten but still reasonably hard and strong root wood. It still gives a nice resonating “clonk” when struck. I do love the stripey coloring, given to it by the decay.

In the middle is some mostly healthy wood, still completely hard and strong, but with a few cracks and occasional woodborer-holes. I hereby declare that those add to the character. They are inevitable parts of wood harvested from a tree that stood dead for several years.

And on the right is some really fancy looking spalted wood. This is so decomposed (by a fungus), that it is significantly softer and less-dense than healthy wood. It sounds a bit dull when struck too. But it is still not so soft and spongey that it would be unworkable on its own. That is important, otherwise I could not do my next step.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

I have cut the slabs and I cut and ground rough outlines of the handles, with a few mm to spare. This will save me some resin later on and it will also mean I won’t have to grind away as much resin-soaked wood as I would otherwise. Which is good, because working resin stabilized wood sucks. Majorly.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

And now the wood is drying up on the heating radiator in my living room. Not only does it need to be completely dry before I proceed, but it also has to wait until my ordered vacuum pump arrives. I do hope it does arrive next week. It is already delayed a bit. I also hope it works OK and that I have not thrown 100€ out of the window.

I do love that I have got three sets of different woods, all from the same species but each with its own unique character. I do not think I will dye the resin for these and I will just infuse them with a clear resin, leaving all cracks and holes distinct and visible. I think there is real potential for beauty here.

 

A Handcrafted Mausoleum and Graveyard

The first Monday of the new year demands something special, and thanks to Avalus we have it. Behold the wonderful mausoleum and graveyard to accompany his Wizard Manse and Observatory.

No town frozen by magic and populated with the undead is complete without a graveyard. So here is my interpretation. I tried making it creepy but also quite peaceful compared to the other buildings that are in ruins.

Again mostly cardboard, with a wooden base, a leftover from furniture. The tombs are just — stuff I had around. I wanted to avoid any real life imagery for the headstones, so I used several established fantasy designs. The fence is pieces of foam and some cocktail sticks a flatmate bought years ago and never used.

Sneaky bit: The mausoleum is removable. Actually, for storage purposes but it might be used for some reveal in a game with a gamemaster.

Also, one work in progress shot. Making these kinds of roofs is actually really satisfying. Just cardboard strips cut with some irregularity and then bend and warped a bit und finally glued to a roof substrate. Just handling the house to take the photos makes me want to make another small house just to have an excuse to build another roof. :D

So let’s take 2020 to the grave!

©Avalus, all rights reserved.

©Avalus, all rights reserved.

©Avalus, all rights reserved.

©Avalus, all rights reserved.

©Avalus, all rights reserved.

Tumbler Upgrade

My tumbler works well for some blades and worse for others, and it works really well for removing scale from pieces with complicated gomtry. However, as I alluded to last time, I had several problems with the drum itself.

The first problem was the water tightness. Not only the lid was not properly watertight, but the sides were neither. I have used screws to secure three wooden planks inside to prevent the contents from simply sliding around the inside without tumbling. And the water was seeping around the screws too. I was able to make it watertight in the end, but it was still not ideal. Plus the inner wooden ribs got worn down a lot quicker than I thought they will, they impeded the contents probably a bit too much.

The second problem was the change of the tumbling medium. I found out that fine gravel with water works great for removing scale, fine sand with walnut shells for a nice satin finish, and walnut shells with ferrous oxide for an even nicer satin finish. However, getting all of the coarser medium out of the drum in order to be able to use a finer one has proven to be nigh impossible. I did not run into any quality problems due to this, given the limited amount of time I have used the tumbler so far, but it did worry me enough to actually postpone its use until I find a solution.

The main problem was finding some kind of receptacle with a screw-on lid of the right size. I was crawling the internet occasionally for months, I even recruited my mother to help me, but we found nothing. We found plenty of products of course, but there were not always measurements written near them and thus we could not order them. And when the measurements were written, they were always of the ronk size.

But the week before Christmas I got lucky and during shopping for groceries, I stumbled upon just the thing I needed. I bought six pieces without hesitation. And this week I took a break from making knives and I made six new tumbling drums. That way I can use six different tumbling mediums without having to worry about contamination.

I started by cutting a 38 cm piece of 100 mm plumbing pipe that remained surplus during house renovations. It is a bit discolored on the outside because it lay outdoors in the sun for a few years, but other than that it is completely fine.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Second, I have marked and cut in half the receptacles.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

The receptacles were a teensy tiny bit too big and did not fit inside the pipe, but that was not a problem since they are made from PET which is thermoplastic. I have carefully heated the edges with my heat gun and they shrunk a little when cooling town. The edges are not very neat, but that is not a problem.

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Copious amounts of adhesive putty helped to seal both the bottom and the top of the receptacle into the pipes. This was actually the hardest work of all, the putty is a bugger to squeeze out of the tube. theoretically it cannot glue PE, PP, and PTFE, but I did glue PVC to PP with it and it held watertight and strong enough so PET to PVC should not be a problem either. Maybe it won’t be the strongest possible bond, but it should be strong for this application. It is strong enough for me to be able to screw the lid on very tight.

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To prevents the contents from sliding and force them to tumble I have decided to try a different approach, one that does not involve breaching the integrity of the pipe. I have cut three pieces of PVC vinyl flooring, also surplus from house renovations. On one side of those pieces, I have made four cuts and inserted the uncut end s into them as depicted.

