Musing with Mud

Studio Progress

2011-05-04T11:12:00.000-05:00

Found a source of plastic fifty-five gallon barrels, Western Container in New Hope. They have recycled blue barrels for twenty-five dollars a piece, and I was able to squeeze four of them into the minivan (one across the passenger seats, and three in the back. We typically leave the last row of seats out of the van.) I need to construct a base and frame that will hold the barrel four feet off of the floor, support about five hundred pounds of weight, and keep the barrel from falling off. I also need a small base cabinet to put a double steel sink in. Sometimes I can find the sinks and cabinets at garage sales.

For the slab roller, I cut and trimmed four pieces of square stock for the cable brackets. The cable brackets are in the four corners of the table, with two steel pipes above and below the table that are the rollers that are supported by the cables. As you turn a wooden wheel attached to the lower steel roller, it moves along the cables, and pulls the upper roller along. I need to hit the home improvement store for the metal crimps that I need to re-bind the ends of the cable together once I install the new brackets.

Two Weeks Off

2011-05-01T11:15:00.001-05:00

I was laid off from work on Thursday. During the exit interview, I had a phone call from another company, offering me a new position. The new job is a little farther away than the old one, but its with a good group of people.

I plan to take two weeks off to work on projects around the property, including getting a studio going in the ground floor of the barn. The barn studio is supposed to be temporary, until we can get the old three car garage converted into the new studio. That will probably include putting on a new roof. That is a project for another time.

I'm looking for a plastic barrel to use as a water reservoir for the sink in the studio, since we don't have water out to the barn yet, and the barn is not heated in winter. I want to use a raised barrel for the water supply, something that I can fill from a hose, and then plumb it to a double sink. The water will drain through a flexible hose outside the back door. Its a temporary solution. I can re-use the barrel later as a rain barrel for the garden.

The other project that I am working on today is the rebuilding our slab roller. I had built it back in New Jersey to help Julie with the pottery classes that she taught at a summer camp. There are four pieces of angle iron, one on each corner of the slab roller where the cables attach that have bent over the years. I am replacing them with square stock steel. I also need to raise the height of the table by about four inches, and add some corner braces to strengthen the structure.

Bubble Bubble

2010-03-20T16:30:00.000-05:00

I have a former chicken stock can full of linseed oil and beeswax in a kettle of water on the stove. I used a couple of spoons to keep the I'm making the finish that goes on the outside of the hive. I just need to let it cook for another five minutes or so before bringing it out to the barn.

Yesterday, Julie and I went to a fabric store, and picked up some heavy pillow ticking to glue along the inside seams of the roof for the hive. I also did some final trimming of the board that closes the base of the hive in winter, as well as the top of the hive legs so that the roof would sit a few inches lower. Everything that is exposed to the elements needs to have the linseed oil and beeswax finish applied.

Progress

2010-03-07T11:07:00.000-05:00

Top bar hives have a long history in Africa. The top bar hive that I am building is considered a Kenyan top bar hive, since it has sloping sides. Vertical sides would make it a Tanzanian top bar hive.

Its essentially a long trough with a lid. There are two boards called follower boards, that conform to the shape of the inside of the hive, and can be moved by the beekeeper to adjust the amount of space that the bees get to use. There are narrow wooden bars, with a groove in the bottom filled with beeswax, that span the trough, and are where the bees will build their comb.

In winter, the unused portion of the hive outside of the follower boards will be filled with some natural insulation, to reduce heat loss from the hive.

Yesterday, I cut boards for the sides and end of the hive, along with rough cutting a section for the follower boards. Since I'm using six inch boards, I started gluing them edge to edge last night, doing the section for the follower boards and the ends. Today I'm gluing the long boards for the sides of the hive, and am heading out to the barn to cut the follower boards to shape. When the follower boards are complete (they need a top bar glued to them), I'll use them as the base to form the rest of the hive.

Building a Top Bar Hive

2010-03-06T13:02:00.000-05:00

We didn't quite make it to Northfield. We live in Dundas, the next community south. We have three acres, surrounded by farmland, with a full size red barn, and two other outbuildings. We plan to put the studio in the ground floor of the barn, with one of the outbuildings as our kiln room.

I'm starting to build a top bar beehive today. I've wanted to get into bee keeping for a number of years, but have never had the space until now. Julie has bought me a number of books over the years. Top bar hives are easy to build on a budget. Extracting the honey from comb is a little trickier, since the comb is not as uniform as that from a Langsthroth stacked hive, but I can build a honey press.

I bought some red cedar lumber yesterday, and will spend this morning cutting boards to length, and then gluing them together. The plans call for twelve inch wide wood, but recommends buying narrow lumber, and then gluing the boards edge to edge.

A twelve inch by one inch board measures eleven inches by three quarters of an inch. It may have measured twelve by one at some point in the milling process, or maybe fifty years ago it would have measured that at some point in the milling process, but what I have available is eleven by three quarters. Buying two six by ones and gluing them together doesn't get you much farther, because a six by one measures five and a half by three quarters. Two together give eleven inches, and gluing a third board on to get the extra inch seems excessive when I am on a budget.

My plan today is to tweek the design of the top bar hive a bit, so that my eleven inch lumber will work on the sides of the hive (effectively reducing the cross section of the hive to ninety-two percent of the original design). The finished hive will be forty-eight inches long.

Northfield

2009-12-02T21:58:00.001-05:00

We moved to Northfield, Minnesota, back in August, to be near family. We are looking for a new home, with more studio space.

Hopefully, more posts to come.

Escape Velocity

2009-04-20T11:26:00.002-05:00

Long time, no post.

There has been a lot going on in our lives, but at the same time, not much has been going on. Things are eating more time.

I've been working out since the beginning of the year. Three times a week, I go to the gym, and have a routine of nine exercises and three ten minute cardio workouts. I've lost weight, built a little muscle, and my blood pressure seems to be under control for the first time in a long while. Someday, I hope to do pull-ups again, which for some strange reason is becomming an obsession. One of the machines at the gym will even allow you to 'cheat' at pull-ups by counteracting some of your body weight with fixed weights until you are strong enough to pull-up unassisted. Its not part of my current routine, but I'm thinking that there isn't any reason why I shouldn't add it.

My real justification for working out is that I want to be on the show 'Survivor'. I have wanted to be on it since the applications were posted when they were starting to cast for the first episode. At the time, I couldn't afford the time off from work (and I wasn't in shape). Julie and I have watched almost every episode of every season, and I finally confessed to her my desire to be on the show late last year. We decided that I needed to be in better shape to have a chance. It's wacky that the remote chance of being on a reality show is what has finally motivated me to do what I needed to do all along for my own health.

(I REALLY wanted to be on the upcomming season of Survivor, which films this summer, since I have convinced myself that the location will be somewhere along the region where the longest solar eclipse of the twenty-first century will occur, which is southeast asia and the Pacific islands south of Japan, the island group that includes Iwo Jima. I had a great uncle who died there during the U.S. invasion during the second World War.)

We spent some time in Minnesota this month, visiting my brothers and their extended family. Julie and I fired up the kiln and raku kiln for the first time in a very long time to make a couple of gifts to bring with us. I made a tuna, and Julie made a tile with a weedy sea dragon. We both hope to spend more time in the studio in the comming months.

The thing that has eaten most of my time is Facebook, where I have a couple of games that I obsessively play. I spend a lot of time when I am home visiting and maintaining my games, and for the longest time that filled whatever it was that I used to do with my artwork and blogging. I miss the blog though, and I miss my artwork even more. I'm getting back to the place that I was years ago, where I am starting to crave the time spent throwing clay, or making rayguns, or any of the other hobbies that I've formed over the last twenty years.

Hopefully, I'll keep you posted.

Progress Report - Garage Door Opener

2008-12-06T17:35:00.002-05:00

I have the old garage opener down, all of the mechanics of the new opener installed, and will work on the wiring for the sensors and the push-button tomorrow. We have guests coming over in a bit, so I need to get cleaned up and get ready so we can head out to dinner.

Scotopia - Eyes Adjusting to Twilight

2008-12-06T11:32:00.004-05:00

I'm working in the garage again this weekend.

The bottom panel of one of our garage doors finally died of dry rot this fall. I'd applied mending plates to it some time ago, and it was serviceable, but the long board across the bottom finally split.

I had removed the lower panel, which measures a little over eight feet wide and about two feet tall, and used my wordworking skills and whatever tools we had on hand to replace the rotted wood. It was mainly getting a very strait two by four, cutting a groove along the length of one edge with a router, then rounding the corners along the length to fit into the rest of the door. Once that was done, it was a glue and screw project to attach it to the rest of the door panel, a little work with wood putty to smooth out the appearance, and then Julie primed and painted for me.

I finally installed the repaired panel last week end. I was relieved when I got the cable and springs working again, and the door opened easily along its tracks (while the panel was removed, I had to open the rest of the door by doing a 'clean and jerk'). The door only opens for projects, and to allow passage of the trash and recycling cans one day a week.

Today I'm working on replacing the garage door opener for the same door. It was broken when we moved into the house, and we just never got around to fixing it until now.

With the approaching holidays, I'm planning to use some vacation to take the last two weeks of the year off. My plan is to get some home repair projects done around the house, projects that have languished for years in some cases.

I also want to work on an sculpture project or two. I have a pair of rayguns that only need some hammer springs replaced to be completed, and another that needs a springs for its trigger and hammer, a paint touch up, and a finial added. Lastly, I have the parts for five rayguns, more along the lines of the Cinco de Mayo and Cereza Negra than the Honor of Coronado series that I want to do the design work and start fabrication. Our plan is to get some of my finished work up on our art site, and try to drum up a little business.

UPDATE:
I've added pictures of the raygun parts to my Flickr site.

Well That Sucks.....

2008-10-09T21:34:00.002-05:00

I haven't posted in a while.

While checking out the sight today, I noticed that my link to the Earth Advisory Board shows that the Earth was destroyed on the tenth of September.

Dang.

That does explain a lot of things that have been happening in the news for the last forty days or so.

Hazy Hot and Humid Day

2008-06-08T08:38:00.003-05:00

Yesterday was our first hot, hazy, and humid day of the summer. I worked in the yard for a couple of hours, digging up some bushes and a long strip of ground cover next to the garage. It had to take frequent breaks to go inside, get a drink, and cool down in front of a fan.

The central air in the house is on the fritz, and our service guy is coming out on Monday to get it working again.

I've been working for the last week on creating a space elevator simulation in Java. I will be documenting the work in Dornick 'n Gleipner.

Pollo Estupendo del Verde Chili

2008-05-11T22:11:00.003-05:00

Publish Post They are having a chili cook-off at work, in support of the food drive.

I tweeked my favorite recipe, using dark chicken meat this time, and made a triple batch. It included five pounds of chicken, ten poblanos chiles, seven cubanelles, six jalapeños, two long hots, a couple of spanish onions, ten tomatillos, six stalks of celery, six cans of habichuelas blancas, and six quarts of chicken stock, with some garlic and dark red chili powder to tweek the flavor.

Steph drew a picture of Super Chicken in green, with a little mustache, as the chili mascot.

Missed it By THAT Much

2008-03-21T07:53:00.004-05:00

Article in New Scientist:

"...when Cassini's radar tracked surface features on the moon, scientists found evidence that Titan rocks slightly due to tiny shifts in its rotation rate. Currently, Titan spins an extra 0.36° over the course of a year beyond what it would if it were in perfect sync with the moon. The moon's rotation rate also appears to be slowly increasing."

That is approximately sixteen kilometers that the base of the ribbon would need to move each year.

Hyperion, the moon that the ribbon may need to periodically dodge, is three hundred and sixty kilometers in its longest dimension.

Cost to Open the Kashagan Oil Field

2008-03-17T08:10:00.003-05:00

The Kashagan oil field is in Kazakhstan's sector of the Caspian Sea, and represents one of the largest oil fields discovered in the last forty years.

There is an article in Salon that states that the cost extimate to open the oil field ranges from $57 billion to $135 billion.

A Thousand Barrels of Oil, and Other Fun Facts

2008-03-13T11:26:00.003-05:00

If I'm doing the math right, a thousand barrels of oil would weigh something like twenty metric tons on the surface of Titan. Titan's gravity is only fourteen percent of the Earth's. Barrels of oil from different oil fields have different weights, but this is a nice, easy to remember number.

In 2004, the United States consumption of oil was approximately 20.7 million barrels of oil per day.

A supertanker carries about two million barrels of oil.

Regarding All That Oil On Titan

2008-03-05T21:47:00.002-05:00

(or 'A little learning is a dangerous thing')

I read an article recently describing the amount of hydrocarbons on Saturn's moon, Titan.

I wanted to kick around the numbers for a space elevator on Titan, one that would allow the oil to be lifted from the surface, and then thrown out of Saturn's orbit to enter the inner solar system.

So far, I've only managed to characterize the length of the elevator ribbon, not the cross section, or mass of the completed ribbon. These could be computed using a similar method as in shown in The Space Elevator book, but with the additional influence of Saturn's gravity is included in computing each ribbon segment.

All of my numbers are approximations.

Imagine a planet with Saturn's mass, with a day that is 15.94 Earth days long. An object in a synchronous orbit would have an orbital period of 15.94 days. The theoretical elevator for this planet needs to extend past synchronous orbit, out into space, to hold the elevator up, with the appropriate counterweight at the end. A space elevator for Titan is similar to the portion of this imaginary elevator that extends past the planetary synchronous orbit.

Titan is tidally locked with Saturn, with an period of 15.94 days. A space elevator could be built extending directly towards or directly away from Saturn from Titan's surface, providing that that length of the elevator passes through the Saturn/Titan L1 or L2 point respectively, and is capped with the appropriate counterweight. The elevator must pass through the Lagrangian point in order to be long enough to exert a force away from Titan that will hold the ribbon up.

The distance of L1 and L2 from the center of Titan is approximated by computing the radius of the Hill Sphere, which is approximately fifty-two thousand kilometers, so an elevator that passes a distance greater than this from the center of the moon, with the appropriate counterweight (if needed) should be stable.

If the elevator ribbon is longer than three hundred thousand kilometers, it should be able to toss a payload with sufficient speed to escape Saturn's orbit. Escape velocity is a function of the mass of the planet and the distance from the planet, so as a payload moves outward along the ribbon, the escape velocity decreases. Traveling outward from the orbit of Titan, this would cross the orbit of the next moon out, Hyperion. Approximately every twenty-one days, Hyperion would pass in the vicinity of the ribbon. Since the orbits of Titan and Hyperion are not exactly co-planer, Hyperion would not necessarily intersect the elevator ribbon on every orbit. Provisions would still need to be made for deflecting the ribbon if necessary.

A pilot ribbon for Titan would be deployed from a satellite placed in L2. With all of the hydrocarbons available on Titan, it would make sense to lower a package to the surface to manufacture additional ribbon material. An exponentially tapered ribbon could then be built deployed from the surface, built from local materials, and hoisted by the pilot ribbon.

I realize that I haven't calculated what happens to the payload once release from the ribbon, or characterized the orbit required to reach the inner solar system, or how to get the payload to the Earth's surface. All I've done is characterize the length of ribbon required for a payload to escape Saturn's orbit, but this is an interesting start.

Honor of Coronado Rayguns - New Finials

2008-01-12T21:19:00.000-05:00

Here are the rayguns from the Honor of Coronado dueling set. I replaced the crystals with brass finials.

