Today, I had an idea, but I could not do a thing in the
morning, what with my wife's shopping, what with sorting
out yesterday's mess, etc tec...
The basic idea was that what I had come up with the day before
yesterday did not feel right on handling them. It seemd that
somehow, the knife portion was upside down.
What one can do might be to invert the template within the confines
of the starting material. The following schematics may help
you understand my agonies this afternoon.
My intention was to invert the knife part as illustrated with A.
It is only a conceptual schematic, though. Since the template was from
an earlier prototype you must leave some ambiguities at the
transition line, which is the vertical line halfway down
the length. Now, the first thing you want to do is to cut the
bottom of the whole thing.
I was aghast at the result! See the photo one after the next.
I had cut along the blue dotted line, did nothing else, and yet
I was staggered to find that it was precariously metastable...
I am a physicist and the only conclusion was that the masses
on either side of the vertical transition line were almost
equal. I could not believe it at once, because as you see
with the top view, a few images down, I had massive
(to my belief) side blocks at the handle end. It was
awfully difficult to persuade myself that the very thin
knife portion had such a siginificant amount of mass...
What can you do under these circumstances? My instinctive
solution was to make this portion slightly shorter. That was OK,
but then what about the aethetic aspect of the handles?
The template can be all contained within the starting material
boundaries. So, in theory it is not impossible to invert
the template and transcribe its circmference.
See above? Can you believe that this is meta stable?
It is only a small triangular piece cut away from the bottom!
See these side pieces? They are Borneo iorn wood! To me the mass
concentration is very heavily towards the handle end, but physics
is telling me it is not the case...
You may very well wonder what for on earth I did curve out such
a massive volume from the bottom of the handle, when removing a small
triangular piece made the whole thing instantly unstable?
It is because as a physicist I was mentally doing intergal
calculus on this portion. It also was my gut feeling.
What I was mentally calculating was the effects on the
stability of the cumulative removal of the bottom mass.
Naturally, one has to be careful...
Above, to my satisfaction, was found to be stable, just
as I had predicted... So, what remained was really cosmetic,
rounding of the handle, mainly.
Here above, I have two prototype pieces, one at the back is
yesterday's and you can see the beast's neck is drooping.
One at the front is today's and it is a proud beast,
sticking up its neck rather beautifully. I like it.
More importantly, it is very stable.
Same happy beast under a different lighting. There are a few other
things I can do. Make the handle length longer a bit. I also could
do with making the mid-section of the handle go Cocal Cola.
All these, I will have to see, but I am inclined to think
that I have found a solution to my butter knife stability problems...
morning, what with my wife's shopping, what with sorting
out yesterday's mess, etc tec...
The basic idea was that what I had come up with the day before
yesterday did not feel right on handling them. It seemd that
somehow, the knife portion was upside down.
What one can do might be to invert the template within the confines
of the starting material. The following schematics may help
you understand my agonies this afternoon.
My intention was to invert the knife part as illustrated with A.
It is only a conceptual schematic, though. Since the template was from
an earlier prototype you must leave some ambiguities at the
transition line, which is the vertical line halfway down
the length. Now, the first thing you want to do is to cut the
bottom of the whole thing.
I was aghast at the result! See the photo one after the next.
I had cut along the blue dotted line, did nothing else, and yet
I was staggered to find that it was precariously metastable...
I am a physicist and the only conclusion was that the masses
on either side of the vertical transition line were almost
equal. I could not believe it at once, because as you see
with the top view, a few images down, I had massive
(to my belief) side blocks at the handle end. It was
awfully difficult to persuade myself that the very thin
knife portion had such a siginificant amount of mass...
What can you do under these circumstances? My instinctive
solution was to make this portion slightly shorter. That was OK,
but then what about the aethetic aspect of the handles?
The template can be all contained within the starting material
boundaries. So, in theory it is not impossible to invert
the template and transcribe its circmference.
See above? Can you believe that this is meta stable?
It is only a small triangular piece cut away from the bottom!
See these side pieces? They are Borneo iorn wood! To me the mass
concentration is very heavily towards the handle end, but physics
is telling me it is not the case...
You may very well wonder what for on earth I did curve out such
a massive volume from the bottom of the handle, when removing a small
triangular piece made the whole thing instantly unstable?
It is because as a physicist I was mentally doing intergal
calculus on this portion. It also was my gut feeling.
What I was mentally calculating was the effects on the
stability of the cumulative removal of the bottom mass.
Naturally, one has to be careful...
Above, to my satisfaction, was found to be stable, just
as I had predicted... So, what remained was really cosmetic,
rounding of the handle, mainly.
Here above, I have two prototype pieces, one at the back is
yesterday's and you can see the beast's neck is drooping.
One at the front is today's and it is a proud beast,
sticking up its neck rather beautifully. I like it.
More importantly, it is very stable.
Same happy beast under a different lighting. There are a few other
things I can do. Make the handle length longer a bit. I also could
do with making the mid-section of the handle go Cocal Cola.
All these, I will have to see, but I am inclined to think
that I have found a solution to my butter knife stability problems...
