Thread about making stuff

[MercenaryChef]

during quarantine i learned a lot about sourdough bread, fermenting vegetables and making kombucha. 

[Castellan]

I had a set of those little measuring spoons. The chain that held them had broken. So I dug them all out and reassembled the set using two of the miniature carabiner type clips that come with the hand sanitiser bottles that I clip on my bag.

That's it.

[Tears of Lys]

I grew up in a household where my parents made absolutely everything - from artificial bricks made out of plaster to cover this one wall (textured and everything) to screen printing to painting fine art to metal working to constructing ice ponds for us kids to skate on in the winter and igloos.  My dad built a miniature car track (can't think of the name of it) in the basement to race electric model cars on.  (no kit involved. just out of his head.) Oh, he built a motorboat from plans, and we boated on it for years.  My mom could literally sew anything - I mean blazers, suits, pants, you name it.  She made all of our curtains, more pillows than I can count - complicated ones, too.  Our bedroom walls had murals of scenes from Peter Pan flying over London at night with Wendy and the boys, and Cinderella with the Fairy God Mother changing the pumpkin to a coach, etc.  She could sculpt too!  She made the most beautiful small statue, but tried to fire it in our furnace and it broke.   She didn't have a kiln.  Oh, and etching too.

That's just some of the things they did.

Unfortunately, all this do-it-yourself-ism left me with the self-assurance that **I** could make or do anything at all too. I've had some success, but not nearly like them.   You really have to love doing stuff like this, or you'll never spend the time it takes to get good at it, and my patience level and attention span has been in the crapper lately.

 

[Fragile Bird]

@Tears of Lys what wonderful parents you had!

[LongRider]

I enjoy stringing beads and have made several bracelets, earrings, and necklaces.  
Lately have become interested in learning to work with wire with the beads, I want to make clasps, jump rings and dangles and have been watching Utube tutorials and practicing the techniques seen there.  

I like beading, it’s fun. 

[Larry of the Lawn]

Got a new torch tip this week to fix something on the truck, but I am am really excited to see what it does to cut granite.  I have a couple stone carving projects in progress that have stalled out and this might be what I need to turn the corner.  Going to grab some more gas this morning and blast a bunch of stone scraps and see what it does.

[The Mance]

Speaking of stone carving, I've gotten back into carving pipes.  Its been a hobby for +/- 30 years, and mostly I've just done it for fun/curiosity/gift giving.  Lately, though, I've been building up an inventory with the idea of finding/creating an outlet to start selling them.  

Typically I work with softer stones in the 2-3 mohs hardness range, so a lot of steatite, alabaster, and catlinite (aka pipestone).  These are all carvable with standard woodworking files and saws, and allow for some fairly delicate shapes and detail.  I worry about breakage, though, and have to warn people about dropping and banging on hard surfaces.  I figure they are at least as durable as glass pipes.

Since moving back to New Mexico I've been tracking down local sites where I've been able to actually mine some stone.  I've found some (pretty soft) alabaster, this stuff called "pilar slate" which I think is a form of steatite but nobody really seems to know for sure, as well some small chunks of lapidalite.  Some time this spring I'm going down to the southern NM/AZ border to track down a source of "Mattlinite"* which looks a lot like a travertine with its earthy colored swirls and hints of blue and white, but is much softer. 

When I first started carving stone it was with a piece of pipestone given to me by a hitchhiker I picked up on my way back from Alaska.  He was making mushroom shaped pipes using nothing but a coat hanger and a sharpened spoon.  I started off with a 4-in-1 rasp and some drill bits.  Lately I've upgraded to a few sets of tungsten carbide grit rasps, some better drill bits, and automotive wet/dry sandpaper up to 1600 grit.  I use a few different table top power tools for roughing out shapes from cut blocks, and for precise hole drilling.  I'm trying to streamline my process as much as I can while still doing the bulk of the shaping and finishing by hand.

Perhaps ironically, I haven't actually used a pipe for years, but I've always enjoyed carving them.  I like the idea of creating a type of personal tool that will be held and used as opposed to a piece of statuary or figurine that just sits on a shelf.  My pipes are all essentially spoon pipes, in various smoothly rounded, symmetrical configurations.  I don't do figures, engraved patterns, or inlays, but they are, I think, comfortable to hold and interesting to look at.  

I'm still working on establishing a price range for selling them.  I'm not really looking to make a decent $ per hour or anything, but each piece can take anywhere from 5-15 hours from rough block to finished, polished, pipe, depending of the complexity, size, and material.  So while I don't want to be giving them away I do realize there's likely a ceiling to what people will spend on a pipe.  My goal is to work out a process and design that I can hopefully get up to $150-200 per piece for.  If anyone has any input on the price of pipes these days, I'm all ears.  

 

*supposedly discovered by a local geologist named Matt, I'm told. 

[Larry of the Lawn]

1 hour ago, The Mance said:

snip

Cool! If you do start selling them post a link here!

I messed around last year making some steatite chess pieces,  I'm making a Man Ray style set for a friend (as soon as he pics out the colors he wants). One of those pipes, appropriately used, would be handy working on the pawns, they are tedious.

[The Mance]

14 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

Cool! If you do start selling them post a link here!

Thanks.  I definitely will.

And I can't recommend tungsten carbide grit tools highly enough.  They are slowly creeping out into mainstream vendor locations.  My first was just a carbide grit sawzal blade from Home Depot, but I've seen rasps and grout cutting tools there as well.  More professional rasps and files in sets and singles can be found from Kutzall, MicroMark, and online stone sculptor supply sites.  They will eat right through your steatite. 

[Liffguard]

I haven't been making anything physical recently. But I have been making some music recordings, to track my progress and give me some goal for my practice.

 

 

[Liffguard]

No videos for these, but I've also been making some rough recordings accompanying my friend as she sings.

 

 

 

[wolverine]

Food, lots of food...

 

Not kids anymore thankfully (3 is enough).

 

Have been woodworking for many years mostly furniture but also longbows.  Most of the bookshelves, dressers, end tables, gun cabinets, coffee bars etc in our house I have made. Play weapons for the kids as well like swords and war-hammers.  They like smashing cans with them.

 

Excited to be getting a sawmill as I have wanted one for a long time.  Government keeps giving us money for some reason so I might as well try keep the economy stimulated.

[maarsen]

I have been trying to make stuff but I find I have to keep repairing the tools I need to use to make the stuff first. I need to make a bed. I have an old headboard and footboard but not the rails. No problem as that is just angle iron and a welded bracket on each end. So I haul out my old welder that was my dad's and is almost as old as me. I have no outlet big enough in the garage but I do have about a hundred feet of #6/4 conductor cable so that I can replace the cord that came with the welder. Did that but now I need an adapter from a welding plug to a stove outlet. Thanks to Tesla, all kinds of adapters are now available. That is then taken care and I finally get all my welding gear and turn on the welder and nothing. So I get out my multimeter and test this cord which weighs about 200 lbs, for continuity, and which involves taking the welder apart, and checking the transformer and switch. Everything tests ok but then the meter dies as the battery inside is dead. I install a new battery and check the stove outlet. That is good too. I drag the cord back and plug it in again and...still nothing. I take the welder apart again and check the switch since it did not seem to make the proper clunk when flicked. I pull out the switch and examine it closely and when I have it in my hand it makes a proper clunk both going off and on. I figure the new heavier cable is putting tension on the switch so it doesn't engage properly, so rectify that problem and reassemble the welder again and test the switch. This time I can hear the proper clunk every time but I am too tired to wrestle the cable again. I am now taking a break.