There is some mechanical work that I need to tweek on these, fabricating some washers out of shim to improve the play of the hammers, but nothing left cosmetically.

Raygun Update

2008-01-12T21:04:00.000-05:00

My big present from Julie and Steph this holiday was a drill press. Some of the fabrication steps for the rayguns require some precision drilling, and taping stock down with duct tape and then trying to drill a hole with a hand drill was tricky, especially when it came to triggers, where I would end up tossing out two or three triggers each time when I couldn't get the pivot hole in right. Of all of the power tools that I could think of, a drill press would solve my biggest fabrication problems.

I assembled and mounted the drill press to the workbench last weekend, and got to use it for the first time this weekend. I'm working on a new raygun, a throwback to the earlier pieces that I had done. I was able to cut some of my wide brass tubing for the body of the raygun (and cutting a perpendicular line to the tubing has become my newest 'step which needs to be repeated to get it right'), and used the drill press to put some holes in it for the supports to go through (an easy job, could have done it with a bench vise and a hand drill, but wanted to break in the new tool.). I also fabricated the trigger guard, and torched it into place. There is a lot of cleanup that I need to do, both from heavy oxidation, burning painter's tape (oops....), and a few beads of solder that need to go away.

If I get time tomorrow, I will work on the trigger for this piece. Once that is complete, I will sculpt the grip, then finish the piece with cleanup and painting.

The New Raygun

2008-01-03T21:36:00.000-05:00

This is my preliminary sketch of the current raygun project. The yellow bits will be brass, the handle will be flexible polymer clay (for durability), and the red thing is a wooden spindle. I've done all of the work from the red spindle forward on the piece, except soldering the finial.

I'll still need to fabricate the trigger, trigger guard, and the butt plate from brass, as well as sculpting the grip. These parts will use the same technique that I used for the Cinco de Mayo and Cereza Negra rayguns. I also want a working trigger, like on the Honor of Coronado dueling set and the Isabella de La Vega. Julie and Steph bought me a drill press for Christmas this year, so I should have the means to drill the fiddly bits for the trigger pivot.

I've spent the last few weeks trying to find the tubing to go above the grip. It needs to be a cylinder with a one and a half inch diameter. I wanted brass or copper, but would have settled for aluminum, iron, or steel if I could have found it. The hardware stores in the area had what I needed, but I couldn't stand the prices that they wanted for the metal stock (especially as plumbing parts). I finally found what I was looking for at a thrift store, where I found an inexpensive headboard for a brass bed. I was able to disassemble the piece, and have a nice supply of brass tubing in two different diameters, along with all of the brass trim pieces and connectors.
I plan to work on the trigger pivot first; since my solution for that defines how long the trigger will be, and what its range of motion is. That in turn will drive the shape of the trigger guard. Once I get all of the metalwork done, I can sculpt the grip to fit.

Replacing Finials

2007-12-11T12:58:00.001-05:00

I had a dueling raygun set at Dragon*Con art show this year, the "Honor of Coronado" set. When making the pieces, I was faced with one of my recurring problems with working with found objects, mainly that I never found some of the bits that I wanted to complete the piece as originally envisioned. Julie had acquired a set of red crystals, and we embedded them into the end of the rayguns. The pieces worked as part of the sailpunk theme of the pieces, but I was afraid that a buyer would drop one of the rayguns at some point, and chip one of the crystals.

The set didn't sell at the convention, but when wrapping them up to ship back home, I discovered that both of the crystals were chipped.

When I am out and about, one of my background tasks is to raygun parts. During the summer and fall, I would go to the Berlin Farmer's Market on the weekend, when they would have a flea market (or 'swap meet', as we called them on the west coast). Being easily distracted by all of the wonderous bounty surrounding me, I would need to chant "raygunraygunraygunraygun...." as I went through each booth, to maintain my focus. Sometimes I would find a bit of brass, like a cheap candle snuffer, where I would cut off the last inch of the handle and mount it in a raygun. Other times, I would bring home a brass bell, with small brass carosel horse mounted on a spindle with a brass ball on the end, and decide that the piece was too cute to sacrifice to my art.

Stephanie and I were at a hobby store a few weekends ago, finding balsa wood for her to build one of her gliders (a dragon this time), when I found an odd source of brass finials for the rayguns. I bought a number of them, and added them to my raygun stock boxes (where all of the raygun and raygun-like bits are kept).

In a bit of free time two weekends ago, I pulled the broken crystals out of the rayguns (one broke off short, and I had to alternately heat it with a torch and plunge it in water to thermal
shock it to pieces). This last weekend, I was able to remove the mounting adheasives that had fixed the crystal in place, and clean the surface in preparation for the new finials. Last night, I was able to solder the new finials in place. I applied flux to all of the surfaces, melted a few drops of solder into the barrel, heated everything up, and then postitioned the pieces together with two pairs of pliers until the solder solidified. I had to reheat twice to get the placement correct on the first one, but was able to get the matching piece on the first try.

The rayguns are back together, and in their display case. Julie is going to take a few pictures for me to post on the net.

Foundry Work

2007-11-11T23:39:00.000-05:00

I built my foundry today. I started with a large metal can, the kind of gift tin that popcorn comes in. I spent about an hour cutting the tuyere hole (the vent that the blower goes in), the vent hole in the lid, and adding additional sheet metal, handles, and support stringers to the lid as well. I then filled the body of the foundry and the lid with a mixture of sand and morter as a simple refractory, then sank a large flower pot into the top as the firing chamber. Everything needs to dry for a week or so. I'm planning to do my first melt on Thanksgiving weekend.

I'll use charcoal and a blow dryer to heat a metal crucible to melt aluminum and brass. I have lots of scrap brass; the bases of the candlesticks that I use for my rayguns. I want to cast the little fiddly bit of brass that forms the tip of the rayguns (I've never found a good source for the raygun tips, always having to rely on found objects) within the bell of the muzzle. I also want to make some rocket belt buckles.

Casting to the Future

2007-10-08T19:16:00.000-05:00

Julie and I have been facing a series of distractions to our artwork; there were other projects in the works that were preventing us from focusing on anything new.

That looks like its past us now.

I bought a book a ways back on creating a furnace to melt brass, and another book on sand casting. I've got projects already lined up for practice, a couple of belt buckles, maybe a small rocket or two, and then we have a potential commission piece from an old friend of the family.

I need to break out the books, and re-read them cover-to-cover, and then start scrounging parts, and then fabricate anything that I can't find.

What I Want

2007-10-07T16:42:00.000-05:00

I want a kiln big enough to make one of these.

The Last Saturday in September

2007-09-29T10:01:00.000-05:00

There is a lot going on right now, and almost none of it is directly tied to our pottery. Julie has created an online pottery store for us, Kastan Pottery and Artworks, that I've added a link to in the right hand column.

We spent a lot of time this year prepping for and going to art shows. We had one every other month, which doesn't sound like a lot, but becomes just about the only thing you think about after a long days work, and the kinds of pieces that Julie and I create take a lot of time in the studio to complete.

We are focusing on all of the maintenance tasks around the house that we didn't have time for in the spring and summer; things like patching the back deck, pressure washing the house, and touching up the trim paint. I have a list of items for the outside of the house, which I need to finish before it gets too cold out, and then I can transition to my list of tasks in the garage (like building a hatch to the crawlspace in the ceiling, and reorganizing my workbench) and then I can get to the list for inside the house.

Julie and I have also started to throw out some of the stuff that we've accumulated over the years that we no longer need.

There's A Joke in Here Somewhere....

2007-09-11T06:03:00.001-05:00

A cancer researcher has discovered a way to burn water.

I guess they mean they can induce combustion using salt water as a fuel. The technique heats the water to three thousand degrees with radio waves.

It would be wonderful if more energy can be derived from this experiment than goes into it, but I'm thinking that that won't be the case.

Slumpin'

2007-08-28T21:29:00.000-05:00

I had issues with the latest raygun. At first, I couldn't get the barrel stub to attach to the base of the new barrel. I ended up cracking the joint three times, and on my last attempt, I overheated the pot metal, and it slumped.

I'll need to acquire a new base piece, just to get the barrel stump, or come up with something new.

I stopped work about seven tonight on the raygun, cleared my work area, and started to build bases for two of my rockets. I'm hoping that bases are to rockets as boxes are to rayguns.

It looks like I'll have three rayguns and seven rockets for the art show.

Progress

2007-08-26T12:49:00.000-05:00

Making progress on the new raygun.

The weather yesterday was really warm, so, I primed and started painting the body of the raygun while I was still torching the bits onto the old barrel stump. I chose a burgundy this time (since the other three rayguns I'll have for DragonCon run in blues and greens).

Julie needed to fire the kiln (glazing yard dragon parts, cone six) yesterday evening, so I had to work at getting the soldering of all the raygun bits done quick, then clean up my workspace, which has typically been the top of the kiln. The great thing about using a torch on the top of a kiln is that you know that you can't set it on fire accidentally. I still put down a fire resistant pad, and do everything on top of kiln bricks.

The raygun bits to be soldered to the old barrel stump, in this case, became a threaded piece from the old candlestick base, that I hacksawed off, then filed to fit. I had to do it a couple of times, again. The first time, I got a strong connection, but the candlestick has a hole in the side, and I needed to have the hole either running vertically or horizontally, and I forgot to check the alignment before soldering. The barrel stumps are made from potmetal, and start to melt if they get too much heat, so I am paranoid about heating them any more than I need to, like when I have to torch them back apart because I've made a mistake.

Today, I've fabricated the new trigger, and cleared a workspace on top of the workbench in the garage to do my soldering. As always, the hardest part of making the trigger is drilling the tiny hole through the curved trigger that the pivot goes through. I have inadequate tools to do it right, and make do starting with a countersink punch, and a drill driving through a jig that I've cobbled together and duct tape. If I get much more serious about my rayguns, I'll need to buy the right tools, especially a drill press.

I'm starting to think about the final steps for this raygun, specifically the display box. I think I have a wooden cigar box that a neighbor gave me that might work without any changes, but I'll need to partially assemble the raygun and try out the fit.

New Raygun for DragonCon

2007-08-21T22:10:00.001-05:00

Started a new raygun tonight. Its another of the flintlock series. I was able to do the metal cutting and shaping on the barrel stub and stock, as well as sanding off most of the paint from the stock. I have a small candlestick cleaned up, and ready to solder onto the end of the barrel. Julie has one of her yard dragons in the kiln, the top of which I use to do all of my soldering.

I need to finish cleaning the body of the raygun, then prime and paint it. I have an aqua colored paint that should look nice.

I also need to fabricate the new trigger, and decide what I am going to do for the finial, as well as check the inventory of cigar and wine boxes to see if I have anything suitable for the display case.

Flash Gordon Episode "Pride"

2007-08-19T13:22:00.000-05:00

Being a raygun and rocket kind of guy, I've been watching the Sci Fi Channel's Flash Gordon series. Julie and Steph have been watching it with me. I had high expectations for the show, but we've been generally disappointed by the series (me because there have been no spaceships, and the rayguns are very pedestrian).

A few minutes into last Friday's episode, "Pride", I started making connections between what was appearing on our TV, and a song that I learned as a child, called There's a Hole in the Bottom of the Sea. Its one of those progressive songs like the Twelve Days of Christmas, that started off as a singing game, and then somebody wrote down a particularly good set.

I started to blurt out fragments, and Julie and Steph pitched in as the episode progressed.

It started with "There's a rift in the hold of the ship with a hole", and started to grow from there.

Whenever the episode would slow down, we'd try to summarize what had happened so far in the episode, mess it up, and start laughing. I sang in "Sea Chanty" voice.

At one point, a character started to describe what was happening in the episode, and almost dropped into the same, sing-song chant that we were using. We busted up.

Over the last several days, I've periodically broken into the chant, so much so, that Steph has resorted to a terse "Knock it off, Dad!" every time she hears it.

"There's a guy with a whip who's the mate of the chick with the trick from the tree in the park in the rift with a crack from the click with the tape by the Doc with the Flash by the boat in the hold of the ship with the hole at the dock by the side of the sea."

Raygun "Isabel de La Vega"

2007-08-16T05:38:00.000-05:00

This is a non-working replica of the raygun "Isabel de La Vega". I have uploaded pictures to my Flickr site, and will be listing it for sale on Etsy.

The backstory to this piece is associated with the events of 13 May, 2117, at the beach of Ensenada Grande on the Sea of Cortez.

RIP - Lilly the Anole - 2005-2007

2007-08-11T13:33:00.001-05:00

Stephanie's second lizard, Lilly, has died. Steph drew this picture of Slurpy and Lilly, ascending to heaven together.

Losing E-Clips

2007-07-14T20:44:00.000-05:00

I spent a half day at work today, doing Stuff. I get up early to go into work on a weekend, but the one advantage is that I can scout for garage sales to hit on the way in (if I'm running late enough for the sales to be open) or on the way home (if I leave early enough).

I was able to hit four sales today, and at one I scored a pair of wooden wine boxes. One of the boxes held three bottles of Campo Viejo, a Spanish wine. I need to sand the face of the box, or cover up the logo somehow, and there was a large label ripped out of the inside of the lid, but it will make a nice presentation box for at least one raygun. It has an rustic metal hasp, concealed hinges, and some decorative, faux wrought nails in it.

After getting home from work, I was able to work on the rayguns. I have had to triage out one of the partially finished guns for now, and focus on the three that are almost done.

After a lot of thought, I figured out how to add springs inside the body of the guns to allow the trigger to be pulled, and the hammer to be pulled back. They aren't connected, but at least they are not glued or soldered in place. I was able to scrounge enough odds and ends together, some little levers and tiny e-clips to hold things together internally. I've learned from working with all of the little parts and tiny screws holding the guts of the rayguns together, that when I drop something I listen very carefully, to determine which way the piece is bouncing, and where it ends up. Unfortunately, I ended up losing one of the e-clips, and will have to go to an auto parts or hobby store to see if they have any sixteenth inch e-clips. I carefully swept the kitchen floor, and then went through the sweepings with a magnet looking for the clip. It went left and behind me, which means it took an odd bounce, and went down into the basement, or down two steps into the family room.

I had to completely disassemble the guns, modify the triggers, and bend some scrap springs into the right form for the new mechanism. Running the springs through hollow tubing allowed me to keep them tight, but not pull the trigger too far forward and out of position. The spring for the hammer runs towards the barrel of the gun, and the trickiest bit was finding a good anchor point.

I scraped some paint off of the guns, mostly where no one will see, which I have touched up. I'll reassemble tomorrow, and then my rayguns are finally finished for the San Diego Comic-Con.

I plan to work on raygun boxes, rocket stands, and to fire the raku kiln tomorrow. Julie also has to fire a glaze kiln in the garage for a new yard dragon for Comic-con, and plans to start a second this week for DragonCon in Atlanta.

Progress

2007-07-03T06:05:00.000-05:00

Haven't had the time to dedicate to the rayguns that I wanted, but progress is being made.

I cut metal on a new project last week, and have the major filing and soldering complete. Its comes from a different starting point, so every step has to be thought through. We bought some copper mesh for some flash on the piece, and Julie is helping me with the fabrication on that.

I started painting three of the rayguns on Sunday. I primed them, then put on the first layer of paint. Two of them are dark green, and the third is aqua. Still looking for small brass beads for the business end. We also bought some boxes at our local Ragshop, a craft store that is going out of business.

