I just finished making what is known as a kindling splitter today, and oh my goodness is this a freaking amazing tool! Anyone out there who has a wood burner or uses kindling should probably think seriously about acquiring one. It makes the tedious, dangerous job of splitting wood into smaller sized “kindling” pieces quick, easy, and MUCH safer.
Continue reading “An Incredible Tool for Splitting Kindling”Month: March 2019
Studio Snippet takes over: Specific details on chasing a small section of a vessel
The studio snippet is taking over again! Over on my FaceBook page someone was asking for more detail about how I’m going about chasing in some shell-like forms on a piece in progress I shared. As I set about doing that I realized it was going to be a bit more of an involved effort than I normally put into such posts, since anything on FaceBook is essentially a flash in the pan, all but forgotten in a couple days. As this information might be something of perennial interest to at least a few people I thought I’d post it here instead. However, it is likely not of much interest to most people as it’s kinda technical geeky stuff about the metalsmithing technique known as chasing. Perhaps you non-chasers will find some interest in getting a deeper understanding of just what goes into such work, but you might also just want to skip this post.
Continue reading “Studio Snippet takes over: Specific details on chasing a small section of a vessel”New Shoots
The snow is nearly gone, the sap is running in the maple trees, and the sun is making its return after a typical cloudy winter. For me this means it’s about time to start the first harvests of the year.
Continue reading “New Shoots”Copper Tongs: a simple beginner project
For those of you metalsmiths reading this, have you noticed how the quality of copper tongs seems to have degraded in the past decade or so. They used to be of good quality with reasonably thick metal. Now, to me anyway, they all seem like flimsy, cheap things made of such thin copper stock. I’ve wondered for a while why we would purchase such things? I mean, aren’t we metalsmiths? Wouldn’t making our own pair be a very basic project, a project suitable for suitable for a beginning student on the first day of class? I’ve never purchased any for my own studio, rather I made a hefty set back when I was in college from some scrap plate copper I had. I actually made a second pair for the university’s studio, which somebody stole rather quickly! I guess that’s one indication they were considered good, probably also a reason why school studios only have crappy ones!
Continue reading “Copper Tongs: a simple beginner project”Has a quiet revolution been happening in the realm of education?
A while back as I was hammering away in the studio on my vessels I was thinking about the whole idea of a free, or really cheap, college education available to everyone that I’ve read about many people desiring. Just how feasible is that? Sure it sounds nice but if you look at the world as a whole interlocking matrix of systems, material, and energy flows one has to recognize there is no “free”. The costs get paid for somewhere. Never the less, wouldn’t it be nice if this was a priority for our culture, something we collectively and willingly put our personal efforts into making happen.
Continue reading “Has a quiet revolution been happening in the realm of education?”A Trick to Reduce Heat Loss Through Windows
I’m going to be traveling off to teach a couple workshops soon. When I’m away from home I also drop out of the cyber world, so don’t expect much to be happening in the blog for a little bit. Still, before I leave I wanted to cover one other winter themed item. My wildly optimistic hope is that by the time I’ve returned March will have made its shift to spring like weather! Yeah, I know, we’ll probably all be laughing about this under several feet of snow at the end of the month, but a guy can dream.
Continue reading “A Trick to Reduce Heat Loss Through Windows”Snow Shoveling Made Easier
It was a dark and stormy night, or so the proverbial first line of a story goes. This particular dark and stormy night must have been punctuated with a tremendous “whump” as one of only two massive oak trees on my property came crashing down. I was quite depressed the next morning to see that beauty laid out in the drainage ditch and up onto the road. Still I wasn’t that shocked as it was half dead by that point after the road crew which dug that ditch a few years earlier took out a major root of the tree in the process.
Continue reading “Snow Shoveling Made Easier”Rocket Mass Heaters – increase your wood burning efficiencies 50 to 90 percent
In the last post I mentioned the three Es. I really need to write more about these soon, but that is something of a conceptual post. Mind you I have nothing against conceptual writings. I expect to engaging in a fair amount of that here with this blog project. In fact, as an artist my personal experience has been that the written word is probably the best avenue to try and convey complex concepts. Maybe it’s just me, but conceptual art trying to communicate its ideas through visuals alone often seems lacking, usually requiring a written statement to go with it that actually explains the concepts.
Continue reading “Rocket Mass Heaters – increase your wood burning efficiencies 50 to 90 percent”