Well, here it is - Land Grab Eve, night of the parking lot party, the big pilgrimage. I'm bummed I can't go. I remember the 'good old days' when I would work today, then frenziedly pack the truck after work, and drive out to Cooper's Lake, arriving around dusk, excited beyond words.
Not this year. Robin will be going out tonight, and won't be home till August 8th. (which sucks). I will probably go out for a few hours tomorrow sometime, and maybe again on Sunday. Whether or not I'll sneak out any next week is up in the air.
But - as I'm sure I mentioned - I have a line on a kennel that comes highly recommended for those who pamper their dogs. This place will even cook for your dog, if like me that's what you do at home. I'm going out Saturday to check the place out, and if all goes well, at least I'll be able to go out to Pennsic during War Week. Maybe not for as long as I have every other year (Saturday to Saturday) but at least something.
A&S 50 Work
Not this year. Robin will be going out tonight, and won't be home till August 8th. (which sucks). I will probably go out for a few hours tomorrow sometime, and maybe again on Sunday. Whether or not I'll sneak out any next week is up in the air.
But - as I'm sure I mentioned - I have a line on a kennel that comes highly recommended for those who pamper their dogs. This place will even cook for your dog, if like me that's what you do at home. I'm going out Saturday to check the place out, and if all goes well, at least I'll be able to go out to Pennsic during War Week. Maybe not for as long as I have every other year (Saturday to Saturday) but at least something.
A&S 50 Work
I began one of my projects this week ... I started carving the mold for my first attempt at pewter casting. This cast will be coins with a musical piratey emblem on them, for members of the Sea Chameleon to give out to bards who, in our humble opinions, go 'above and beyond' during Pennsic.
I started with outlining my basic circle, using a dollar coin as a size guide.
I believe I didn't really prep the soapstone all that well. For one thing, this chunk is large enough that I think it could have been split horizontally into two pieces, or at least evened up. But I hadn't had Robin do that part for me yet, when I got the time Wednesday to work on it, and didn't want to wait. I suppose, if it can be split, it still could be, even with the mold carved.
Then I carved out the entire surface for the coin ...
... which was a lot trickier than I thought. As I was trying to get it deep enough (but not too deep) to give the coin a nice thickness, I was also working on keeping nice straight side edges. Then I discovered that as you carve around the edges more and more to deepen the design, guess what - you also incrementally widen them as well. So the final size of the coin is somewhat larger than I intended. Fortunately not by much - 1/8 to 1/4 of an inch is all - so it's not going to make that much difference, and I'm okay with that.
I also got it a little uneven, getting it a little egg-shaped with one section of one side sticking out a little more than it should. But that's okay. It's not really that bad.
Next I began to carve the first part of the design. Pop quiz: what is wrong with this picture?
Yeah ... in casting, the design has to be carved in backwards to get it to show properly on the finished piece. This obviously isn't backwards. Fortunately, I caught this before it was a complete disaster, as this was just my very initial roughing in of the design, and it wasn't deep at all, just barely scratched in. I was able to sand it out and start again without significantly deepening the mold.
The final design.
A nice piratey musical note with crossed sword. We did a test cast on this last night - Robin did the actual casting, though when it comes time to make the final coins, I'll be doing it, since it's my A&S project.
I started with outlining my basic circle, using a dollar coin as a size guide.
I believe I didn't really prep the soapstone all that well. For one thing, this chunk is large enough that I think it could have been split horizontally into two pieces, or at least evened up. But I hadn't had Robin do that part for me yet, when I got the time Wednesday to work on it, and didn't want to wait. I suppose, if it can be split, it still could be, even with the mold carved.
Then I carved out the entire surface for the coin ...
... which was a lot trickier than I thought. As I was trying to get it deep enough (but not too deep) to give the coin a nice thickness, I was also working on keeping nice straight side edges. Then I discovered that as you carve around the edges more and more to deepen the design, guess what - you also incrementally widen them as well. So the final size of the coin is somewhat larger than I intended. Fortunately not by much - 1/8 to 1/4 of an inch is all - so it's not going to make that much difference, and I'm okay with that.