I'm thinking I'll have four rayguns for Comic-con, and and four or five rockets. Julie has a yard dragon in the works, and once she clears the slab roller in the garage, I can try to cut some wooden bases for the rockets.

Raygun Progress

2007-06-17T21:58:00.000-05:00

Updated photo of one of the rayguns in progress. I fabricated the new trigger, and added a bead in front of the trigger guard. I plan to paint the body of this raygun dark green. I'm examining the spring mechanism inside another one of the gun lighters to get an idea of how to make the trigger at least spring back into position when pulled.

Started a second raygun today as well. It has a fluted silver bead and a silver bell on the end. A small finial will come out of the bell. I'll fabricate a new trigger, as well as attach a bead in front of the trigger guard. I was able to cut the stock and barrel, and to file them both down. It took me four or five tries to solder the cap onto the end of the barrel stump, and attach the other parts to the end of the barrel. I'll need to strip the stock of paint, and then paint it dark blue.

-----------------------

For Father's Day dinner tonight, we grilled up some barbecue baby back ribs, with sliced onions and roasted red yams. We also had a greek pasta salad. For dessert, we broke out the Donvier, and made a white chocolate frozen custard.

Raygun Parts and Sapphire Plating

2007-06-04T20:31:00.000-05:00

More raygun parts showed up today, an on-line purchase. It will give me enough to build a second raygun like the one that I'm currently working on.

I ran across the curved brass stock that I used for triggers yesterday evening. I'm still consolidating all of my raygun stuff into a single crate, which includes ziploc bags and boxes full of brass, copper, aluminum, plastic, costume jewelry, and wood that all are candidates for new rayguns. I found a partially fabricated trigger, a spare from the Cereza Negra, which I can use in the current ray gun, once I drill the right size hole for the pivot, and solder a brass ball on the end. I need to acquire a very thin drill bit for the hole.

As always, I need some type of finial for the business end of the raygun. Either that, or I could use a brass bead mounted on the end of a narrow rod or tube.

One of my co-workers is going to loan me a car battery charger, which I will use to try to anodize the stock of the current raygun. Anodizing puts a layer of aluminum oxide onto the surface of the aluminum, which uses a warm dye bath and boiling water to seal the piece. Crystalline aluminum oxide is sapphire, and saying that the raygun is plated in sapphire is way cooler than saying it has a coating of aluminum oxide. I suppose the raygun can be dyed a shade of blue or blue-green to play up the sapphire bit. There is a really intense dark blue that can be achieved on titanium at twenty volts or so that I have in mind.

Raygun Work in Progress

2007-06-03T16:32:00.000-05:00

I was able to work on one of my rayguns this weekend. I did some soldering on the stub of the barrel, some drilling with a hand auger on some lenticular beads, and a lot of sanding.

I still need to paint the body of the gun. I was thinking of anodizing, and dying the body maroon or burgundy, but will probably stick with auto paints for this one. I want to replace the trigger, so it looks like the one from the Cinco de Mayo raygun, and I need to add a little accent trim to the gun as well.

I may start the next one before I fully complete this one, providing my parts shipment shows up in the next couple of days.

Here is a picture of what the piece currently looks like:

Magarita Recipe

2007-06-02T14:21:00.000-05:00

One of the few mixed drinks that I like is a margarita. I have a food allergy to most of the margarita mixes, so I tend to only order the ones made from scratch.

We were vacationing in Florida a few years ago, and I had a really good margarita at a restaurant called Shells. I got a chance to talk with the bartender, and even though it was against the rules, she gave me the recipe:

Margarita
1 1/2 units gold tequila
3/4 unit Cointreau
3/4 unit Triple Sec
1 unit fresh lime juice
1 unit bar syrup

A 'unit' depends on how much you are mixing. A single drink would have units comprised of ounces, a half pitcher would have units in cups.

We usually don't have bar syrup around the house, but we have Rose's Sweet Lime Juice, so I throw in two units of that instead of the lime juice and bar syrup.

Cointreau is a kind of Triple Sec, so you could combine the two, or use Grand Marnier, which is a little sweeter than Cointreau.

If the batch is small enough, I'll throw it into a shaker with ice, then strain it into a glass. Salting the rim is optional, and is done by taking an empty glass, rubbing a wedge of lime around the rim, then dipping the rim in salt.

Prepping for Comic-Con

2007-05-30T20:10:00.000-05:00

We're about two months out from the San Diego Comic-Con.

This will be the biggest convention of the year for us.

Julie and I have started working on additional projects for the art show.

I would like to get a couple more rockets made and fired. I'll try to do the throwing this weekend, to get it into the firing cycle.
I'm also working on some ray guns. My first two ray guns sold at Arisia and LunaCon. I'm working on a new series, a steampunk/sailpunk design, with flintlocks. The first one started as a derringer lighter I picked up at a garage sale. I disassembled the piece, tossed the non-working lighter bits, made a few modifications with a hacksaw and drill, and have braised a brass washer and nut to the inside of the shortened barrel. I have a threaded brass rod screwed into the nut that will pass through rubber stopper, a set of lenticular beads, short pieces of tubing, and attach to the base of a small brass candlestick. I still need to find a couple of small brass beads, one for the sight, and the other for the business end of the ray gun. I could also use a small lamp finial for the business end.

Bad Hands

2007-05-23T06:03:00.000-05:00

I've been having problems with my hands and feet . in the last few months.

It starts as a stiffness in the joints, then rapidly progresses to swelling and general mobility.

It started in the left hand, lasted for a few days, transferred to the right, lasted for a few days, dropped into my right foot, then reversed course through my hands.

Some times, like this last weekend, I have full mobility of both hands. There was a little stiffness in the left, but I was able to attempt a series of projects (which lead to dismal failures, all interconnected, but none traced to a lack of mobility).

By Sunday evening, my left hand went from stiff, to swollen, to alarmingly painful. The fingers were also cold to the touch.

The worst part was that I couldn't find a comfortable position to sleep in, since the only way to make the hand stop hurting was to dangle it strait down from my shoulder. I sat in a kitchen chair for most of the night, and got a couple of hours sleep.

Saw my doctor Monday morning, got a shot for the pain and swelling, and a specialist in the afternoon.

Yesterday, I ran over to a clinic after some morning meetings, where they drew six vials of blood for various tests.

There is so much that I want to do this Summer getting projects ready for shows, as well as jobs around the house, and I can't do it without both hands.

RIP - Slurpy the Lizard 2005-2007

2007-05-06T14:12:00.000-05:00

Golden Compass Daemon

2007-05-02T12:27:00.001-05:00

This Got Me to Thinking.....

2007-04-22T20:27:00.000-05:00

It started with beads.

I need some one inch transparent beads for a pair of ray guns. Fumbling through the internet, I finally found a site with beads that almost met my needs; they were made of resin.

This got me to thinking. I've had friends that have cast resin. I could make some molds, and just cast the beads that I need.

I ran some searches on how to cast resin. It looks easy, and wouldn't cost too much. The trickiest bit would be creating the mold.

This got me to thinking. If I'm going to go to all of the trouble to make molds for casting, perhaps I could cast more parts for the rayguns, like handles, sites, triggers, and finny bits. In fact, I could use found objects to help create molds, cast the rayguns in multiple pieces, then join everything together.

One interesting technique is called 'cold casting'. Metal powders are mixed with resin, and poured into a mold to coat the interior. The rest of the mold is filled with foam, resin, or resin mixed with iron or lead shot. The effect is to look like a metal casting, until you touch it. I know that there is an extension to this technique, which involves sand blasting the surface of the finished piece to erode the resin and expose the powdered metal. The metal can then be burnished, which joins the metal particles.

This got me to thinking. I already have gas fired kilns, and equipment like tongs and gloves to use when handling orange hot pottery. If I was going to make molds to cast resins, and wanted to make pieces that looked like metal, how much harder would it be to just melt metal and pour it into molds?

Surfed the web. Looked up 'brass casting', and ran across an interesting site.

So, now I want to scavenge scrap aluminum and brass from the neighborhood on trash day, and melt it into ingots using recovered cooking oil discarded from restaurants, then recast the metal as rockets, dragons, and rayguns.

Learning To Reason With Two Monks

2007-04-19T20:16:00.000-05:00

I took a training course at work a number of years ago.

The class was on creative thinking, or left brained thinking, or problem solving.

The point was to try to get the students to approach problems in a different manner.

At one point, the instructor posed the following problem, and then moved along with the lesson without providing an answer:

"At dawn, a monk stands on a path at the base of a mountain. The path is only wide enough for one person at a time. As the sun rises, the monk starts moving along the path. Sometimes he walks, sometimes he runs, sometimes he kneels and prays. As the sun sets, he reaches the monastery at the end of the path at the top of the mountain.
The next morning, at dawn, he stands at the top of the same path, but facing down the mountain. As the sun rises, he starts to move down the path. Sometimes he walks, sometimes he runs, sometimes he kneels and prays. As the sun sets, he reaches the same spot where he had started the day before.

Prove that there is a placed on the path that the monk stood in the exact same spot at exactly the same time on both days."

Projects Projects Projects

2007-04-17T19:19:00.000-05:00

We've received informal confirmation that both Julie and I are accepted to both the Comic-Con and Dragon*Con art shows.
I have one rocket currently in the works, which is a reconstruction of the first rocket that I ever made, back in Georgia. I now need to start a few more. I also need to refire the Luther Burbank and the Clipper rockets.
There are four rayguns in the works, two pairs.

The first pair started as a small set of candlesticks, and I have the design worked out in my notebook. There are a few parts that I need to acquire, essentially clear beads, somewhere between an inch to an inch and a quarter in diameter. I want polycarbonate, but will settle for acrylic (glass breaks too easily). I would like to get red/blue/green/or amber. The closest match so far is a ball lamp at Wallmart, which has four pink beads on it. These will be small enough to fit into some of the hardwood cigar boxes that I have acquired.
The second pair started as brass wall sconces. I need to cut them down a bit, and then torch them back together. The new seams will be disguised by how I mount the handles.
There is a big, community garage sale this weekend in one of the nearby developments. This was the same sale that, years ago, I got the original set of wall sconces to make my first pair of ray guns. I am hoping that there will be enough eclectic stuff to allow me to finish the ones that I am working on now, or maybe inspire another pair.

My friend Laura and her fiance Bill are getting married on Memorial Day, and I am doing a hundred tiles for favors at the reception. The tile will have a cobalt blue image of the mansion that the are getting married, with names, locations, and dates above and below the image. I created a quick sim of the artwork using MSPaint and wotnot, but need to redo the artwork in CorelDraw so I can size the text properly and burn the silkscreen templates.
Working around the kitchen, trying to finish the base molding. There are only a few more pieces to cut and stain, and then it will be finished (after years and years of waiting). We had kicked around the idea of replacing our basement door with one with a window in it, to allow more light into the basement, but finally decided to just finish the project.

Cracking the Kiln

2007-04-13T10:35:00.000-05:00

We cracked the kiln last Sunday.

There had been little reduction, most of the glazes never matured, and almost all of my bowls had cracks in them.

I attribute the cracking to the bowls being bisque fired ten years ago, and then following us around for several moves. They probably had hairline cracks before we glazed them.

Two bowls were saved, one that Steph laid claim to, and is now in her room, and the other is a slightly heat warped mixing bowl.

We will try again sometime soon.

The rocket that I threw is dried out, wrapped in a towel in a box down in the studio.

I took yesterday off as a floating holiday from work (forty-sixth anniversary of first man in space), and today as a vacation day.

I'm planning to work on a raygun today. First stop will be to go to a bead store on the White Horse Pike (one of the local roads that goes back to colonial times) to see if they have any large beads that I can incorporate into the pieces).

Falling Cones

2007-04-07T18:45:00.000-05:00

Well, we tried to fire Monstro last weekend.

We started at nine in the morning, and Ronnie threw in the towel at ten at night. She got the kiln up to two thousand degrees, and there it stalled, bellowing flame and soot.

She called the manufacturer of the kiln, Olympic, and talked to them for a bit, and also brought in the gas company.

The first problem was that the kiln still had the natural gas orifices installed, instead of the propane set that I had. Now, I thought that I had swapped them out, before Steph was born, when we had the kiln sitting on the pad next to our house in Phoenix (a.k.a., The Ranch). We had had a studio added as a bonus room to the side of the garage, and were planning to get a propane tank to hook up.

Propane is more energetic than natural gas, so the orifices have smaller holes.

The other problem was that the kiln had been loaded incorrectly. Julie and Ronnie unloaded the kiln, and then reloaded with gaps between the sets of shelves, and rotated the shelves ninety degrees between levels. This is to force the hot gases to circulate more, and to help temperatures even out in the kiln.

We started at nine this morning. Every half hour, we would use a pyrometer to measure the temperature at the top and bottom of the kiln. We would then tweek the gas up a bit. Early on in the firing, we had a three hundred degree difference in top and bottom. We had the kiln climbing at about two hundred degrees every half hour, when, on one tweek, the kiln stalled, and we wondered whether we had given it too much gas. Too much gas is as bad as not enough, and the kiln stalls.

We backed the gas off a hair (there is a single valve that rotates about ninety degrees to control the inflow of gas to the kiln. There are four burners, with an autoignition ring, and a small thermocouple that shuts off the gas if all flames go out for some reason), gained another hundred degrees, then stalled again. Each time the kiln would stall, the temperature at the bottom of the kiln would creep up a little more, so the thermal gap between top and bottom was slowly closing. We then cracked the valve a little wider, and got it to climb again.

Ronnie had loaded three pyrometric cones into a cone pack (a bit of clay to hold the cones up. Ronnie's look like little Viking long boats with three masts). She uses a seven, a nine, and a ten. As temperatures climbed in the kiln, the cone seven would start to bend. A little later the nine would go, and finally the ten. When the tip of the ten touches the bent over cone nine, then the firing would be complete.

The inside of the kiln is really hot, over twenty-two hundred and fifty degrees at the end of the firing cycle. Everything in the kiln is glowing with a yellow-orange heat, and it is difficult to see the cones through the peeps in the kiln, because there is nearly no contrast between pots, kiln interior, cones, and flames. We squinted and stared a lot. Julie loaned us her darkest sunglasses out of the car to cut down on the glare.

After cone seven fell (bent over until its tip touched), we started monitoring the cones and temperature every fifteen minutes. As the tip of nine started to bend, we covered the opening in the lid of the kiln with a piece of broken kiln shelf. This is called 'damping the kiln'. Damping cuts down the gas flow through the kiln. A shaft of flames comes out, which is caused by insufficient oxygen in the kiln for full combustion, so the remaining fuel is burning outside of the kiln. The atmosphere in the kiln is in a state of reduction, and is pulling oxygen from anywhere it can, including the melted glazes on the pottery. This is what shifts a copper glaze from green to red.

A side effect of damping is that the bottom of the kiln starts to close the temperature gap with the top.

The whole kiln got within fifty degrees top to bottom, as the final cone (ten) fell. We shut off the gas, closed the damper, did a quick victory dance, then all went home. It took ten hours for the firing, but we think that we can shave a couple of hours off of that next time by turning the gas up quicker. We now need to wait at least twenty-four hours before cracking the kiln open.

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I threw a rocket today.

