Even When Not in Doubt Marcus Knows

Yesterday Giliell posted about the wonderful gift of acrylic casting supplies that she received from Marcus, noting that she’d been considering trying this art form.  Well, I received the same gift from Marcus last week and I wasn’t even thinking about trying resin casting. Marcus just knows. He knows that I have a large collection of seaglass and that this is the perfect medium to pair with them. I can’t wait to try it, but I’ve been rearranging my cabinets and my work table is buried under a ton of paper crafting crap right now so I haven’t gotten past the gazing in wonder at it all yet. Well, I have watched a few how-to videos (link below) that have given me lots of ideas for using seaglass and more. I love the bracelet Giliell made and it’s made me even more anxious to try it. Alrighty then…time to clean up the mess and play. Tune in over the weekend to see if I can make something as pretty as Giliell did. Thanks, Marcus. You definitely spread sunshine.

Resin Obsession (a very good site)

Wow, Thank you Marcus

Yikes! The bigger picture (my work table is under there somewhere)

 

 

Making Kitchen Knives – Part 1 – In the Beginning…

… there was a bar of steel.

After a short break due to harvest I have started two knife making projects and I will share the progress on them as I go along.

The first one is about developing a viable process for making small-batches of kitchen knives.

The knife that I have given my mother for Christmas has proven itself to be an excellent cutter. It held an edge for half a year and still shaved hair when my mother requested honing the edge because it had a few blunt-ish spots. The handle does not show any sign of deterioration too. And it is used daily, by at least two people, on everything from fine chopping veggies to de-boning chicken. So I think that with some adjustments (mostly making it look prettier) it might be a saleable product.

I reckon (I will not bother you with the math and reasoning, some of it has solid rational basis, some of it I pulled out of my nether regions) that in order to be able to eventually barely survive whilst making knives, I would have to be able to make a passable kitchen knife in under five hours spending with the fun work, i.e. manual labor. The lower the better. Rest of the working day would in such a case be eaten by the unfunny part of the job, the actual business of business.

But developing a viable production process is something I have a professional experience with and so I want to have a go at it, even though right now making knives is just a hobby. And I will be sharing with you all the failures as well as the improvements in trying to achieve my time goal.

The first step is straightening the steel. For this project I am using N690 steel 1,8x50x500 mm and all the steel bars had a slight bend to them that had to be corrected. Currently the only way for me to do this is to use a vice and three thick screws. Had the plates had a kink, I would place the middle screw straight on that kink and bend it with ever-increasing pressure until after taking the steel out of the vice it would be straight-ish. However these did not have a kink, they were nearly universally bent in a very slight regular arc.  To straighten that, I first tried to bend the bars slightly at multiple points. It worked, but it was time-consuming and unreliable. Later I have tried to close the vice only slightly on the steel bar and then pulling it through the screws – essentially using it as an improvised roll bender. That worked much faster and reasonably well.

Even soo, all in all it took me less than 1 hour to straighten 12 knives worth of steel. That is less than 5 minutes per knife. I think that building a small roll bender specifically for straightening these thin long bars should not be difficult and it could potentially shave off quite a reasonable chunk off of that too. But right now, I am putting this into the “high hanging fruit” basket, since despite the clearly impromptu setting it takes only about 2% of my time goal. That means, I will ignore this step in the process for now and not bother about improving it.

For the first knife made let’s write down 5 minutes for this step and move on to the next.

Jack’s Walk

Last year we didn’t really have too much of an autumn show of colour. Instead, most trees just went from green to brown to leafless. This year, though, autumn is glorious and all the trees are wearing their best, bright party dresses. Jack and I invite you to join us as we stroll around our neighbourhood and look at all the pretty October colour.

Just starting to colour up

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More Spiders!

OK, it’s just one more spider, but (s)he’s beautiful. This one came to us from Avalus who says,

I found this spider in August when I was riding home from work under the lit handrail of a pedestrian bridge. She had many moths woven in silk hanging just under the rail, so it seems she picked a good spot.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   She did not like the flash too much. I think it is a common orbweaver (Kreuzspinne – “cross spider” in german).

Photos are below the fold. The detail in the second shot is outstanding. Thanks for sharing, Avalus. [Read more…]

Friday Feathers

This week’s Friday Feathers come from Nightjar who writes this:

 

These sanderlings briefly landed in front of me during a relaxed walk on the beach, understandably I was not carrying the 500mm lens with me. I took these with the 50mm, and then I cropped and cropped some more, and then I pretended I meant to compose the images like this all along because sand and seawater are pretty too. :D

I completely agree that the composition IS beautiful and I sympathise with “if only I had the other lens”. I am wondering, are sanderlings related to starlings?

Sanderlings on the beach

©Nightjar, all rights reserved

Sanderlings on beach

©Nightjar, all rights reserved

Sanderlings on beach

©Nightjar, all rights reserved

 

Spring Tulips from Down Under

I never tire of autumn colours, but the sight of these gorgeous tulips sent in by David from Australia made me more than a little nostalgic for the season of new growth. The white ones in particular caught my eye. They look so fresh and crisp. David Says,

It may be Autumn/Fall up North, but here in the South, Spring has sprung, The Grass has riz. Shot these tulips last week in Bendigo, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bendigo)

such a lovely sunny day it was impossible to shoot without humans getting in the pics. Enjoy.

Thanks, David. I am enjoying and so will everyone else.

