Wax Axe – the Axening

A year ago I obtained one of those electronic induction heaters, because, why not? They’re fascinating. Some blacksmiths use them to produce high point-heat, including bringing small regions of steel to welding heat in about a minute (more or less). Induction heating is also used by some craftspeople to melt/slump glass in home microwave ovens – you put a block of insulating material containing your target into your microwave and turn it on for 10 minutes. Then, if you still have a microwave oven and kitchen, you can let it cool down and examine the contents.

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Vacuum Infusion

Vacuum infusing resin into wood is a primary technique for stabilizing it. Usually, woodworkers use lightweight water-based resin like Cactus Juice, which is cured with heat after it’s soaked into the wood. Cactus Juice is good stuff, unquestionably. Sometimes, I want to experiment, anyway.

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Footy

Voyager’s dog-friend Jack is a featured character over at Affinity [aff] and, as a great fan of dogs in general, I wanted to do something fun for Jack. This has been brewing for nearly a year, as I subconsciously chewed on the technical problems.

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A Rite of Passage

My grandfather used to own a little toy steam engine that ran on live steam; my dad loved the thing and so did I. It wasn’t until a few weeks ago that I realized I was looking at an industrial age in a nutshell. Also, a very small kid-sized bomb that you can give a kid and tell them “run outside and play.”

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Wax Axe – 2

When I was a kid I remembered looking at jewelry in museums listed as “lost wax process” and naturally I wondered how they knew it was that process, if the process was lost. It turned out, of course, that it’s the wax that’s lost in the process, not the process being lost, itself.

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