Loading Monstro

2007-03-31T19:26:00.000-05:00

Monstro is the name of the gas kiln that I bought before Julie and I were married. It is an Olympic Kiln, a 2831G. I had had a gas line run out to the back of my first house in Phoenix, when I bought the place, and was going to have the kiln on the back porch by the pool.

Monstro was the name of the whale in Pinocchio.

Monstro followed us through every move that we made together, and was never fired. Our friend, Ronnie, has a studio where she teaches, and she set up a slab in back for Monstro to live on, and piped it for propane.

Today, Julie and I went to visit the studio. We brought with us a box of five bowls that were all thrown about nine or ten years ago, in the studio of the house that we had built together, and have been carefully packed for the two moves since. The bowls were thrown with cone ten clay, and were always meant to be glaze fired in Monstro.

Some day.

The largest of my bowls is big enough to use as the basin of a sink, if I had trimmed the proper sized hole in the base for plumbing. Ronnie suggested that I try making a few sinks, and see if we can sell them.

Ronnie had bought a huge hunk of beeswax this morning from one of the few bee keepers in the area that hasn't lost all of their bees to the egg mites. She melted it in an electric fry pan, and we took turns setting our pieces into the melted wax to coat the foot of each piece to keep the glaze from sticking. The wax had never been filtered, so there was bits of debris (including a few former bees) that stuck to our pieces.

The glazes had been mixed in five gallon buckets. Ronnie has worked with them before, and had fired samples of most of them on different pots, showing the effects of overlapping the glazes on top of each other. Cone ten glazes have a different composition than the cone six or the raku glazes that we've got in our studio. They fire to a higher temperature, and since the kiln burns gas, the potter can control the atmosphere inside of the kiln for the final stage of firing, to cause a reducing atmosphere to pull oxygen out of the glazes. This is how gas firing can be used to get purples and reds that are impossible in an electric kiln.

Most of our bowls were too wide to fit into the buckets. I would use a big measuring cup to pour glaze into a bowl, then rotate it as I poured the glaze out to coat the insides. The bowl would go outside onto an improvised table to dry out a bit, then it was brought back, flipped over, and I would pour or ladle glaze over the sides of the piece while letting the excess run back into the bucket. The inevitable finger prints on the rim and sides, where I accidentally pulled the partially dried glaze off in handling is patched by dipping a finger into the glaze bucket, and painting over the marks.

For some of the pieces, after I had a base coat of glaze, I would to to the other glaze buckets, and cup some glaze into my hand, and splash it across the inside or outside of the piece. The glaze chemistry will interact during the firing, to produce variations in the glaze surface.

Two of the bowls were glazed with 'tessa', which is a brown glaze that breaks black across the trim lines of a bowl. The brown surface isn't a solid color, but is more like a temoku plum, with the pixelated iron crystals on the surface.

Two bowls have a blue rutile glaze overall, one with jmod red on the rim and splashed inside, the other with a series of splashes across the inside and outside of the bowl.

The last bowl has an experimental glaze, oatmeal sky, splashed with jmod red, rutile blue, and tessa.

Ronnie glazed a number of her pieces as well. She is in a lot of shows, and having a kiln for her own use will aid in her business.

Julie, Ronnie, her husband Tom, and myself worked at loading Monstro when the pieces were dry. The kiln shelves are half circles of high fired clay, about twenty-eight inches across and an inch thick. They are very heavy. The hardest part was laying the first few shelves at the bottom of the kiln, which is done by leaning over the top rim of the kiln. I wasn't quite tall enough to pull it off, but Tom has a little extra height that allowed it to work.

In a glaze firing, the pieces can't touch each other, or they will fuse together. There also needs to be gaps between the pieces so kiln posts can be inserted to support the next level of kiln shelves above all of the pieces on the lower shelf. The bottom most layer was a series of soup bowls, the kind with handles. A set of four inch posts supported the next set of shelves, which I was able to help put in place. More of Ronnie's pieces went in, and Julie and Ronnie worked at arranging the pieces to get as much in each layer as we could.

Loading got easier, as the height of the shelves climbed in the kiln. You didn't need to bend down so far to place a piece. My two smaller bowls made it in the third layer. We were starting to run out of room in the kiln, because my three biggest bowls were going to take up a lot of space. Two of them were six and a half inches high, and the third was seven inches high. The two shorter pieces, when put on the same level, spanned so much space in the kiln that we could not get enough kiln posts in to support two more half circle shelves; there was only enough support for one. With a quarter inch to spare at the top of the kiln, we were able to get my tallest piece onto the last shelf. Ronnie went back into the studio, and glazed a couple more smaller pieces to nestle under the curve of my bowls at the top of the kiln.

We shut the kiln, and used an extra shelf to cover the vent hole in the lid as a damper. Tomorrow, we fire.

We Have Set Up an Ebay Store

2007-03-24T08:29:00.000-05:00

Since Lunacon, along with everything else on her schedule, Julie has been working to set up an eBay store for our pottery, jewelry, and sculptural pieces.

The name of the store is Kastan Pottery and Artworks. I have added it to the links on the right side of the blog.

Sales at Lunacon

2007-03-22T22:21:00.000-05:00

The Cezera Negra ray gun sold at Lunacon. It is the ray gun on the right. That's two conventions in a row that one of the ray guns sold.

Divine Hauler of Cargo

2007-03-22T06:15:00.000-05:00

Woke up this morning with this name for a new rocket buzzing in my brain, and I will probably throw a number like seventeen after it (or perhaps a number like seventeen, or "No. Many Many"). It would transform the piece from a raku rocket to being a revered object of worship (in the rights circles, the extraterrestrial ones that believe in Cargo.)

Balticon is approaching.

We went to Lunacon this last weekend. The grand scheme was to drive up Friday, set up, and drive home Friday night. The reality is that our two hour drive was turned into a five hour drive by the worst sleet storm I have ever seen. We had three to four inches of accumulation that looked like snow, but was actually ice pellets that fused together.

We drove up via the turnpike. The speed rarely exceeded thirty miles an hour. The safest thing to do (besides staying home) was to drive in the ruts of the car in front of you. If a vehicle in the next lane went out of their ruts, they threw up a rooster tail of muddy slush that hit your windshield, and visibility would drop to zero for a few seconds. Many drivers would swerve a bit when their windshields got hit, whether from flinching or in an attempt to shake something loose. The best practice was to be ready to flip your wipers to maximum at all times.

Julie reminded me not to trust the brakes to stop the van, meaning that it was going to take a lot longer to stop in those conditions. We had to make sure that there was additional space between us and the car in front to allow for sliding.

We were to the west of New York City, in the leftmost lane, when the car in front of us slowed down suddenly.

I hit the brakes, which quickly reverted to anti-lock mode as they tried to bite in. It was obvious that we wouldn't be able to stop in time, and Julie's last wincing words to me were "I told you not to rely on the brakes."

I had been thinking about what to do in this kind of situation for part of the drive.

I threw the steering wheel hard to port. The nose of the car started to come about, and we started a hard swerve to the left; enough snow, sleet, and slush was hitting the turned front wheels that it was helping us turn.

Once I judged our direction would miss the car in front (I think it was a white, high-end, SUV), I straitened out. We were now safely headed towards the concrete barrier that divided the two directions of the turnpike, moving into the deeper sleet and slush of the shoulder, one wide enough to take a whole van.

Julie says we missed the car's bumper by about an inch. I was too busy swinging the wheel hard a starboard , to miss the barrier, to notice.

We slowed down enough that we had enough room to merge back in traffic, which I carefully executed.

Julie and I laughed about the incident. We kidded that the combined karma of our cargo of little dragons, jewelry, and rockets saved us. All of the dragons came to life, and furiously flapped their wings, while the rockets all blasted at emergency power to help the car swerve. Just enough to keep things from turning ugly.

We arrived at the show late, and ended up getting a room at a nearby hotel for the night. The next day, it took about two and a half hours to drive home.

Prepping for Lunacon

2007-03-14T21:17:00.000-05:00

We are getting things together for Lunacon.

Julie is working on the bid sheets and inventory. I have to put a different lining in the box for the Cerza Negra raygun. The current lining is white, and we need something more striking.

We'll set up on Friday, then come home. On Sunday, we will pick up our work.

Planning and Plotting

2007-03-01T18:23:00.000-05:00

Julie and I are working to register for the art shows at our next series of conventions.

Lunacon is coming up next month, and we have space there.

Balticon is in May. I have an email into the art show director asking whether we can have two tables instead of one, since the tables are only fifteen inches wide.

We've applied via the jury process for DragonCon, 0ver Labor Day weekend. We will know by April fifteenth whether we made it or not. Julie and I each applied separately, submitting seven pictures representing our work.

Lastly, we need to work on our Comic-Con application. Comic-Con is in late July, and falls in the middle of our planned vacation.

Blue Bayou

2007-02-21T20:36:00.000-05:00

Steph likes to play on VMK.

That's Disney's Virtual Magic Kingdom.

At the real Disneyland, and in VMK, there is a restaurant called the Blue Bayou. It is set near the Pirates of the Caribbean in New Orleans Square.

In VMK, they serve gumbo, mint juleps, and monte cristo sandwiches.

Steph has had gumbo before, but wanted to try the other two. Using the combined powers of Google and Wikipedia, she tracked down recipes for both (the julep being made with non-alcoholic creme de menthe syrup and limeade.

We bought a loaf of artisan bread, and sliced it thin. Buttered the outside of the bread, put slices of ham and turkey on either slice, a slice of swiss in the middle, pinned it together with toothpicks, dipped it in a milk and egg mixture, and pan fried it on both sides.

Steph was very pleased. She kissed me on the top of the head to thank me.

Six Weird Things

2007-02-12T18:57:00.000-05:00

I've been tagged with a meme by Maureen McHugh.
I've supposed to write six weird things about myself.

This is going to take a bit.

1. When I was in the first grade, we were coloring in class. The teacher had a big box of crayon pieces, gathered over the years, in the front of the room, that I decided to dig through to find an interesting crayon than the eight-pack that I had as my school supplies. I found a short stub of a bronze crayon. I had never seen a metallic crayon before. I took it back to my desk, and stared at it. It had a scintillating surface of tiny speckles of colored light, and as you moved it, the colors twinkled and shifted. I stared at it for about ten minutes, and then threw up. I couldn't look at anything made of bronze for years. I wear a bronze dragon buckle (created by Metal Dice Unlimited, numbered 109/250) with my jeans, but I never look too closely at the surface of the buckle.

2. When I was born, the tops of my ears were curled down, so I had pointed ears. When my daughter Stephanie was born, she had only one pointed ear.

3. The earliest dream that I can remember involved a figure, wearing a hideous mask, standing before a wall of fire. I was told that I could have anything that I wanted, if I would just jump through the fire. I was too afraid. The figure then removed her mask, and revealed herself to be a beautiful woman. She offered me some sort of physical relationship that I didn't understand if I would just jump through the flames. I explained that I did not want to, and that I had all of the companionship that I needed (e.g., I had my stuffed animals). She was very angry with me. I was probably about three.

4. I joined Mensa my sophomore year of high school for extra credit in my Advanced Senior Math class.

5. On a shelf in my library, I have a section of a fan blade from a B-70 Valkyrie. There are nine holes that were chem milled though the length of the fan blade, to keep the blade from melting during operations. My dad was the one who figured out how to do that.

6. When my mom was in high school in Minnesota in the forties, she read a collection of science fiction stories from her school library. When I was in high school in the seventies, in San Diego, she described to me some of the stories, and told me what she thought the collection was called. I then found it in my school library. I still own a paperback version of the book, _Adventures in Time and Space_.

Feed Her Some Hungry Reggae

2007-01-29T19:32:00.000-05:00

The weather has turned bitter cold, here in New Jersey.

Last Thursday, Julie took the truck out for an errand, and reported that the instrument lights were flickering and dying. The rheostat that controlled intensity didn't seem to work any more.

Friday morning, they blazed furiously for a few seconds, then died completely. I thought that the lamp burned out, it blew a fuse, or the knob finally gave it up.

This is one more petty annoyance to fulfill a month of petty annoyances.

The truck was collecting a number of odd failures. The CD changer behind my seat had stopped broadcasting in autumn, the motorized baffles in the climate control had stopped working (luckily stopping in a mode that was compatible with winter), and the service engine soon light was popping on.

I'm also thinking about new tires.

(Petty annoyances come in cycles, and they sum up.)

Drove to work without instrument lights. I've driven my little pickup for a couple of years now, so I wasn't too concerned about it. I stayed with the flow of traffic, and listened to the engine as I drove.

Everything seemed happy.

I was mainly worried about a meeting at work, so my mind was sort of occupied. I'd flick the headlights off at stoplights to see what time it was on the clock. The dimmer only controls the digital clock intensity when the headlights are on.

I ended up opening my door out of sequence when I got to work. There was a beeping noise from the instrument panel, which I somehow decided was because the keys were still in the ignition. I grabbed the keys and went.

I had lunch with a friend. She drove. I hate driving, because I don't get to talk as much if I want to avoid an accident. I'm funny that way.

Got out to the car that evening, and discovered that I had left the lights on all day.

The battery was dead, dead, dead. Not a sound when I tried to start the engine, not the clock coming on. Nothing.

I got a jump from a passing engineer. We had to hook his jumper cables to my car, and sit for fifteen minutes before the car would even feebly crank. Ten minutes later, it started right up.

I drove home via the 295. Its a bit longer, and can be brutal if there is any traffic, rather than the back roads that I usually take, but I wanted to run the engine as long as I could before turning it off.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I didn't drive the car on Saturday. I had a bit of a cough, and tried to stay inside as much as possible (with one excursion to sell Girl Scout Cookies at a local Acme market with Steph. Sold something like four boxes).

Sunday I decided to take the truck for an errand. If it wouldn't start, but there was power in the battery, I could bump start it down our steep and icy driveway (WAHOO!), or jump it off Julie's minivan if the battery was totally dead. I'd run and get the battery tested, and maybe buy a new one.

Luckily, it started right up, and didn't give me any trouble.

The clock would have to be reset at some point, and none of the presets worked on the radio. I had to dial in the NPR station.

So, this morning, I'm driving to work. I'm fiddling with the rheostat for the instrument lights, because I can't believe that the freakin' rheostat has suddenly decided to fail. I notice that, if I move it real fast, the instrument lights flicker on for a brief instant, then go out.

Sort of like a video game.

Its now a challenge.

I spend ten minutes of my morning commute flicking the knob back and forth, trying to stop it when the lights are on. Halfway to work, it happens: the instrument lights are functioning again.

I make a mental note to NEVER TOUCH THE KNOB AGAIN.

I have a pretty good day at work. One of my friends had to join my former team temporarily, and a spare chair in my office was a convenient spot for her to park for the day. It was nice to have a little company, and we got to chat a couple of times when we were both free.

Much work was done, and after too many hours at work, I got to go home.

Driving home in the truck. Decided to take the freeway. On a traffic free day, I can sail home on the freeway in less time then the back roads I usually drive, but its a little longer distance-wise.

I'm dialing in music stations, since W was getting a long interview on NPR. Couldn't find what I wanted, so my finger shot out to the instrument panel, beneath the lights, and turned on the CD changer.

The one that hasn't worked since fall.

Reflex. Go figure.

I realized what I had done, and watched as a CD loaded. Nothing too tricky, the player had always seemed to work, it just didn't seem to broadcast to the radio like it was supposed to.

