My son is headed off to Germany on a mission trip this week. They play baseball and work with a church over there during the baseball practices and tournaments. The hosts put up the folks from Carrollton and Baltimore in their homes during the 10 days they are there.
My son wanted to give his host family a thank you gift so I suggested making some pens. He made all of these. They are made from Olivewood, Cocobolo and Walnut.
The people who didn’t show up for the dragon ink pot hand building class really missed out!!! Amazing class taught by @dryad2b. I have never done this before but I picked up a lot of good tips and I’m looking forward to making more things.
Nine sided bowl turned on a four sided table. First picture is the model in Fusion 360. The second is the real thing in my hand.
wow !!! 50357097u50495
So these are the results of a marathon work-session I had one day hanging out in the common room. The Moldavite (top pic) was by far the fussiest and had some complicated mechanics on the back where most of the wirework is (took forever) but happy how it turned out. The sweeps on the bail are a new thing I like and will repeat. Did sweeps there and on back to echo the hair. The movement on the back echoes the front when seen in shadow. The topaz ring in the middle is an engagement ring. The bottom piece, cool stone. It’s magnetite in jade. I did a new thing with shaping the curls near the bail with elongated coils, kinda to echo the shapes in the magnetite of the stone. I may do them elsewhere because I like how they did. So several sudden inspiration things on these. Must be the good vibes swirling around the common room 
Wow. I love these so much! That ring is amazing.
She has a class coming up in the basics of that style of wire wrap, Jeanie is really good
So I have an upcoming project where I plan to use an ARM MBED (thanks @zmetzing) Nucleo board. I like things tidy, so I designed and 3D printed a container to mount the Nucleo board as well as a couple of breadboards. I also included holes with threaded inserts (3mm) to allow the mounting of project specific panels to hold things like potentiometers, banana jacksm etc…
It was designed in Fusion 360 and the original design file as well as an stl if you just wanted to print one is available on thingiverse
Very nice job Walter! I love it when you make cool things!
that is amazing.
Looks like an easy mod for Arduino or R-Pi’s.
here’s a little fancy boot embossing plate I finished up today on the HAAS cut in aluminum. broke my 1/16" ball nose bit on this one. I’m going to have to start buying those things by the box load. I seem to get only 2 projects out of one. cheers!
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Ok here we go. Pro Tip: John, Always remember to point the pointy part of the pen towards the paper. It should make contact with the paper. If you’re using your hand with the pen, move the hand around and you’ll notice that ink automatically comes out of the end. It’s designed that way, so don’t be too surprised. Try writing letters with it. I’d start with block letters first. Later, in a couple of weeks, try writing in script. That’s where you “connect” the letters together.
Ask and ye shall receive! I modified the design for UNO form factor Arduino’s as well as MEGA form factor Arduinos yesterday. I have printed one of the UNO form factors to confirm the alignment of the screw mount holes and posted the designs (stl & Fusion 360 file) to Thingiverse for anyone wanting to make one themselves.
As soon as my print is finished for the MEGA form factor one, I will also post that to Thingiverse for any to use as they wish. These are the inserts I have designed this to work with;
https://www.amazon.com/uxcell-M3x3mm-Threaded-Thread-Insert/dp/B015A31MBW/ref=pd_bxgy_328_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B015A31MBW&pd_rd_r=83EWVKF94WNG9XSKTNZC&pd_rd_w=cObrr&pd_rd_wg=TP0t0&psc=1&refRID=83EWVKF94WNG9XSKTNZC
BTW, I am going to make a version for the BeagleBone Black, but I will not for the Pi, since I already had a good commercial solution to the PI. I picked one of these up when they were crowd sourcing them.
http://www.gooligum.com.au/wombat-proto
But anyone wanting to make a version for the Pi, can use either of the Fusion 360 design files included in the Thingiverse posts to do so. Really just a matter of determining the coordinates for the mounting holes and changing the size of the recess.
Polyhedral bowl I made in ceramic along with the slab cutters that I designed in TinkerCAD and printed out on the PolyPrinters.
The bowl was made by what’s called stiff-slab handbuilding. I roll out a big slab of clay and cut the individual faces out. Then I let the faces sit for a little while and become a little stiff, but still workable. I then assemble the pieces together and smooth out the joins.
The faces of the bowl are all painted in a black underglaze except for one face that was done in a light blue underglaze. It was then glazed with a dipping clear glaze that I didn’t apply very well (my dipping technique is not great). The overall blue tint to the whole piece is caused by microbubbles in the clear glaze. Strangely, something about the chemistry of the light blue underglaze caused the clear glaze to pull away and leave a couple of unsightly pits (these can be seen on the rim here). I’m just going to wave off using that glaze.
I’ve been making polyhedral works in ceramic for a couple of years or so now but being able to make the cutters has made a massive difference in quality. The repeatability and accuracy versus my old techniques is really fantastic. I’m a big-time math nerd and the symmetries and clean lines of pieces like this really make me happy.
If anyone is interested, I’m considering doing a class sometime in late July or August where we can put something like this together. I’ll have several forms to choose from. I want to get clean examples of all of those forms before I consider putting up the class.
I love this! Almost all of my ceramics projects use 3D printed cutters - mostly pendants but I’m trying to start using cutters for larger objects. I would be interested in a class.
When cutting small pieces on the MultiCam I often use “tabs” (small bridges that help hold the piece). The tabs are easily cut with a utility knife or chisel. However, cutting the tabs effectively requires turning the wood over. In the process of flipping the wood a tab or two will sometimes tear away damaging the wood.
A jigsaw with a reverse blade (cuts in the upward motion) is a great way to cut the tabs without having to turn the wood over. But that requires fetching a jigsaw and being prepared to bring a sharp reverse blade.
Having grown tired of flipping the wood / forgetting the reverse blade I decided to take action. Allow me to introduce bladestick (looks like a lipstick cartridge but packs a blade)…
