Today being Friday I did not need to go to Kamakura.
Much of the day was spent on making all of the
pieces in the latest coating lot mat. What follows is only part of
today's output.
There are some 30 odd forks in addition, but they are
not shown. In fact, they were all given away to my wife.
I will describe bellow, what is involved in making
my pieces go mat.
Building up protective surfaces on my atefacts really
needs the full use of my drying beds, which are,
essentially, nail beds.
However, with the process for making them mat you
need a vacant space. Matting process is quick, and
by the time you coat (for matting) the last remaining pieces
you will notice that those treated for mat surfaces earlier
on in your coating have become dry! And, since I only go for
half of each area of one piece going mat, I will have to
coat the remaining halves quickly.
So, if you have a very large number of pieces to go mat,
and had they occupied the whole drying areas, then you must
make them ino two groups, for wanting some working spaces
on the drying beds. A nice point about matting process is that
becasue they go mat quite quickly you can remove those gone
mat from the drying beds and place new comers, in their stead!
That is a simplistic account of what goes on, but in reality,
all this takes a lot of time, simply because any one of the
pieces is bound to have a few leftover uncoated (for matting
purposes, that is) areas. and as a result they do not leave
the drying beds as qickly as you wish! So, all in all, today's
matting operation probably took up 6 hours of my time!
However, there are lulls, in between, after all they
need to dry, before I can do double, tripple coating
for matting effects. Take a look at the following photo.
Can you see that these are straight on one side and at the other
side they have curvatures!
Anyway, what I ended up with is the following.
See that they are, more or less, symmetrical? This is the
minimum requirement for subsquent operation, of making
gaps at the top. This is a rsisky business for a few
reasons. The worst fear here is that the gaps may not run
along the centre line of the stems! I will illustrate this
with what follows.
C is the point in case! Now, I create these gaps
using my milling machine and the angle of the vice grips
are perfectly parallel to the motion of the cutting
tool, which is along the X-axis. I have very carefully alligned
the vice orientation on the milling bed. Now, if you insert an
oddly shaped object in the vice grip you could easily end up
with something like C!
A is really showing you the normal procedure, of
vicing a rectangular piece, making the gap first,
then jigsawing the profile.
I very naturally thought of making the original pieces
rectangular by sanding...
I would have done that if the thickness of the pieces
were not enough. Today's pieces had more than enough
thickness, so I took risks in forming symmetrical
profiles, then gap making, then sanding for the side
profiles. Normally, if you do not have enough thickenss
in a case like this, stems are bound to snap!
And, you do not know on whose shouders you could cry!
Anyway, I will see the outcome, tommorrow!
Much of the day was spent on making all of the
pieces in the latest coating lot mat. What follows is only part of
today's output.
There are some 30 odd forks in addition, but they are
not shown. In fact, they were all given away to my wife.
I will describe bellow, what is involved in making
my pieces go mat.
Building up protective surfaces on my atefacts really
needs the full use of my drying beds, which are,
essentially, nail beds.
However, with the process for making them mat you
need a vacant space. Matting process is quick, and
by the time you coat (for matting) the last remaining pieces
you will notice that those treated for mat surfaces earlier
on in your coating have become dry! And, since I only go for
half of each area of one piece going mat, I will have to
coat the remaining halves quickly.
So, if you have a very large number of pieces to go mat,
and had they occupied the whole drying areas, then you must
make them ino two groups, for wanting some working spaces
on the drying beds. A nice point about matting process is that
becasue they go mat quite quickly you can remove those gone
mat from the drying beds and place new comers, in their stead!
That is a simplistic account of what goes on, but in reality,
all this takes a lot of time, simply because any one of the
pieces is bound to have a few leftover uncoated (for matting
purposes, that is) areas. and as a result they do not leave
the drying beds as qickly as you wish! So, all in all, today's
matting operation probably took up 6 hours of my time!
However, there are lulls, in between, after all they
need to dry, before I can do double, tripple coating
for matting effects. Take a look at the following photo.
Can you see that these are straight on one side and at the other
side they have curvatures!
Anyway, what I ended up with is the following.
See that they are, more or less, symmetrical? This is the
minimum requirement for subsquent operation, of making
gaps at the top. This is a rsisky business for a few
reasons. The worst fear here is that the gaps may not run
along the centre line of the stems! I will illustrate this
with what follows.
C is the point in case! Now, I create these gaps
using my milling machine and the angle of the vice grips
are perfectly parallel to the motion of the cutting
tool, which is along the X-axis. I have very carefully alligned
the vice orientation on the milling bed. Now, if you insert an
oddly shaped object in the vice grip you could easily end up
with something like C!
A is really showing you the normal procedure, of
vicing a rectangular piece, making the gap first,
then jigsawing the profile.
I very naturally thought of making the original pieces
rectangular by sanding...
I would have done that if the thickness of the pieces
were not enough. Today's pieces had more than enough
thickness, so I took risks in forming symmetrical
profiles, then gap making, then sanding for the side
profiles. Normally, if you do not have enough thickenss
in a case like this, stems are bound to snap!
And, you do not know on whose shouders you could cry!
Anyway, I will see the outcome, tommorrow!