Reached out to the radio, and started crawling across the dial.

Stopped when I heard the song.

Steely Dan, loud and clear. "FM".

Bliss.

Had a great drive home.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I think that the death of the battery had saved the CD changer (at some point in the near future, I had planned to replace it). When I was an undergrad, studying chip design, there was the concept of an 'unused state' in a circuit, that if your design tripped into it, couldn't get out unless the circuit was designed to get out.

Or someone hit the big reset button.

Let me try to explain:

Imagine that there are a series of states that a circuit could be in, and that they are all related to each other. There are rules for how and when to go from state to state. Imagine the circuit is in state A, which transitions to B, then goes to C, then back to A. You design the thing to cycle between these three happy states. Think of the states as things like 'loading a CD', 'playing a CD', and 'unloading a CD'.

Now imagine that something weird happens, and the system ends up in state NARWAHL. Now, there are no specific rules for ever transitioning out of state NARWAHL, so the circuit kind of sits there. Think of this state as 'look like everything works, but don't broadcast any music', since the rule to send out the music is only part of state C.

Old digital watches used to have this problem, when you would change the battery. The calender would get lost, since there was no rule on how many days were in the twenty-ninth month. There was usually a way to reset the IC in the watch to a known state, one of the correct states, and then things would work again.

I think that having the battery dead for a few hours caused the CD changer to fall back into a known state.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Good fortune comes in cycles, and it sums up.

I have to remember to check and see if the climate control is working in the morning.

Maybe I'll have new tires, too...

Public Face/Private Face

2007-01-21T21:03:00.000-05:00

I'm a fan of the space elevator.

I wear a lanyard around my neck at work, from the Space Elevator 3rd International Conference. Its starting to wear out, and at some point, I will need to replace it with a new lanyard. I think I have three or four left from the conference, since Julie and I were the ones that made the lanyards, pens, and notebooks for the conference.

A couple of noteworthy types from the space elevator community have started a new company, Black Line Ascension. Hooray for them. I found out about it almost a week ago, from The Space Eleavator Blog.

One of my new co-workers for my new position at work noticed my lanyard, since, he too, is a fan of the project. We started talking, and I promised to send him a few interesting links to further his interests.

Black Line Ascension was one of the links that I sent him. I remembered that the url was their company name, but couldn't remember what the name of the company was, so went back to Space Elevator Blog to find it. They have a copy of the logo for Black Line Ascension, so I banged in the name, and discovered something interesting:

Black Line Ascension has two 'N's, not one, like their logo says.

The web site is the public face of Black Line Ascension, and they can't even spell their own name.

I've sent a couple of emails, with no response.

Bugs the heck out of me.
-----------------------------------------

I baked a pecan pie tonight, from Pamela Z. Asquith's pie book. Three cups of pecans, dark brown sugar, light and dark corn syrup, a half cup of eggs, and a half stick of butter. It makes a very nutty, non-sweet pie.

Back from Arisia

2007-01-14T23:56:00.000-05:00

We have returned from Arisia.

We had one theft during the art show, but sold one of my ray guns (The Cinco de Mayo) and a number of Julie's polymer dragons.

Julie had me write up little stories for each of my pieces before the show, that we put on the back of the bid sheets. The one for Cinco de Mayo read:

"Cinco de Mayo - Mixed Media Ray Gun by Tom Kastan
Two lovers, one stranger. When honor has been challenged, satisfaction must be found. The Cinco de Mayo is a non-working replica ray gun, commemorating the duel that will take place on the 5th of May, 2117, at dusk, on the sandy beach of La Paz, Baja California. Refreshments will be served."

The gentleman who bought the piece (in a nice, black velvet lined display case), has a persona named "Flamingo Montoya", who is apparently a decendent of Inigo Montoya from _The Princess Bride_, and was very happy to purchase the piece. His last words to me, while holding the ray gun to my head, was "Make more!".

So...... How Was Your Day?

2007-01-07T23:12:00.000-05:00

I awoke early this morning, to run errands. I've been working a lot of overtime at work, with a new assignment, so haven't had time for much of anything. I had to fill a propane tank, drop a couple of books off at the library, pick up some empty paint cans, and also stopped by Target for some sundries.

The plan was to re-fire a few of our pieces that we were not satisfied with, and to fire the one rocket that I have made in the last month or so. Julie had one of her vases with a dragon emerging from it, and I had several of my rockets. Some of the pieces we added more glaze to; primarily Seth's Luster, but also there was a dark patch on the body of one of my rockets that needed to be coated with two layers of white underglaze and a thin layer of clear crackle. We sat around the kitchen table, brushing on extra layers of glaze. Raku ware is non-vitreous, so the pieces were still able to absorb the water from the glaze, which is what helps bind the glaze to the piece. We got together enough pieces to do two firings, with each of us pulling two pieces from the kiln.

When I unwrapped the kiln, the base seemed really damp. Julie and I pulled out the burner, reduction chambers, tongs and gloves from the garage. I also turned on the water to the hose bib for the back of the house. It usually freezes by this time of year in New Jersey, so the hose bibs need to be turned off and drained to keep the pipes from cracking.

After attaching the burner to the newly filled tank, we loaded the first four pieces into the kiln (two refired rockets, one refired dragon, one new rocket), and lit things up.

Billows of steam rose from the kiln. At first, it rose from the central vent hole in the lid of the kiln. The pyrometer showed that the temperature rose to four hundred and fifty degrees, then stopped. There was so much energy being used to convert the water trapped in the soft brick of the kiln to steam that we couldn't get the temperature to go up. I finally throttled the kiln back to about quarter power, and decided to wait things out.

Steam started to come out of every opening of the kiln. There are cracks between kiln bricks, narrow holes that once carried power to the kiln elements, and gaps around four peep holes that I had plugged with hand whittled pieces of kiln brick. The steam would condense back to water on the the stainless steel casing around the kiln. The pressure gauge on the propane tank read about four and a half pounds.

An hour later, the pyrometer still read four hundred and fifty degrees. Steam was still pouring off the kiln, and could be seen rising from any exposed brick surface. Julie and I kept peeking in through the vent in the lid, to see how our pieces were doing, afraid that the glaze would be 'steam cleaned' off of the pieces. The propane tank was cold to the touch, and water was condensing onto its walls.

At about an hour an a half, the steam rising from the vent hole dropped considerably, and the temperature slowly started to rise. Frost and frozen water droplets covered the propane tank by now, and the pressure was starting to drop. By the time we reached a thousand degrees Fahrenheit, the pressure was down to two pounds and was dropping rapidly. The kiln was stalling. Killing the gas, we swapped out the propane tank for a half full one on our grill, re-lit the burner, and continued firing.

As we cleared fifteen hundred degrees, Julie and I would take turns going out every five minutes to see how the firing was commencing. We were also watching the Eagles game, and were a bit distracted. I went out for what I expected to be the last time, after we had cleared seventeen hundred degrees, and discovered that a spot weld holding the metal strap to the stainless steel sheath on the outside of the kiln had failed. The superheated kiln brick, lacking any external support, was opening like a flower.

I shouted for Julie, and then ran for the garage to try find something to hold the kiln together. I worked sixteen hours of overtime this week, and have been mentally preparing myself for a meeting on this coming Tuesday for the last four days, so I had a little bit of trouble identifying what I could use.

Julie donned her kiln gloves, and carefully pushed the kiln bricks back together. She then turned down the burner, since we had reached temperature.

I finally ran back outside with a spool of electrical wire and a pair of cutters. Donning my kiln gloves, I started stitching lengths of wire through the holes along the edge of the stainless steel sheath, while Julie held the steel back into position. We placed two heavy wires in place, figuring that we could add more once the kiln cooled.

Killing the gas, we grabbed our tongs, and working together, used them to open the lid of the kiln. We alternately pulled pieces from the kiln, each piece glowing a cheery orange hot, and some of the molten glaze mirror smooth, and placed them into individual reduction chambers, then sealed the lids. Two of the pieces had Seth's, so had to be 'flashed', which allows air back into the chamber, and the greasy yellow smoke from the burning newspaper inside 'woofs' into a ball of flame before the lid is slapped back down.

We placed the second load on top of the kiln to allow the pieces to start warming up (two rockets, one wide bowl). Julie opened up the reduction chamber with her dragon vase, and was very pleased with the results of the re-fire. There was lots of copper-penny on the piece, and some patches of blues, magenta, +and purples.

My smallest rocket, which was a re-fire reducing in an unused paint can, also turned out very nice, with similar colors as Julie's dragon, but with a shiny instead of a matte glaze. The previous firing had left the piece an unattractive, blotchy green, but now it looks much better.

The new rocket is dark red with matte black fins. The three engine bells start off copper around the base then transition to a metallic green near the mouth of the bell. The rocket has little canard fins in the mid-body. Its very striking.

The final rocket turned out great as well. The Seth's had some very nice effects on the belly of the rocket, a pearlescent appearance with golds, metallic light blues, pinks and yellows. The rocket body had a higher thermal mass than Julie's dragon, so held onto more heat when before I flashed the piece than the dragon had. The increased heat effects the thickness of the oxides that form on the surface, which results in the colors maturing differently.

We reloaded the kiln, and started firing again. We were up to twelve hundred degrees within minutes, when it started to rain( fat, heavy drops ). We decided to stop firing then, and killed the gas to the burner. I fetched our largest umbrella, and Julie held it over the kiln when we opened it up to allow the pieces to cool. We brought everything back into the garage to wait for tomorrow night, except for the four finished pieces.

Kastan Pottery Sales

2006-12-20T22:33:00.000-05:00

Juli has set up a little slide show of some of our current and former work for sale:
Kastan Pottery Sales

Jellied Cats to Solve the High Cost of Energy

2006-12-14T18:42:00.000-05:00

I ran across this link today. Steph certainly got a big kick out of it.

http://unreal.rit.edu/Kim_Miner/Perpetual_Motion.ram

This is almost as good as applying clown car technology to the overpopulation problem.

Multimedia

2006-12-03T07:32:00.000-05:00

Julie and I have been talking about how to educate people at the art shows about the raku process. I think that if people knew more about raku, that they would have a better understanding of our work, and would therefore have a better chance of becoming a potential buyer.

Yesterday, I baked a coffee cake in one of the cake pans that Julie had thrown. I then drove it to the craft fair at a local elementary school where she was set up, along with our friend, Brenda, who does polychromatic glass and silver jewelry.

I was talking with Brenda about displays, and how to convey to the potential buyers all of the work that goes into some of her pieces. We developed the idea of picking up an inexpensive digital picture frame for use as a media display.

The frames are small and light, so won't take up much room when we travel to shows, and have just enough capability to make them useful, but aren't so powerful, like a portable DVD player, to make them targets of shoplifting in the art show.

For Julie and I, the raku presentation can include a short history of raku (traces back to a Korean method for making roof tiles, where the kiln is constantly firing, and tile pieces are moved in and out), pictures of the firing process, and glamor shots of work that we didn't bring to the show.

Maybe we will get an extra one for ComicCon, for Stephanie to display some the comics that she draws.

Names

2006-11-29T22:08:00.000-05:00

SquidgePa's Aliases

Your movie star name: Digestive Biscuits Mike

Your fashion designer name is Thomas Vienna

Your socialite name is Mad Dog Voorhees

Your fly girl / guy name is T Kas

Your detective name is Dik-dik Valhalla

Your barfly name is Digestive Biscuit Margarita

Your soap opera name is Edward Grandview

Your rock star name is Raspberry Truffles Tacyon

Your Star Wars name is Thobuf Kasjul

Your punk rock band name is The Pissed Zepplin

The Amazing Meganame Generator

Miranda Rights

2006-11-19T21:27:00.000-05:00

I twisted my ankle when we were loading the car on Saturday morning. Steph was on her way to a friend's house to play and spend the night, and Julie and I were on the way to a local science fiction convention. I was carrying a box, with Steph behind me, when I partially stepped off of the walkway, and my ankle collapsed sideways.

It really hurt, like my ankle was on fire. I also ripped the knee of my jeans, and skinned one knee.

Julie ran Stephanie over to her friend's house while I cleaned up. We got in the car when she returned, and headed to the convention.

I gimped around for the day. For lunch, we gimped over to a chinese noodle house in Philadelphia's China town, and I had a beef satay dish with wide noodles. Julie had a fresh flounder dish. The best part of the convention was that one of the conference rooms was a steady stream of panels about online gaming, virtual reality, virtual businesses, and the uses of virtual spaces for psychology. There was a projection TV set up in the room, showing a theater in Second Life, and the panel was being broadcast live to the virtual world as well. A few times, we were able to see the panel from the point of view of the virtual world. The avatars in Second Life could comment, and get their questions answered by members of the panel.

Julie ended up leaving me in the room to do other things, since I lacked mobility, and she got to play with clay with another artist.

We ended up not selling anything in the art show.

Busy Week

2006-11-16T13:02:00.000-05:00

A lot has happened this week. We fired the kiln three times, once as bisque, once to cone four, and then once to cone six. I turned it up to high at one thirty this morning, and put in the peep plugs. The kiln sitter tripped sometime before six this morning, and the kiln is now cooling.

I bought two boxes for the rayguns. I had hoped to find some used cigar boxes that would be the right size, but they were not long enough. I ended up going to an arts and crafts store, and buying a pair of latched boxes. Hopefully, we can get them stained and lined before Friday; if not, they will wait until Arisia.

We almost fired the raku kiln last night. I had one new piece, the rocket with the canard fins, that I had glazed, and a few other pieces that I was going to risk for refire. The canrard rocket will have a red body, with a black nose tip and fins. The engines are copper red. It will be a nice piece when its done, and the red low fire glaze that I used is one of the most reliable that we have. We decided to put the firing off until we have some dryer weather and more new work.

An Unfortunate Choice of Names

2006-11-12T10:35:00.000-05:00

Read this.

Then click on this link.

We drove by the latter yesterday, while visiting Charlottesville, Virginia. I couldn't get the definition of the term out of my head.

Monticello overlooks Charlottesville, and is also near Blue Ridge Pottery.

Sunday Firing

2006-10-30T12:55:00.000-05:00

We fired the raku kiln Sunday.

I had spent most of Saturday in the studio, glazing rockets and pots. I didn't have a lot of pieces, but it takes a while to do each one. We tend to put layers of underglaze under our glazes, which intensifies the colors of the glazes, or moves them from being marginal to being vivid. I also had a lot of finicky, detail work, like glazing flower petals, stems, and leaves on two pieces.

We took a break Saturday evening, and went to an Octoberfest party for a few hours. When I got home, I returned to the studio until midnight.

We noted some strange things when glazing the tallest of the rockets. The windshield was no longer centered on the dorsal fin; it was as if the entire piece twisted in the bisque firing about twenty degrees. There was a set of portholes along each side of the rocket, and you can see where they are no longer lined up, and are progressively more off center the farther you get from the nose. I used a Korean throwing technique to get the height for the piece, and it put so much stress in the clay that the piece 'unwound' a bit while firing.

Julie had a porcelain test piece that she fired, trying some different techniques, and she also glazed a small lided jar that I had thrown some time back.

We did two firings. During the first, I placed a vase in a bad position in the kiln, and it was unfortunately dropped and chipped its foot when we were taking it out. I want to try to refire two of the rockets, since I don't like the way the Seth's turned out, and the engines weren't reduced enough and are a bright green instead of being copper.