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Duct tape helped to hold the pieces in place while I rolled them together and inserted them inside the pipe.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

And voilala (or somtin’)! The inside of the drum is not smooth and round anymore, so the contents should be forced to tumble.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

There were some bugs to figure out and correct. The lids were not perfectly watertight, but I was able to cut circular gaskets from some softer leftover PVC vinyl flooring that has solved that problem. I also had to increase the span between the bearings on the axel on which the drum spins, because I am an idiot and I did not measure it correctly and I made the drum too big.

Currently, it is spinning with fine gravel and a few uncleaned broken blades to see how it works. After twelve hours there were no major problems and it did make reasonable progress on removing the scale.

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One problem remains and I have yet to find a good solution to it. During tumbling, some bigger particles of the tumbling medium (a fine stone or a piece of walnut shell) do wander into the thread of the lid and make it difficult to open the drum afterward. I have tried a few things, but so far without success. But as long as the lids do not get stuck completely, it is a minor issue and I am sure I will find a solution eventually.

 

The Wizard’s Manse and Observatory

I have something wonderfully whimsical to share from Avalus,

A wizard manson with an observatory:

All made from cardboard, leftover foamboard and a few bits of fly netting and translucent paper for the windows. I did not make many photos of the building process.

It was really fun to craft models again and over the next month or so I created a handful of different buildings.

When I was younger I was a regular tabletop wargamer. Over the years, the gaming fell away, but the crafting and painting of miniatures and terrain pieces stayed, if somewhat periodically. In the first week of the lockdown, some stuff in my flat broke and I had to order replacements over the internet (something I do not like to do). And then, when I had a few boxes and other carton pieces, ready to be thrown away, inspiration struck.

I am not sure yet, what I will now do with them, as I don’t really play more than once a year. Probably gift them to my gaming friends.

©Avalus, all rights reserved.

©Avalus, all rights reserved.

©Avalus, all rights reserved.

©Avalus, all rights reserved.

©Avalus, all rights reserved.

©Avalus, all rights reserved.

 

Kitchen Knives Set – Part 2: Making the Blades

There are multiple pictures, so I am putting the post below the fold. I have filmed most of these works, but if a video ever comes out, it won’t be this year. I am already getting a bit sidetracked by making this project more elaborate than I originally intended and by my desire to re-build and improve some of my tools. Whilst being hampered in my endeavors by cold weather and other, previously mentioned, things.

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Kitchen Knives Set – Part 1: Thoughts and Design

So, this is my next big-ish project, I have decided to make a basic set of kitchen knives – three knives and honing steel. I am not entirely sure about how useful honing steel is with knives from N690, but I have used it on my mother’s knives and it seems to work. It does not appear to hurt. If this small set works out OK, I will make more in the future and perhaps add some specialized knives along the way, but this basic set is meant for casual cooks like myself (and indeed most of my friends), who do not need a special blade for every task and will be probably very content with one knife for 90% of work.

And because this time I am preparing perhaps for more future projects, I have made templates in photoshop, printed them out, and laminated them in transparent foil for future use.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

The grid is metric, with the smallest scale being 1 mm.

The “meat” knife is a de-facto universal knife, one that I expect to take care of that 90% of work. Medium-sized blade with a round tip, ergonomic handle for firm grip, suitable for slicing protein as well as fine-dicing herbs and vegetables. And for remaining tasks, there is a small peeling knife with a sharp tip for piercing and a relatively straight blade for scratching-peeling, and a big chef knife for tackling difficult cabbage and for those occasions when cutting a lot of big-ish vegetables or huge chunks of whatever is necessary.

The chef knife has holes along the blade edge, which should help with reducing the sticking of whatever is being cut to the blade. It is easier to make than hollow grind or S-grind and it does work too. The handle is ergonomic as well but it is formed with a focus on two main uses of such a big blade. The thicker butt with a hook end prevents the knife from flying out of the hand when chopping, and the thin front with a lot of space for fingers allows for a choked-up grip with the index finger and thumb on the blade for fine slicing and dicing with a rocking motion.

All these designs should work as expected since they are based on knives that I have already made in the past. Of these, the least tested is the chef knife, but I still do not expect any trouble. I won’t follow the designs exactly, they are just approximations and I expect to tune them up a bit during the work. Any thoughts and remarks on the designs are welcome, as well as any suggestions for further additions to the set ( I am thinking about fish-knife and cheese-knife).

However, I will definitively introduce one new and relatively original feature right now. One that I have not seen used by another knifemaker (which does not mean nobody does it, I just did not see it done). As you can see, there are four-five holes for pins in each tang, which might seem a bit excessive and dorky-looking. That is because I need more pins – two will be wooden and two will be metallic. And they will not be visible. That is, the knives are designed as full-width tang, but the pins won’t appear on the outside of the handles. I have tested this idea on one broken blade and it seems to work perfectly OK for a kitchen knife that won’t get hit with a mallet or hammer too much. Or at all, as things should be.

So stay tuned for the following articles with a full write-up of my manufacturing process for this project. I am decently far already given that I only could work three days this week. And because a video was requested, I am filming (almost) all work as well. But I make no promises there – a future video is, at this time, uncertain and might or might not happen.