©David Brindley, all rights reserved

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Tummy Thursday: Plum Liqueur

This week’s recipe comes thanks to kestrel. Hmmm, too bad we don’t have plums this year. I’ll let kestrel take over:

This time of year I am overrun with plums and like to find ways to take advantage of the bounty. Way back in 1984 I got this recipe from a friend, and over the years I’ve tweaked it a bit to make it more to my own satisfaction. I want to let people know that one of the first things I did was to cut the amount of sugar in the original recipe in half! If having LOTS of sugar is important to you, remember that you could double my amount and still be in line with the original recipe.

Ingredients and tools needed

Very neat setup

ere I have all the things I’ll need to make plum liqueur: plums, spices, empty jars, brandy and sugar. This is the basic recipe:

1 1/2 pounds (680 grams) plums
3/4 cup (255 grams) sugar
12 cloves
Piece of cinnamon stick
750 ml plain brandy

The original recipe called for vodka, but I felt it was not as smooth as I like when finished, I think brandy gives a better taste.

cut plums

Destoning plums. Probably everybody’s least favourite part…

Start out by cutting the plums in half and removing the pits. If you are busy, what you can do instead is take a fork and pierce the skins to the pits, in five or six places on each plum. That will work just fine and is a lot faster.

plums in a mason jar

Looks good already

This is a half-gallon (1.89 liter) jar. I’ve put in plums, 3/4 cup (255 grams) of sugar, plus the spices.
the jars are filled with brandy now

No, don’t think about it

Now I’ve put the 750 ml of brandy in the jar. Put the lid on securely, and shake the jar. Shake it for a minute, wait, shake a bit more, until the sugar is more or less dissolved.
closed jars

I’m not going to wait those three months, whatever kestrel says

After 24 hours, you can already see the wonderful color developing. Leave the jar(s) on your counter, giving them a shake now and then. This is the hard part: wait three months (I know, it’s very hard to wait so long!) and then strain the contents into a jar. By then it will be a lovely deep purple color. Not only is this nice for sipping on a cold winter evening sitting by the fire, it also makes a nice base for a stir fry. It’s a wonderful gift for the holidays; use a fancy pen to write up the recipe, put the plum liqueur in a decorative bottle, and there you have a memorable and welcome gift.

I only have one question: Would it not be easier to dissolve the sugar in the brandy first so you don’t have to shake the whole jars?

Youtube Video: Pictish Crossbow – discussion and shooting

I would love to someday to build a crossbow. It definitively is on my ever growing to-do list.

Not that I feel particular inclination to be armed, but the simple yet not easy to make mechanism of a crossbow (or even a bow) intrigues me.

Tod Todeschini not only makes crossbows, he also likes to share his extensive knowledge about them. Here he uses that knowledge to speculate a bit about how pictish crossbows could look like.

When in doubt rely on Marcus

I’ve been in a bit of personal debate recently about whether or not to get me some sort of starter kit to cast things in resin, with the arguments in pro being that you can create beautiful stuff, and those in contra being that I already have half a house full of crafting supplies.

The argument was resolved nicely when one of Marcus’ boxes of wonder arrived this week which included everything you need to get started, including the proper gloves (not pictured).

Crafting supplies to cast things in resin

Oooohhhhhhh…

You can see the resin, moulds, colours, glitter, some of Marcus’ gorgeous abalone shells, some dried and coloured flowers and even gold leaf, which peasant me almost spilled on the floor because peasant me had no idea what it was. I’m not sure about those rectangles, I guess they are a work surface for mixing small amounts with colour.

Of course I couldn’t wait to get started. I thought that this would be a great way to use our “mermaid tears” that we collected at the beach.

resin bracelet with colourful driftglass

Very first bracelet

As you can see it’s not perfect yet. I think I didn’t stir the mixture for long enough and my ratio was probably a bit off. Also the pieces all sunk to the bottom. I think I need to cast something like this is two or three sittings, which will probably test my patience a lot.  But I’ve also got a lot of ideas already.

Thank you very much, Marcus. You’re definitely at least as crazy as me, but I love you all the more for it.

A Soviet Heritage

So this happened. And yes, snowflake that I am, I find it offensive. Deeply so.

“We are disappointed that the largest retailer in the world and in the U.S., Walmart, does not acknowledge or respect the millions of victims of various nationalities, who suffered under the Soviet regime – those deported, including the elderly, infants and children, political prisoners, dissidents, members of resistance movements and all those who lost their lives, health or family in the Gulag or other repressions of the Soviet totalitarianism,” a letter to Walmart, signed by the chairman of the Estonian Pro Patria party, Helir-Valdor Seeder, Estonia’s minister of justice, Urmas Reinsalu, and the Estonian member of the European Parliament, Tunne Kelam, said.

It’s like some symbols of authoritarian regimes are verboten, while others… are hip and trendy? By virtue of being labelled differently? (And yes, the term ‘communist’ as applied to the Soviet Union bears little resemblance to its application to the underlying philosophy, but this is not that discussion.)

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Jack’s Walk

 

©voyager, all rights reserved

I love the way fallen leaves collect on the ground and flutter with every passing car. They softly whoosh and dance and sometimes my heart swells just at the sight and the sound of them. I can often be found kicking my feet in the gutters and setting them in motion. Jack politely stays on the sidewalk, often giving me a look that says ‘mommy, we’re not allowed to walk on the road,’ but even his good manners can’t stop me. Come dancing leaves, my feet are restless and my ears hear the waltz in your sighs.