Prepping for Sunday

2006-10-28T10:35:00.000-05:00

We plan to fire the raku kiln tomorrow. We've had rain for the last couple of days, but the weather is supposed to clear up by Sunday.

Today, Julie and I need to glaze our pieces. Julie has one test piece, and I have my rockets for Philcon. I need to get one of the propane tanks refilled, to make sure that we have enough fuel for the firing.

New Pictures Up

2006-10-24T22:42:00.000-05:00

Julie and I have both posted new pictures on our Flickr accounts, accessable from the links on the right hand side of the blog.

Red Cherry Tomato Grapes

2006-10-24T08:57:00.000-05:00

Tod, one of my associates, was washing out some grapes this morning. They were very large for grapes; he referred to them as 'nearly small plums'. We kicked around alternate names for them, and then settled on 'red cherry tomato grapes', which creates a sort of closure with the term grape tomatoes. One could make something like a Waldorf salad including grape tomatoes and red cherry tomato grapes.

I took a peek in the kiln this morning. It was too hot to throw open, but cool enough that I could lift the lid for a quick glance inside.

It looks like the rockets all survived the bisque firing. Some of them were rather tall, so we loaded them on one side of the kiln, which allowed Julie to get in another half shelf supporting the tail of a new yard dragon.

Countdown to Philcon

2006-10-22T19:47:00.000-05:00

The Philcon Art Show starts on November 17th. That is about four weeks from now. We are loading a bisque kiln in preparation.

There are five of my rockets currently in the kiln. A sixth rocket is still a bit too damp. It is a mid-sized, three engined rocket, with tight tail fins, and a pair of canard fins. The only carving is the windshield. The canards are so far forward on the body of the rocket that I had to break two notches into the throwing chuck to accomodate them.

Julie has a number of her dragon pieces, both for raku and high fire in the kiln. She is waiting on a set of mugs that she threw that have dragons emerging from the side, reading books.

This Pot is Worth Eight Thousand Eel Skins

2006-10-22T19:40:00.000-05:00

Long ago, back in the day, I would engrave things into the bottom of my larger bowls and covered jars. The foot on these pieces would be so big that my name and the date would look a little lonely. I used a green covered jar for my chili at the cookoff (Laguna clay company "Rod's Bod", celedon glaze with iron oxide decorations, reduction fired to cone ten), and that was what was carved on the foot. Fragments of my dreams would make it onto pots, and this was one of them.

Another piece had the statement "Eggs were the id of the sixties".

Chili Cookoff

2006-10-16T11:37:00.000-05:00

Julie came in second in the most unusual category.

My chili had issues, which started when I couldn't find the same kind of peppers that we used when we made the test batch, and I added too much crushed tomato, and had to fight to doctor it back.

Next year, I'll go with a vegetarian chili, made with a vegetable broth base and portabella mushrooms.

Win Some, Lose Some

2006-10-11T21:44:00.000-05:00

I'm still getting over my cold.

More of a persistant cough now, but I have to take something every four hours to keep it from getting too annoying.

I went into the studio, bright one morning this week, to check on all of the rockets. Julie had moved some of my finished pieces out of the damp box so they could start drying out (one of my larger rockets had issues with a fin starting to separate, since the fins and rocket body had been different degrees of dampness when joined, so Julie repaired it for me). I picked up one of the two smaller rockets, flipped it over, and tried to stand it on its tail. The fins were slightly out of alignment, so the nose of the rocket didn't point true. The problem was that the fins weren't flat on the bottom, but came to points. I fiddled with the tip of one fin with a fingernail, scraping it a bit, and tried again. Nope, still not right. After four or five tries, and a couple of different fins, I accidently snapped one of them off.

I spent some time looking at the piece, and decided that the little aerospike engine that I had trimmed into the rokcet body wasn't very even, since I may not have centered the piece on its chuck properly before trimming. With no ceremony, I scuttled the piece into the recycling bag. I didn't trust myself after that to do any trimming that early in the morning.

Today, after work, I was able to return to the studio. I had planned on it last night, but had ended up making "savory Cornish pasties with bits of sheep innit". From scratch. Very tasty, but it took a bit more time than I had wanted to spend, and by the time we had finished dinner I was too tired.

Anyways, returned to the studio to work on the pieces that I had thrown sometime last week. I pulled out the long skinny rocket, and set the rocket body upright on the wheel head. Centering it, I spent some time with my trimming tools and a steel rib reducing the diameter of the base of the rocket, and then feathering the change into the rest of the rocket. I start at the very base of the rocket with a wire trimming tool, and trim down against the wheel head. This ends up sealing the piece to the wheel, and I worked a small coil of clay around the base of the piece as well to strengthen the seal.

Some of my favorite trimming tools are actually sculpturing tools with wire loops at the ends. One end is usually a round loop, and the other is squared off. I use the round loops to trim anything that is flat, and the square end to trim anything that is rounded, since applying the right end of the tool to the right shape of a piece will cause the tool to touch in only one small area. The wire is thin, so it cuts the clay. The only trouble with these tools is that they wear out pretty quickly, the wire thinning out from the wear, until it breaks. Usually, I would just buy another one, but we haven't found a local vendor for these tools. I may have to fabricate new rounded ends in the garage with my torch, pliers and a paperclip for raw materials.

Rocket trimmed nicely upright. I found that my chuck was slightly too big, so the nose of the piece would have dented against the wheel head. I used an older chuck that has already been bisqued, and then used Julie's Giffin Grip with the long support arms to hold the rocket body upside-down so I could trim the base and foot where the engines would attach. I ended up only having enough room for a single engine bell at the base of the rocket.

When trimming the engine bell, I left a plug on the base of the engine. I carved a hole into the base of the rocket, and then scored and slipped the pieces to join them. There is a lot more surface area on the plug, so the engine bell is held much more tightlythan just scoring the base. I created a fin template, cut out and beveled fins, then carved V-shaped notches into the rocket to double the surface area joining fin to rocket, with corresponding beveling of the root of the fin. Julie had a little talk with me about my handbuilding techniques after I snapped that fin off, and is encouraging me to strengthen my pieces. She has also had the opportunity to see almost every rocket that I have made over the years break in one move or another, so has seen the insides of most of my work.

Once the fins were on Julie helped me lay out a little carving on rocket. The piece is so long that I can't work on both ends of it clearly with or without my glasses. I described how I wanted the cockpit window to look, a narrow slit, like what you would see on a commercial airliner, and she drew in the first line properly centered with one of the fins. Once I carved the cockpit in place, I added a row of four portholes along each side of the rocket, as if it was a passenger liner.

The piece is drying slowly in the damp box. We'll pull it out this weekend to join the others drying in the studio.

Under the Weather

2006-10-09T06:00:00.000-05:00

Last Tuesday, fifteen of us went to see the Late Show with David Letterman. I was able to get a block of twenty tickets, but, due to some last minute scheduling changes at work, I could only get commitments from fifteen, one of them being Julie. We took the train up to NY Penn Station, and then the subway up to the theater. I had a bit of a cough that day.

My brother Rob was in town on Wednesday, and we all had dinner with him in Cherry Hill. We went to a restuarant called Bahama Breeze, which has some pretty good seafood. My cough was a little worse.

By Thursday, things were bad enough that I had to stay home from work. There were a couple of meetings that I had scheduled with my co-workers that I missed, and there are is a paper that I am co-authoring with another engineer (well, more like ten pages of guidelines than a paper) that I am overdue with my contributions for. I have serious sinus congestion, and a wicked cough. Most troubling, the glands along the left side of my neck are so swollen that they are painful, as if something sharp was jabbed into my neck. Along with the bubbling rasp of my voicebox, it sounds and feels just like things did earlier in the year, when I got so sick and the bronchial cleft cyst formed. This is on the left side this time, not the right.

I spent most of the day sleeping. I had to get Stephanie off to school, since it was the second day of Julie's jury duty.

I was out on Friday as well. After dropping Steph off at school, I went to work to pick up my laptop, in order to do some work at home. I ended up in a meeting for an hour, and then came home. It was a rainy, miserable day, which I also spent mostly in bed. I never got around to using my laptop. At the end of the school day, I picked Stephanie up. The only bright point in the day was that the trial that Julie was on ended, the filed their verdict, and her jury duties are over.

Julie started coming down with something on Saturday.

Two New Cons

2006-10-02T11:23:00.000-05:00

We've added two more conventions to our list for next year:

Comic-Con at the end of July
Dragon*Con in early September

There is only a month between these two conventions, so we will see how it goes with the availability of artwork. They will be the largest two cons on the schedule. Dragon*Con is also a juried show, so Julie and I will need to submit pictures of our work sometime in the new year to see if we can get admission.

We will need to ship our work to San Diego for the Comin-Con, and there is a sculptor who I know will be at Arisia that I want to talk to about better (and cheaper) means of shipping than what we used to go to WorldCon in Anaheim. She had a honkin' big wooden crate that she packed her artwork in and shipped.

A little over two months after Dragon*Con is the next Philcon, and the convention cycle will start again. Hopefully we will spend the next year madly throwing and firing pieces for the shows.

A Day in the Studio

2006-10-01T21:44:00.000-05:00

I returned to the studio today.

Julie kept wetting my pieces down all week. She also ran across two partially completed rockets, a larger version of Stephanie's rocket with the flowerpot in the window, and a small rocket, and wetted them down seven or eight times, wrapped them in wet sheets of newspaper and plastic. There were no engine bells or throwing chucks for the older rockets.

I worked on the tall vase first. I trimmed it upright first, to get some clay off the base, and then flipped it over. Instead of trimming a step inward from the side of the vase to the foot, I created a rounded rim that projected from the side of the foot, to match the rounded rim on the top of the vase. I then dug out my pottery notebook, and found the sketch of a vase that Stephanie had decorated for me. There were three six petalled flowers, with a couple of leaves, wandering up the side of the little sketch. I used a black felt pen to hand sketch the design on each side of the vase, and then used a pick tool to carve out the lines. I plan to use white crackle on the piece, with pink flowers with yellow centers, and the leaves and stems green.

I next worked on the large rocket that I threw earlier in the week. I had forgotten to roll out a slab for the fins, so I went out to the garage, cleared off the slab roller, and rolled out a small slab. Returning to the studio, I placed the rocket in its throwing chuck on the wheel, and trimmed the base. I carved out the base of the rocket, similar to the foot of the vase, and left a rounded rim. I then sketched out and carved the windows for the cockpit. The center window is a rectangle, with a right triangle on either side. I placed the spots for the fins, then carved a set of vents on either side of the top fin behind the cockpit window. I carved whale belly lines onto the ventral surface. There were four engine bells, so I picked the three best matches, setting the last one aside for another rocket, trimmed the other three, then attached them to the body by slipping and scoring. I went and found a piece of light cardboard in our junk mail pile, and used it to make a fin template. The sketch that I had made for this rocket had the fins staying tight to the rocket body, the curve of the fin not going much beyond the widest part of the rocket, and were attached from just before the where the engines were mounted almost to the widest diameter of the body. The inner edge of the fins sink between the rise of the engine bells, with the bells and fins sixty degrees out of phase. I cut the fins, bevelled the leading edge of the fins, and attached them.

The rocket was placed in its chuck, wrapped in plastic, and placed into the damp box.

The two older rockets needed chucks to dry and be fired in. We have some bisqued chucks in the garage from older rockets, so I grabbed a pair and brought them into the studio.

I attached the fourth engine bell to Stephanie's flowerpot rocket. I then cut and placed the fins, then wrapped the finished piece and placed it into the damp box. I used a fired chuck from the garage to hold it

The two smaller rockets did not have engine bells. The idea of these pieces is that they were to be simpler, quicker to make, and less expensive to sell. When trimming the foot of the pieces, I trimmed some rings and circular slots into the base, sort of like an aerospike engine. I added three fins to each, then placed them in their chucks in the damp box.

I threw two more large rockets, with three engine bells, and rolled out a small slab. Everything is wrapped and in the damp box for later in the week.

The first rocket has a body shaped like a large tear drop. I don't know what I'm going to do with the fins, but I may just do an aerospike engine on the end of the teardrop, trim the other end to a point, invert the piece, and add fins.

The second rocket is taller and thinner than any of my other rockets, and may have one or more of the engine bells attached. I threw the piece more like a tall vase, doing lots of collaring, before closeing the piece. The volume of air trapped inside seemed perfect for creating a tall, slender piece. I have a lot of sketches in my pottery book of taller, skinnier rocket designs, so I am going to finally get to implement one of them.

Rocket Count: Four Green, Two Thrown

'P' is for Pottery

2006-09-23T13:29:00.000-05:00

I returned to the studio today.

I threw a large rocket, firing chuck, and a set of three engine bells. The piece will be shorter than the Lunar Queen, the one that sold at the Worldcon art show, but it is larger than most but my first few rockets. The fins are going to start just after the body of the rocket curves in to the tail, and the outer edge will be strait lines that are parallel to the direction of flight. The inner edge of the fins will curve into the spaces between the engine bells. I'm debating whether to add stubby canard fins. There was one rocket that exploded in the kiln that had canard fins, and it was the first one that I had thown with the inner edge of the tail fins intruing into the bell gap.

I threw a small rocket as well, one that won't have engine bells, and will have minimum carving. The amount of work to create the little rockets will be less, so I can set a lower starting price on it. I figure that I can try to sell a couple of these little rockets at each convention. If the bidding warms up enough, then the buyers may hop over to some of my mid price pieces.

The last piece that I threw was a tall vase. I have some doodles of tall vases, with different simple shapes and patterns carved into them, like geometric shapes, flowers, and bamboo. Stephanie had me draw her a vase, and then did a simple column of flowers decoration. I'll blow up her flower design, transfer it to the piece, and then carve the outline of all of the flowers. I plan to have the body of the piece white crackle, the flowers pink with yellow centers underglaze covered in clear crackle , and the foot, rim, and flower outline matte black. The outline will make the flowers look a bit cartoony, but that is part of the look that I am going for.

Julie is still working in the studio, so I am going to pull together a green chili.

Winter Pottery Tour

2006-09-18T19:15:00.000-05:00

We have selected four conventions with art shows to enter our pottery in.

Starting in November, we have one convention every other month, all within driving distance. This will save money on shipping, as well as provide time for us to do additional work between the cons.

The conventions are currently:

Philcon in November, near Philadelphia
Arisia in January, near Boston
Lunacon in March, near New York City
Balticon in May, near Baltimore

Julie is already working on new dragons. We have also ordered a Critter spray gun and compressor for glaze application (hopefully to solve the Floating Blue problem). I need to get into the studio and start making rockets again.

Chili Weather

2006-09-18T18:33:00.000-05:00

Fall is upon us. Time to think of the Chili Cookoff.

Julie and I were talking the other day, while we were on a driving excursion, and the topic turned to chili.

We've had a lot of luck with our local chili cookoff. I think we have each won once or twice in the last few years, and I've done it twice with non-traditional chilis. Two of my memorable chilis were "Road Kill Chili" and "Beachcomber Chili". Both were green chilis, one with fish and scallops, the other with 'not beef' in it (a variety of meats, all store bought).

