Dallas Makerspace Show And Tell - November 2017

Post a picture and description of anything you are working on this month at the 'Space here!

It can be anything from a small craft project to a large CNC router project to building a table to 3D printing to a science experiment and so much more. There are lots of people doing cool things at DMS all the time, but most of us don’t get to see it. Post it here and share the interesting things you are doing at Dallas Makerspace this month!

Posting here helps not only promote Dallas Makerspace, but could inspire others to make something. It will also help PR post a monthly look at what can be done here on a blog post (with attribution to each maker of course).

:bulb: NOTE: Please try to include the following on each post, to help make for richer blog content!

  • a decent QUALITY photo
  • a notation about WHAT you’ve made
  • WHO you are (for attribution on the blog)
  • HOW you’ve made it
  • and WHY
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This week we fired our first round of experimental slow cool in the newly repaired kiln. We had successful, weird and ‘whoa, what’s up with that?’ results so now we are off to do a round two!

Works from: @FrenchFrog, Alexandra, @Matthew_Eby, @Shirley, @JasonM314 and @cmcooper0

Glazes: Coyote Macrocrystalline, Coyote Two Step Oil Spot, Coyote Red Gold, and more.

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Here are my pieces from the first firing. Also, one one work in progress :smile:

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Adorbs! Love love love

I saw working on the one on far right - looks amazing. All of them.

Would love to try making something, but personal pride, shame, and being klutzy prevents me from engaging in “clay abuse”

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You should come try anyway. It’s just mud and made to be abused! If you don’t want to start with a lump of clay we will be rolling out more classes like the yarn bowl class where we provide folks the option of purchasing an already made base item that they can alter. That way the class is accessible to anyone interested regardless of ceramics experience.

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This is the first step in my quest for the perfect yarn for a project idea. It’s taken a couple weeks for this round of experiments.

So…I got this idea that I want to weave a shawl from my handspun yarn to wear on chilly days at my renfair shop, maybe for next spring if things go well. Need to spin yarn first. So had to design and prep fibers first. Then spin samples. See which properties I like the best. Then another round of experiments control-freaking my yarn coming up :slight_smile:

Pics below of the process. Read further for gory details if you’re interested.

(This is your tl:dr warning line) :stuck_out_tongue:

On the yarn design, there’s things like the color combinations, and mixing fiber properties that give something lofty, warm, soft. Plus sampling for spinning style and grist (size/density) of yarn.

Potential fibers:
There was some wool fiber on sale at Scrap in Denton. And then I got to thinking this would be a good time to stash-dive some fibers lurking in my garage too. And there’s a local shop that sells dyed bamboo in pretty colors for accents. Don’t really want to mess with dyeing this go-round if I can use/find what I want.

So, I’ve spent a couple weeks experimenting with my first round of samples. I expect to tweak this some.

First, had to process the raw fleece. Wash, then in this case, combed it (the pointy things in the picture), which gets all the trash out and leaves the results ready to spin or blend with other fibers.

Next pic is the combing I did in CA the other day:

Then time to blend the various fibers/colors together. My initial inspiration was kinda of a stormy sea vibe, blues/grey with green/brown undertones. Turns out I’m really loving the green/brown touches, and more black alpaca, darker overall vs the lighter values. Hmmm.

In the mix this round:
• the cheap commercial wool base from Scrap for shot of color (dark/light blue)
• camelids (grey and black alpaca in this case, cinnamon llama as backup idea) for softness, warmth, and drape (from stash)
• wool from a fleece from my stash for adding loft and texture (and good grief, I need to work through some fleeces). First round used a silver Romney (sheep breed) with shots of brown. It’ll add a hairy lofty texture
• bamboo (teal and bronze) for silky sheen and color and drape (shopping from local artist)

Below is the blending process on drumcarder (the round thing) that I did one evening at a Fiberfrolic in CA. The batt (fluffy sheet in upper left) is the result and will be torn into strips and spun next.

Then to sample spinning styles. Goal is soft, lofty, fuzzy yarn to use as weaving weft (the side to side woven yarn on shuttle vs warp, which is the yarn threaded lengthwise on loom). Below, bottom-center is kind of a before/after. More grey, pretty enough, but the left center is the darker value sample I’m liking most and will gear the next samples towards. And of course, all under close cat supervision.

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Discharge and clear plastisol inks class results were interesting. Since the discharge ink uses heat to remove the dye from the shirts, you can play with how it is applied and get a lot of variation. Everyone’s shirt came out differently as we experimented with using the flash dryer, spot heating with a heat gun, and combinations of the two. The clear plastisol ink adds a tone on tone/gloss effect. Lots of experimentation with “expired” ink (the discharge ink has a short shelf life after the two component parts are mixed, up to about 48 hours), screen issues, etc.


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this was a quick test of vacuum forming a piece of leather. Since no heat is involved it is much faster than the plastics, although the order is a little different. I’ll show it when I offer up my first class.
@Kriskat30 - it’s on!

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congratulations to Rick Willardson who completed his domino on the HAAS. here he is showing the DMS logo side.

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STILL slaving over the Xcarve at home…she’s alive but not calibrated. I did sneak up and knock out a quick ting for a friend

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Fitted the braces and cut the f holes. Now to fix my mistake (wood split along the grain while carving one of the f holes). Big thanks to @fedakkee for all his help. I am ready to get started on the back this week!

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Way too cool. Looking forward to seeing more of your progress.

Ha. Showed my sweetie, and he immediately rattles out that it reminds him of a Gibson ES-35 hollow body guitar. Dunno how close he is but now I’m curious…

I’m thinking more like a Gibson L-5, but Gibson bodies tended to follow all the same traditional shapes into the sixties.

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Small box with finial lid. Maple, walnut, red pauduk and quartz crystal.

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My latest pieces from the last 2 firings of the slow cool firings. They are a mix of Macrocrystalline or oil spot glazed pieces.

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Meet The Similar. first attempt at a 3D stamp of skull with flag, Similar to the Punisher with flag I posted before. This has prominent teeth which are difficult in the 0.12" total thickness I have for embossing everything else. I’ll work on them if I get a chance. Overall height was 3" cut on the HAAS. so much for tonight’s folly. cheers!

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I’ve designed “canimals” and functional objects that can be made using my proprietary tools from soda cans.

My projects are on the website that I made: www.aluminoids.com

See <a href="http://www.aluminoids.com>Aluminoids!

Thanks for checking it out. Obviously the website is a work in progress. I haven’t commercialized this yet.

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Finished my turners cube. I’m going to polish it up some more. I’m toying with the idea of anodizing it.

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