I also got it a little uneven, getting it a little egg-shaped with one section of one side sticking out a little more than it should. But that's okay. It's not really that bad.
Next I began to carve the first part of the design. Pop quiz: what is wrong with this picture?
Yeah ... in casting, the design has to be carved in backwards to get it to show properly on the finished piece. This obviously isn't backwards. Fortunately, I caught this before it was a complete disaster, as this was just my very initial roughing in of the design, and it wasn't deep at all, just barely scratched in. I was able to sand it out and start again without significantly deepening the mold.
The final design.
A nice piratey musical note with crossed sword. We did a test cast on this last night - Robin did the actual casting, though when it comes time to make the final coins, I'll be doing it, since it's my A&S project.
But the results weren't good, yet. The design didn't show up at all. Apparently it is not yet deep enough nor wide enough. Some of the lines in the mold are very, very thin, and apparently it's difficult to get the pewter to actually get down into those thin lines. We even tried re-heating it right in the mold, to see if we could get it to seep down in, but it wouldn't.
That's okay ... the basic design is good. All I have to do is widen and deepen each line, without ruining the whole thing. Should be fine! (she said with forced perkiness and unwarranted optimism!)
I really wanted Robin to have these for Pennsic, and I am unsure how I'm going to accomplish that now, unless I work on it Sunday, and can manage to fix the mold and cast the coins all that day, then run them out to him that evening or one evening next week. But ... that may be possible, if that's all I do on Sunday. We'll see.
Cell Phones Don't Swim
Which I knew, but had to experiment with anyway. Yesterday morning I accidentally dropped my cell phone into my mug of coffee. I immediately pulled it out, pulled the battery (upon which coffee ran out), and tried to dry it out, but it wasn't doing well. After about an hour I did get it to power on, but only as far as the initial splash screen ... and there was coffee squishing around under the screen.
I have to have the cell phone now, especially, as we haven't had a home phone in years, and this is all I have ... Robin was about to leave for 2 weeks at Pennsic, which made it even more important.
So I went to the Alltel store, and the girl initially told me to just put the phone and battery in a bowl of rice, that it would draw the moisture out, and often people said that would fix it. I was skeptical. Then she and some other employees there did acknowledge that even if it works, the phone usually never works quite right, and probably wouldn't last all that long. It might be a temporary fix, but not a permanent one.
I didn't want to take the chance of it working only long enough for me to, say, get to Pennsic, then my phone to die (if Tyler's at the kennel, I need to have a reliable phone on all the time), so I splurged and bought a new one. I'm glad I did - I love it! It wasn't that expensive, either (something like $80 after rebate). It's an LG Banter, and yes -
it's got the slide-out texting keyboard! I admit it ... I like texting. My old phone had the usual keypad thing where you had to hit each key multiple times to get the letter you wanted, and it was a pain. When they showed me this, and it was affordable, I was like, "Oh yeah!"
I didn't drop the phone in the coffee on purpose, but I'm kind of glad I did. Love the new one.
I have to have the cell phone now, especially, as we haven't had a home phone in years, and this is all I have ... Robin was about to leave for 2 weeks at Pennsic, which made it even more important.
So I went to the Alltel store, and the girl initially told me to just put the phone and battery in a bowl of rice, that it would draw the moisture out, and often people said that would fix it. I was skeptical. Then she and some other employees there did acknowledge that even if it works, the phone usually never works quite right, and probably wouldn't last all that long. It might be a temporary fix, but not a permanent one.
I didn't want to take the chance of it working only long enough for me to, say, get to Pennsic, then my phone to die (if Tyler's at the kennel, I need to have a reliable phone on all the time), so I splurged and bought a new one. I'm glad I did - I love it! It wasn't that expensive, either (something like $80 after rebate). It's an LG Banter, and yes -
it's got the slide-out texting keyboard! I admit it ... I like texting. My old phone had the usual keypad thing where you had to hit each key multiple times to get the letter you wanted, and it was a pain. When they showed me this, and it was affordable, I was like, "Oh yeah!"
I didn't drop the phone in the coffee on purpose, but I'm kind of glad I did. Love the new one.
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