This year we started to kick around different chili themes and names. The two working themes that we settled on were "Chili Alfredo" and "Pizza Chili", with Julie glomming onto the former, and I the later. Pizza chili would be a red chili, without beans, but it would have a pizza spin to it, with the selection of chile peppers and meats, and would be served with mozarella cheese (maybe in little cubes instead of shredded.) Chili Alfredo would be a chili with a cream base.

Although the cookoff isn't until October, we need some time to try out and perfect the recipes. We decided to start our experiments this last weekend, to give us time to mess around with the recipes.

Inventing a new chili recipe is fairly straitforward. I usually look at a handful of chili recipes to start, to get an idea of proportions and refresh my memory on the various cooking techniques. Its more to get me thinking of the components that go into a good chili, so non of my experiments will go totally flat.

Sunday I made the pizza chili. I used sweet italian sausage and diced pepperoni for the meats, crushed fresh and canned roma tomatos for the red sauce, and used roasted cherry peppers for the chiles. More herbs, spices, and garlic were added, and some sauteed onions. We served it with shredde mozarella and a little orechette pasta, which are like little flat discs of pasta with a raised edge. It was really tasty, and Stephanie liked it a lot. You could tell that it was chili, but it also tasted like a really good pizza.

We followed the pizza chili with vanilla bean ice cream, with a home made hot fudge sauce.

Today, Julie made the chili alfredo. It used three types of green chiles, chicken broth, diced tomatos, spices, little white beans, something cleverly run through a meat grinder, and heavy cream. It tasted absolutely wonderful, looked beautiful with various red, pale green, and other colorful bits in a blush sauce, and had the interesting property of being hot when you ate it, but it had a short tail for the afterburn, since the cream made it self-quenching.

We followed the chili alfredo with freshly baked pecan bars.

Each evening, after approving of the finished dish, Julie and I would write down everything that we could remember about how we made our chilis, including all of the ingredients and proportions.

I'll post recipes after the cookoff.

Kiln Conversion

2006-09-10T13:01:00.000-05:00

We got up early this morning, at least for a Sunday. I spent about twenty minutes loading assorted tools into my toolbox, and the stray oversized ones into a corregated box. The last thing that I tossed in was my glaze recipe notebook.

We went over to Ronnie's studio, to convert an old Sno Industries electric kiln to raku. It was an easy conversion, taking about an hour to pull off the kiln sitter and heating elements, cut the burner vent into the side of a kiln section (without taking the steel off of the kiln brick, tin snips for the metal, and using a hacksaw blade to cut through the kiln brick) and cutting vent holes into the top and bottom of the kiln. Ronnie's husband, Tom, was there to see how it was done, and to help out with the lifting and anywhere else he could.

Having another set of hands and another brain to throw at the process really speeded things up. About half way through, Tom and I started to talk about doing raku kiln conversion as a side business, since it was going so quickly. We decided that we needed a three and a half inch diameter cylindrical saw attachment to a drill, for the vent holes, that would be tall enough to allow us to cut through the side of the kiln in one pass, rather than fiddling with the tin snips and hacksaw.

We also placed the cinderblock pad, on top of the concrete slabs that Ronnie and Tom poured behind her studio. The kiln is inplace, with all of the pieces correctly stacked. The only thing left to do is to add swag chains to the lid, and to get their propane tank installed and plumbed.

Their kiln is not as deep as ours, but it is wider, so pieces that are of a larger diameter can be done.

Back From Vacation

2006-09-01T10:00:00.000-05:00

We're back from vacation.

Four pieces sold at the Worldcon art show. Three of them were Julie's dragon pieces, one raku, one stoneware, and one porcelain, and had bids for a couple of days. The last was one of my rockets, the "Lunar Queen", and it sold after the normal bidding closed. I didn't realize that I had had a sale until I was doing an inventory as we were packing up to leave.

We received a lot of positive comments about our work on the last day.

The sales don't nearly cover our expenses for the trip, but we never thought that they would. We need to plan ahead a little better, and also need to put something together, like a photo album, to educate people on the raku process.

We have identified three conventions in the next six months that we would like to attend, and talked with the art show directors for two of them, and had an indirect communication with the director of the third. All are within reasonable driving distance (which in this family means within four hundred miles).

Finishing Cinco de Mayo

2006-08-14T22:25:00.000-05:00

I finished the Cinco de Mayo tonight. I had to swap out the finneal that sticks out of the front of the gun. I had found a really neat crystaline ball on the end of a brass fitting, and tried twice to solder one onto the gun without having the thermal shock pop the ball off the end. I failed both times, and I even used a heavy C-clamp as a heat sink on the second try. Unfortunately, the magical adhesive that the vendor used to attach the ball popped after about an hour after attaching it to the fitting to the gun. I tried three or four different commercial adhesives, including the stuff that you use to glue paste gems to costume jewelry, and nothing worked.

The new finneal is a piece of turned brass, the same as is on the Cereza Negra. I torched off the remains of the old finneal, and replaced it with the heavy brass one.

The raygun is done, touched up, and has been placed into a long, stray sock, which is now in one of our suitcases. I may play with the paint on the grip while in Phoenix later this week.

I wish that I had a pair of wooden cigar boxes, from a Latin American country, to display the rayguns in. Maybe I'll see if I can track something down in the airport, or maybe at a cigar store in Phoenix.

Cereza Negra is Complete

2006-08-13T21:42:00.000-05:00

I finished the Cereza Negra tonight. I had to do some fine touch-up painting. It looks real nice. I may post some more pictures of it tomorrow.

The Cinco de Mayo is having issues. I hope to finish it tomorrow, but I may need to abandon it until after vacation, since there are so many little details that I need to finish.

We brought Slurpy and Lily to my friend Laura's house, and I got to meet her boyfriend Bill. We all had a good time, and also grilled up some dinner. Julie and I brought Greek chicken, legs and wings again, which always seems popular.

Thursday Night

2006-08-11T07:35:00.000-05:00

Worked on the rayguns last night.

Some of the paint was flaking off the trim pieces, so I used steel wool to get them down to bare metal, then sprayed them with a few coats of primer. I was able to place the pieces on the top of empty root beer and lemon thing bottles, instead of hanging from string like I did last time. The pieces are very flat, and the visible part is rim of each piece.

I repainted the body of the "Cereza Negra" as well. I was able to balance the spindle on the top of another glass soda bottle, and get access to all sides of the piece.

I also sculpted the handle for the "Cinco de Mayo" raygun. I altered the curves on the back of the handle butt, which looks aesthetically pleasing, as well as fits the hand better.

Friday night, I'll paint the second raygun handle, as well as start the finish work on the Cereza Negra. This will be gluing the trigger and triggerguard into place, and then filling the remaining gaps with wood putty. This will then be sanded and touched up this weekend.

Painting Handle

2006-08-08T06:16:00.000-05:00

I painted the grip for the raygun last night. The flexible sculpey was tan, the craft store being out of the darker colors. I disassembled the raygun until I had separated the grip with trigger guard, and then masked off all of the brass and metal. I suspended the piece with string outside, then carefully applied a couple of coats of spray paint.

The paint is a medium brown that is supposed to bead and look like leather. It takes twelve hours to dry, so I have it hanging in the garage until later this morning.

The Muse of Fire and Mud

2006-08-06T20:32:00.000-05:00

Its been a hectic week. We realized on Friday night, while I was prying up boards, that the damage the the deck is greater than we thought. It looks like we need to pull up the entire surface of the deck, and replace it. Julie voted for something that can't rot, like the composite boards that they sell at Home Despot. With so much going on right before vacation, and so many projects left unfinished, we decided to wait until September to finish ripping up the deck and repairing it.

Yesterday, I worked on the ray guns. Julie had made me a handle for one our of flexible sculpy, but when it was finished, and the gun reassembled, I did not like the way it looked. The trigger guard of the gun didn't fit right any more, and the space between the trigger and the handle was too small. I finally realized that I had switched handles on the guns, and when I swapped them back, I ended up breaking the joint holding the guard to gun, which was buried in sculpy. I had to remove the handle before I could re-solder the guard. I was rebuilding the handle to a different design.

Julie was in the studio, glazing. She was working on raku dragon vases. She was also firig a glaze kiln with a bunch of wonderful pieces in it, including a dragon teapot with two matching tea cups. We were planning to fire the raku kiln on Sunday, so we needed to get everything glazed and dried.

To increase the complexity, we had company coming over for dinner Sunday, Ronnie and Tom, and also see us fire the raku kiln. We were planning to grill greek chicken, with sweet potatoes and portabella mushrooms. Our guests were bringing a couple of salads. We also wanted a blueberry crumble pie, so we bought some fresh blueberries.

When I got into the studio, I glazed three rockets, and four of my smaller closed forms. The rockets all had a black underglaze on the fins, with a cone O6 candy apple red glaze on top. I had tried the glaze in raku before, but it had turned out a more pinkish red. I was hoping that the red low fire glaze was partially transluscent, so that the black underglaze would darken it. An underglaze is like a matte paint that doesn't change during the firing process, and is placed under the glaze.

The big rocket has its body covered with Seth's Luster, with copper red on the engine bells. I left the cockpit windows and the 'vents' between the fins unglazed, so they would turn matte black.

The second rocket has Seth's around the cockpit window, and Seth's on the belly and nose cap. I used a white underglaze on the rest of the piece, with a clear crackle over the top. Copper red was used on the engine bells.

The third rocket has the candy apple red around the cockpit windows, with black underglaze underneath. Copper red was used for the engine bells, belly, the vents between the fins, and on the nose cap. The rest is white underglaze with the clear crackle over the top.

There is a lot of uncertainty when we fire raku. The thickness piece and of the glaze, the combination of glazes on a piece, how the kiln is run up, and what the conditions are in the reduction chamber all contribute to the final piece. There is a lot of luck involved to get a sucessful piece, or there is an acceptance that a piece is what it is. Serendipity.

The muse of fire and mud sang today; every one of the pieces that we pulled out of the reduction chambers was wonderful. We spent the evening, camped out on the remains of the back porch, eating chicken with fine company, and talking pottery. As we talked process and techniques, Julie or I would run into the house, and pull down a piece from one of our shelves, or out of a box. We ended the night around the kitchen table, eating blueberry pie.

When we return from our vacation, we're helping Ronnie and Tom build their own raku kiln. They had spent this morning pouring a concrete pad for it outside of their studio.

Demolition Guy

2006-08-01T20:09:00.000-05:00

Ripping up parts of your house with a crowbar is both frightening and enlightening. I have to pull up part of our back deck, since the boards are rotting. The previous owner, who had installed the deck, had not left any gaps in the board to allow for drainage. The first few boards next to the sliding door have started to crack and sag. The fear is that I will crack a window or dent the wrong board when swinging the axe or prybar. The enlightenment is seeing how it was all put together, and deciding how to improve things so the deck won't die again.

Some of the boards I could step on, at the end next to the house, and get them to pop and sag. I decided to replace the entire length of each damaged board. I was up to five boards (ten feet by two by six) before they started to seem solid. I was able to drive the chisel end of the prybar through each board without too much effort.

Did I mention that its one of the hottest evenings in the year? I was able to rip two boards out before I got could no longer see, due to a lack of light and too much sweat in my eyes. I'll continue Thursday night.

Saturday Night

2006-07-29T22:22:00.000-05:00

The kiln tripped at about 2:00 this afternoon. The garage is very hot, due to the kiln, but I had to work on cutting some brass and soldering this afternoon. I am making a brass plate that fits at the bottom of the grip on each ray gun. The pieces are held to the bottom of the orthoganal stems with a knurled brass cap that I bought in the lamp section at the Loewe's. The hollow tubes that hold the ray guns together are all three eighths inch with fine threads at the ends. Most lamp parts match this size, but finding anything in the screw and fastener section of hardware stores doesn't bring much luck.

The butt piece on each gun is two rectangular pieces of brass, one slightly smaller than the other. There is a hole in each piece, drilled out to three eighths, and then the holes are lined up, and the pieces soldered together. I solder on top of a scrap kiln brick on top of the kiln, and things were really hot out there today with the kiln cooling down.

Hopefully, I can sculpt the handles this week.

Bisque Fire - Dragons and Rockets

2006-07-29T07:46:00.000-05:00

We have the kiln loaded about 2/3rds. There are several rockets, all of my closed forms, and Julie has some wonderful dragon pieces, including a large pitcher and a teapot with matching cups out of porcelain.

We candled the kiln overnight, since we were uncertain whether my rockets were a hundred percent dry. Candling warms the kiln enough to drive the physically bound mositure out of the clay. In our case, overnight is about seven hours, since Buffy woke me up for some unknown reason this morning at six thirty.

I used a hand mirror to check for mositure. The lid of the kiln is propped open with a piece of fire brick, so I slipped the mirror under the lid, and checked to see if there was any condensation on it. There was none, so I turned all of the switches on the kiln to low, and closed the kiln.

Two hours later, I again checked for moisture. I had to use my kiln gloves, since the handle on the lid is getting hot. Again, there was no moisture. I turned the bottom bank of kiln elements onto medium. Checking our firing log, we will turn up one bank of elements every hour, working from bottom to top, until they are all on high.

I bought some brass from a hobby shop during the week on the way home from work. More stuff for the ray gun handles.

The Weekend

2006-07-23T16:25:00.000-05:00

We did a lot of yard work this weekend. There has been a rather large pile of mulch in our driveway that has had me parking my truck out on the street for well over a month, which is now distributed over the yard. Steph spent a couple of hours pulling weeds (working off her Nintendo DS debt, with the virtual dog software that she is running on it.) Julie has been everywhere, scrubbing the stairs, leveling sand, placing flagstone, and directing my work as well. I mainly shovelled mulch, and wheeled it around in the garden cart.

Yesterday morning, I was able to return to the studio and finish my pieces. I trimmed the last of the little closed forms, as well as put another rocket together. It looks fairly clean, where most of the things that bug me about my pottery were worked out in the raw clay before it is fired. These include things like beveling the edges of the wings, keeping the wings strait instead of accidently warping them through handeling, making sure that the marks in the piece where the fins have been joined are smooth rather than being able to see the scoring marks, having all three engines be the same size, joining the engines so that they point symetrically, making sure that the fins form a level surface when the piece is finished and standing on its tail.

Three weeks until vacation. We need to fire the kiln at least twice before then, and then fire the raku kiln three or four times.

Big Big Rocket

2006-07-18T21:23:00.000-05:00

I finished the big rocket tonight.

The humidity has been really high for the last week, so everything is taking forever to dry enough for carving.

On Saturday, Stephanie and I drove down to the Shore, Long Beach Island. She played in the waves for about six hours, with a break for a late lunch. We went to a nice sea food restaurant, where she had mako shark, and I had fresh scallops (harvested from the bay), which were in a pesto sauce with mushrooms, artichoke hearts, sundried tomatos, and mozarella cheese. Steph had a side of onion rings, and I had diced tomatos in basalmic vinegar.

At dusk, we learned to beach comb for sea glass.

Today, I had spent a few minutes at work on my whiteboard, sketching fin configurations until I found something that I liked. I kept trying to force a pair of stubby rectangular fins onto the mid body (I've only made one rocket where it looked good, which promptly blew up in the firing because I forgot to put a hole to the sealed center cavity..... uh, wait a minute.....needle tool through rear of rocket. The Big Rocket made a sucking noise as the pressure equalized.)

Three engine bells and fins. The cockpit windows are two rows of three rectangles. I carved two sets of intake vents between the top and side fins.

