Over at Instructables

I'm finally settling in at Instructbales.com and needing to post some of the things I've been doing here as well. Likely just some photos and a little more personal description of what I'm up to with a link to the step by step instructions.

One thing especially rewarding for me has been rebuilding carbide lamps and getting something posted online for others to access so these great little "machines" can live on. I learned about them many years ago when my awesome uncle introduced me to caving. I have fond memories of exploring a certain southern Indiana cave where Teddy Roosevelt left "carbide graffiti" on a cave wall. We used battery powered lamps but it left an indelible impression on me and a quiet fascination with old carbide miner's lamps.

Now I've been able to bring that to a less quiet level and rebuild a couple fairly derelict examples and see them come to life!

If you are curious or even better, have an old lamp sitting around and want to resurrect it check out the Instructable for a fairly in depth how to on rebuilding and repairing them. It's everything short of re-sealing a breached carbide chamber or re-braising broken joints and if you can do that there's nothing you can't fix on these cool old lamps.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Rebuild-A-Carbide-Lamp/

Photography Show

I don't think I have mentioned much about my photography in this blog but I wanted to share that I'll be participating in a group show in Hong Kong that opens August 22nd this year. I won't be there but my photos will.

So, if anyone will be in the neighborhood I'd love it if they dropped by and let me know how things went!

I'll update with the address as soon as the next step in the process is confirmed!

Modern Stone Age 2

In an earlier post I wrote about a project making "stone" tools from chunks of quartz glass. My thinking was, and still is, that using quartz glass is about the best material for making these tools. The concoidal fracture pattern in both man made glass and volcanic glass, obsidian, makes for incomparably sharp edges. While not the most durable they are arguably the sharpest blades around. As it becomes more of a reality I'm growing all the more attached to the idea of producing a conceptual art project that brings stone age and space age at least in some way full circle.

I finally got my hands on another, and larger, piece of quartz glass. It's not space industry salvage but it's a good starting place to hone the needed skills to use that salvage material if I can manage to acquire some. The piece I have looks like it is a cutoff from manufacturing some sort of large round lenses.

If anyone works for a glass manufacturer or the space industry, I'm still trying to source a piece of quartz glass from an observation portal!

Make A Drop Spindle

For my first Instructable I decided to do a how to guide for making the drop spindles I wrote about in some recent posts. So, now if you want a step by step guide to making your own you now have it! 

http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-An-Awesome-Drop-Spindle/ 

I've gathered more fiber recently and now have new motivation to re-hone my craft and get spinning. I'm hoping to be up to speed enough soon and able to put together another Instructable showing how to do that as well as washing and carding fibers. I did recently attend a sheep shearing where I was able to re-visit some things I had forgotten and hopefully improve my spinning. 

Please do have a look at the Instructable even if you are just curious. 

If there are any questions or comments or offers for a spinning workshop or three, please contact me here or through Instructables. 

Wet Caligae

Hiked cross town(San Francisco) in the caligae. Not all that far but a few miles anyway. As luck would have it, the walk home was in a pretty decent downpour. It was even a cold day so I was wearing thick wool socks and got a great window into wet weather usage.

While I was moving my feet stayed warm even with the wet socks. While I was soaked through to the skin I wouldn't say the soles of the sandals were saturated and my feet didn't slide around at all. Not sure if the lack of sliding was due to the wool or just that it was still sort of dry under my feet. Either way the caligae didn't stretch or lose shape as a thought might happen and I can say they passed the wet weather test pretty well.

Once they dried out I think they may have actually been improved by getting wet. They certainly molded more to my foot shape and they seem to have shrunk in all the right spots. They also dried slightly more rigid than they were. Had I used a thicker leather that might be undesirable but as noted before this pair was made of somewhat thinner material than the historic examples I've seen in museums and books.

This will be yet another chunk of good information to consider for the next pair.

Instructables.com

If you have yet to discover www.Instructables.com you no doubt be pleasantly surprised and can plan on spending a few hours(or days) taking it all in. It's a fantastic community of DYI minded folks doing all manor of projects.

One of those people is now me! I signed on as editor and started a couple days ago working at Squid Labs. So, some of the projects I post on here will now have companion how to instructions, or "instructables", over at the Insturctables website. I'll be sure to post links so anyone who is interested can see how to do their own versions.

It's also a great way to compare notes and get the help of countless experts. So, don't hesitate to make duplicate projects or comment on the ones you see!

Badgerific Anvil

One of the more unusual things from my past is that I was involved with a living history museum during my teenage years. In the course of volunteering and eventually working there, I spent several years as an apprentice blacksmith. I didn't apply for my journeymans card, wish I had, but did learn a lot and carried on an all but lost family tradition. According to my grandfather, he was the last of five generations of blacksmiths in the family before the trade fell on hard times and he and my great grandfather found new ways to make a living. So, my adventure worked well for everyone. Grandpa was proud and happy and the museum had what was left of our family tradition as a resource. I have always at least dabbled in metalsmithing regardless of having a smithy to work in and am tentatively planning a few classes at the very cool Crucible in Oakland some time this summer. I would love to resurrect and confirm my skills with an official journeymans card but I have no idea what that takes these days.

I hadn't realized how much I regard anvils as standard shop tools until fate dropped an almost unused Badger anvil into my care. Though, as luck would have it, the one I have is sort of a one of a kind example from when Vulcan bought out Badger. The experts tell me it's somewhat of a museum piece. So it won't be seeing any type of use that might threaten the fragile paper decal. Badger anvils are all but non-existant these days and this transitional example with a paper decal is possibly unique. Lots of anvils got melted down during WWII as part of the war effort. Not that there are a lot of anvil collectors out there but for those that are, some older models are scarce.

I'd forgotten how often I used to cold work things to straighten, flatten or bend them into correct or more useful shapes. I do have a torch but I'm fairly certain the neighbors wouldn't appreciate the noise or the fire hazard. For now it's just nice having an anvil again (When I moved cross country to San Francisco it wasn't exactly high on my list of things to bring.) and as mentioned above I'm not of a mind to degrade the Badger's condition. So I'm still on the hunt for an anvil but for now I have something to remind me why I want one.