Its almost too tall to fit in its chuck in the damp box. I have it wrapped in plastic to slow down the drying. Tomorrow, I'll do the smaller rocket, and trim the closed forms and little vase.

Tres Balls

2006-07-13T07:03:00.000-05:00

The pieces were too wet for trimming last night. I pulled them out of the damp box, removed the plastic, and let them sit out for an hour to promote drying.

I threw three more of the ball shapes. Each one starts as a lump of clay about the size of a tangerine (or a jing char siu bau). Center the clay, open it up, raise the walls to a few inches, then collar the piece in. As the neck narrows, the rim goes ragged, so I trim it with my needle tool.

I collar until I have a small opening, then use a rib to define the square corner between the ball and the short stem that the opening is in. I also use the needletool to make the hole perfectly circular.

I use a concave rib to shape the outside of the piece, and make it more spherical. This can also involve gouging out clay that formed the base of the cylinder wall against the wheel head, and then using the rib to continue the curve of the exterior into the gouge.

I use the edge of a rib to put three concentric circles around the stem, stop the wheel, and do a one handed lift to a board for drying.

I have a page of notepaper where I sketched fifteen or so variations of what I could do with the ball shape, drawn months ago, and I'll choose three for implementation. Some are carved, like turbines, some have faces and ears, some are just statements of glazing effects.

Back to the Studio

2006-07-11T21:30:00.000-05:00

I finally got back in the studio this afternoon, right after work.

It took me a while to find the raku clay. I had built a set of shelves that we have placed just outside of the studio, with all of the boxes and bags of clay on it. It probably has six or seven hundred pounds of clay on it (its built of scavenged two by fours, held together with long deck screws). The raku clay was still in the studio, but hiding under one of our little tables. Julie had to tell me where to find it.

We have a bag and a half of soft raku clay, and several bags of dried out clay that I need to reconstitute. I cut off about a six pound hunk, a quarter bag, gently bounced it into something like a cylinder against the wheel head, and started to throw.

The clay has this musty and moldy smell to it that I always am surprised by when I've been away for a while. Its a happy smell for me. Its very earthy, like good soil.

I've been drawing pictures of rockets for a few weeks now without having a chance to throw, so it was fun to try to throw something specific.

My first piece was a rocket. Its bigger and longer than my regular rockets, along the lines of the Terra-5 from Space Patrol. The rocket body is thrown as a tall cylinder, and then the rim is collared in to a point. This traps a pocket of air within the body, so that the entire form of the rocket can be manipulated without fear of collapsing the cavity inside. Usually in clay, a push from the outside of a cylinder is matched by a supporting hand on the inside, and vice versa.

A piece is removed from the wheel head by first passing a cutting wire under the foot of the piece, pulling it as tight as possible so that the wire doesn't bow up under the piece. A squeeze of water is then put on the wheel head, and the wire is used to pass that under the piece. If the piece is small, it can be lifted off of the wheel head with the tips of your fingers cradling the piece, or, for larger pieces, the splash pan can be removed from the wheel, and the piece can be slid off of the wheelhead to a board covered in wet newspaper.

I tried to cut corners, and set a board next to the piece on the wheel head, and then tried to lift the rocket body clear. It was tall and tippy, so it fell over, and got flat on one side. Since the cavity inside is trapped air, the piece did not collapse. I was able to pat the piece back into shape, and then put it back on the wheel to remove most of the imperfections.

Each rocket needs a drying chuck and engine bells. I threw three large bells for the rocket.

My second piece is a smaller, fatter rocket, more like the ones that I threw at the beginning of the year. This one received three engine bells, and a small chuck.

The third piece is a small, skinny vase, with a collared shoulder and raised rim.

The fourth piece is a bit hard to explain. It is a spherical shape, about the size of a large Christmas ball ornament. It even has a stem like a ornament, but larger. Its too heavy to be an ornament, but it is a pleasing base shape, and I think of it more like a flower pot for a single flower, or maybe with a bit of frayed steel cable sticking out. I plan to make a whole series of these ornament sized things, and one day at lunch drew sketches of a whole family of them. This one will end up as a little jack-o-lantern, and be metallic copper when it is done, sort of like those pumpkins in the Spiderman movies. I may even do one out of cassius.

Steps, Pedals, and Rayguns

2006-07-08T18:14:00.000-05:00

Today, Julie worked on the steps out front.

She had gone to a tile store, and bought some nice tile from their clearance room. She broke them into pieces, and added some sea glass, shells, and broken pottery from rejected pots. She layed out patterns of shards to attach to the risers of the stairs.

When she worked at deciding what shards would go where, I worked on my rayguns. I used a box cutter and a small drill in my cordless screwdriver to carve out the groove that the trigger guards would go into in each raygun. I carefully used the boxcutter to cut the surface of the wood, and then used the drill to go deep. Between the box cutter and a metal pick from my tool box, I created two fairly clean groves. I also drilled a hole for the trigger. I started small, and worked my way up through the bits until the hole was big enough.

I brought the trigger guards out into the garage, wrapped the edges in cloth, and then clamped them into my bench vise (the cloth is to keep the vise from scratching the surface of the metal). I used a hacksaw to cut the trigger guards to the right length to fit into the grooves, arch over the trigger, and then touch the orthogonal metal stem on the ray gun. The orthogonal stem will be surrounded by the handle when the raygun is complete.

I tore long strips of aluminum foil to wrap around the wood of the guns, to shield them from the heat of my torch when I soldered. I used three layers, with air gaps between. I needed to solder the trigger guards while they were in place because the angle between the trigger guard, wood body of the raygun, and orthogonal stem of the raygun needed to form a tight triangle, and I had doubts about my ability to torch the guards on free hand.

Here is a picture of what one of the wall sconses looked like before I started. I pieced this together this morning, Julie took pictures, and later I realized that I had assembled the piece slightly incorrectly, but it gives an idea of what I started with:

The correct assembly for the wall sconse would have the flared pan for candle drips moved down to just above the dark ring above the orthogonal stem.

From the side, it looks a bit like a phaser pistol from the original Star Trek series, but with a Victorian flair.

Here is a picture of what the rayguns look like now:

Second half of the afternoon, I helped Julie hand mix eighty pounds of morter. She worked outside, mudding the shards and applying them to the steps. On the tops of the steps, she mortered decorative pavers.

It dirty work. Each piece needs to be 'buttered' on the back with morter, then applied to the surface of the wall. Morter is pushed between the pieces, and then a heavy wet sponge is used to smooth the morter and clean the face of the shards.

The decorative pavers seemed to involve lots of whacks with a rubber mallet, to get the morter to comress underneath so they can be correctly leveled.

She did three steps today. We have two more bags of morter, and the tree biggest steps to do.

I moved buckets of water, fetched drinks, and set up a fan to keep her cool. I also puttered around in the garage, straitening things up on the workbench, and fabricated a base plate for the foot pedal to Julie's flex shaft. Every time she uses it, she gets a shock because the cover on the bottom of the pedal was lost. I cut a piece of masonite to the right shape for the base plate, glued and screwed a small wooden block to it, then added four peg feet. I used a screw to go through the top of the pedal case into my block of wood to hold the new base plate on.

Independence Day Projects

2006-07-04T15:22:00.000-05:00

About five years ago, Julie, Steph and I went out to go to a community garage sale.

I came across a box containing two wall mounted light fixtures. They were brass and wood, with those 'flame' shaped light bulbs. I looked at the fixtures for a minute, then started to play with them. There were knurled caps that could be unthreaded, and then the whole thing fell apart. Looking at the pieces, I decided that I could pull the wiring, re-arrange the bits, and be most of the way to having a slick pair of vintage ray guns.

I paid the family the couple of bucks, and we got in the car. Before the next house, I had rebuilt one of the fixtures into my first gun, all it needed was a handle, trigger, and trigger guard.

I drew a picture of the finished gun on a piece of notebook paper. At some point, I added the title 'Cinco de Mayo'.

Later that day, I went to the local Pep Boys, and bought a can of red lacquer spray paint, the kind for touching up cars. I removed the turned wooden spindle from one of the fixtures, threaded it onto a length of string so I could hang it, and carefully spray painted the wood, so as to have no drips.

Once dry, I re-assembled the ray gun, and then worked a fashioning a handle out of oak. The handle was much simpler in the origingal design, mostly long curves. I spent a couple of hours on cutting and carving the handle, and finally put it in a box in the garage with the picture, and never worked on it again.

I'd run across the project every once in a while, and I had it sitting out a couple of weekends ago when Stephanie asked me if I would every make any more ray guns again.

I hated to admit it, but I had never finished any, so the whole thing dropped back into my mind, and I have been working on how to finish it.

Here is a picture of the current plan. I scanned in the old sketch, and then tweeked the handle in Paint.

I bought some flat brass stock yesterday from a hobby shop, and hand bent a trigger guard, made of two pieces of brass sandwiched together. The brass accent ball is soldered in place as well. The trigger is non-functioning, and is made from a piece of a brass o-ring, with a brass ball soldeded on (lead-free solder).

I have two fixtures, so I made two sets of trigger guards and triggers.

I need to drill a hole for the trigger to go into, and then cut a thin slot in the wood for the trigger guard to slide into. There is a metal tube inside where the handle is, which I will solder the trigger guard to. The handle will be made of flexible polymer clay.

Next project is to start dinner on the grill.

Third of July Planning

2006-07-03T16:56:00.000-05:00

We've been grilling a lot lately.

For dinner tomorrow, we are going to grill Greek chicken. We had Greek chicken legs on Saturday, so this time we are going to branch out and do wings as well.

The recipe is adapted from a boneless lamb kebab recipe from a cookbook by The Ladies of the Philoptochos Society Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church, in Charleston, South Carolina.

Chicken legs run about ninety-nine cents a pound, so its an inexpensive cut of meat to feed the family.

Greek Chicken
Four pounds or so of chicken parts (use your favorite bits)
1/2 cup oil
1/2 cup wine vinegar
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice (about two big lemons)
2 or more cloves garlic, crushed
4 teaspoons salt (double to be authentic)
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 Tablespoon oregano (or just 'Oregano', as the recipe calls for)

Combine all ingredients. I mix everything but the meat in a bowl, then pour over the meat that has been artfully arrange in a rectangular storage container, one big enough so that there is only one layer. Marinate the meat six hours or over night in the refridgerator, turning at least once to coat all sides.

Grill using your favorite method. It helps if everything is the same cut (say all legs, wings, thighs, or breasts) so they all cook the same amount of time.

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I'm working the trigger and trigger guard for my ray gun. I went to several hobby shops, and bought some brass strips, tube and rods. I've got some little brass balls around. I'll bend, cut and weld them together, then make the handle for the ray gun out of a bendable polymer clay. It will provide a durable handle, but will not shatter if dropped, since the cured surface bends like rubber. I can then spray paint the handle to match the rest of the gun.

A Thursday in Late June

2006-06-29T09:47:00.000-05:00

Worldcon is coming.

I don't really have anything for the art show. I've been reading instead of doing much else. We went to a blueberry festival last weekend, picked some berrries, and I baked a blueberry crumb pie.

I still have a cough and am wheezing. I have an inhaler that helps about half the time (the other half is either coughing fits or my gag reflex starts to kick in).

Four day weekend coming up. I have to start the pottery pipeline now, in order to have raku pieces ready.

I want to make a couple of rockets, both raku and high fired celedon pieces. I've had a ray gun in the garage that I haven't worked on for years that I could make a raku or cassius handle for to finish it.

I'd like to do a covered jar with some carvings in it. Maybe I can make a modern canopic jar or something.

Slinging Cement

2006-06-20T10:15:00.000-05:00

This weekend, we started to tackle one of our bigger projects. Julie has been landscaping the front yard, and there was a series of steps that needed to be created so she could finish laying mulch, flagstone, and plants.

On Saturday, we finally decided what we would do. We would cast the steps in concrete, and then mortar brick and flagstone on to finish the look.

We started to build wooden forms, out of a bunch of scrap plywood left over from other projects. In a couple of cases, we needed to have a curving form, so I bought a piece of thin plywood sheet, and we cut it lenghtwise into three long pieces. We used two foot lengths as 1X3s as stakes, only because it was the cheapest thing that I could find.

It was very hot this last weekend, so we worked only a few hours on Saturday and Sunday, but finished the forms.

I took yesterday off from work. I had a ten o'clock appointment with my ENT, to review another MRI that I had last week (everything fine, no sign of the cyst). We then went to Home Despot to get bags of concrete and to rent a mixer.

Five hours later, I returned the mixer. We had mixed two thousand two hundred and forty pounds (a British long ton) of concrete to create forty linear feet of steps. The worst part was having to lift the eighty pound bags, and hold them over the throat of the mixer, while Julie cut them open.

We are very sore, but quite pleased with the job. Having an electric cement mixer beats hand mixing, either with a shovel or with a rolling cylinder mixer. The mixer is nicely balanced, so positioning it for pouring, even in loose sand, was pretty simple.

Update

2006-06-15T08:38:00.000-05:00

I seem to have gone to a really dark place.

I am disappointed by just about everything that I see in the world.

The neverending battle to do the right thing is exhausting, and I want a break.

When I get the break, I don't want to do anything with it.

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Last night, Steph announced at 9:15 pm that she wanted to be part of a school talent show. There was a song that was attached to an animation that she found on the net, and she memorized the lyrics. She needed the music.

The song was called "Toy Soldier", by an artist named Martika, and had been recorded in the '80s.

I carefully explained to Steph that she can't task us with projects that late at night; if she had told us earlier in the evening, we could have done something about it.

She was sad, but accepting.

I was proud of her, but then thought about the times as a child when my parents were too busy to come through on a last minute requests.

I tracked down the name of an album containing the song on the web, then called our local Border's to see how late they were open.

They had one copy of the CD, and put it on hold for me. I raced out, and picked it up before they closed at ten.

Steph was very happy to get her music. We put it on her CD player, with "Toy Soldier" on repeat, and she happily listened as she was tucked into bed. I was happy to be her hero. At least there is some hope in the world, when we can solve little problems for our loved ones, and make them smile.

Update

2006-05-22T20:20:00.000-05:00

Last Monday, I travelled to Ft. Wayne for work.

On the way, I had a chance to visit my friend Maureen for a few hours in Cleveland, and we had lunch. We spoke of many things, and had a great time. My carry-on for the plane was a bag, with a raku rocket, and one of Julie's dragon vases.

The next few days were pretty uneventful, except that I was in Ft. Wayne.

I returned Wednesday night. Stephanie and Julie were very happy to see me.

Buffy-dog had had a really bad ear ache, and had to be taken to the vet while I was gone. She is on ear drops and doggie meds for the next few weeks, until her health improves.

On Sunday, I awoke with the inside of my mouth and uveula swollen. My breathing was blocked if I laid down on my back. When I talked, I sounded like someone 'talking under water'.
Julie had me call the doctor, and they sent me to the emergency room.

After a couple of hours of IVs, including Benadryl and steroids, as well as a neck X-ray and an ENT using a 'happy scope' up my nose, I got to return home. The swelling had dropped, due to the meds, but I had a cut on my uveula and a lesion on one of my tonsils. The doctor's are guessing that the swelling is a side effect of the blood pressure medicine that I have been taking for the last six years or so. I am on prednesone, benadryl, antibiotics, and a new blood pressure medicine.