Dallas Makerspace Show & Tell - March 2019

[John_Marlow]

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).

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

[Kriskat30]

Finished resin on acrylic. Walnut base

Four different light effects

[Josh_Melnick]

I like the new base Kris.

[mrjimmy]

Tree of life pendants from Cairenn’s class.
Sofia made the one with the swing, I made the regular tree.

[jrkriehn]

The “Moe Dog” quilt is finished!
This is the front (more or less; draping on a recliner isn’t the most efficient display method…)

Here’s a couple of details of some of the stitching (nose and eye)

…And, for a better illustration of how heavily it is stitched, a view of the back.

Lastly, the text I wrote for the label.

[John_Marlow]

Absolutely stunning! I am going to have to go to the Dallas Quilt show this weekend to see this masterpiece in person.

[kyrithia]

Here’s a some wire jewelry pieces I’ve worked on while hanging at DMS.

The pendant is similar mechanics to the wire bezel classes I’ve taught recently. This style is good for holding stones, fused glass, resin, etc.

For those that have taken the class, same construction, but the variant where you allow extra wire for prongs and loops on the bottom.

The “stones” in the first two images are actually melted glass marbles a customer brought me to have them put into jewelry for her.

BTW, apparently marble collecting is a Thing.
This lady has 1000s. (The mind boggles.)
Which led me to my next question…we had an interesting discussion about displaying them.
She has a dedicated room.
There are other marble enthusiasts out there.
There is a meetup group for this (of course).
They did a road trip to a marble factory.
Gentleman there gave them access to a machine and let them make their own colors.
There’s a whole bunch of terminology of the various shapes the wonky reject marbles coming off the line achieve.
And when that guy gets bored, he melts some into puddles.
He let the meetup group melt some for fun.
She brought some of hers to me.
And here we have some jewelry

Because I know you’re curious, (I looked it up), a “Mibologist” is a person who studies marbles. Your life is now complete.

Couldn’t find a term for collector, so just gonna say a person who owns 1000s is a Marble Maniac. Nice lady. Had a bunch of marble jokes too.

Ok, so for the pendant, it’s sterling silver wire, and beads are lapis, carnelian, bronze pearl, austrian crystal. And, of course, melted marble.

The marble for the ring had a neat sweep in it, and was big enough I could work an echoing swirl into the design. This is a variant of a ring I’ll probably teach this summer if there’s interest.

And here’s a ring I just finished. Brecciated jasper, size 17 (custom order). I love this stone. He was wanting “reddish” but not bright. This was perfect to go with his new garb but also wear every day.

[Lordrook]

I have a couple from this month so far, Jeannie’s post reminded me of the wire wrapped cabochon I did in her class, also a fountain pen made from red mallee burl, some resin shot glasses, turned wine goblet stems, and I finally finished my creepy baby head lamp for a friend.

[meanbaby]

You make beautiful pieces!

[meanbaby]

Thank you, I think your wrapping is amazing.

I want to take the class again because I’m having an issue keeping the flat wires flat. I’m think it may just be my cheap tools?

[kyrithia]

@meanbaby

Re keeping wires from bunching

Two things:

1. make sure you are pressing down EACH side of EACH round of the half-round wire

2. grasp the bundle with your flat nose pliers pretty close to the wraps and make sure all wire side by side, not bunching, as you wrap

Well, and are you using square in at least part of your bezel? All round or twisted is much trickier to avoid bunching

[black3806]

I built a little dashboard for the house to show drive times, weather, combined calendars, some actiontiles and a current newsfeed - oh and full screen interactive weather radar. 24" touchscreen with onscreen keyboard and sticky notes section.

[rshill]

Needed some large dominos for a project I’m working on, but the woodshop was out, so I made my own out of some scrap hard maple I had! Planed the board to 10mm, cut them 26mm wide, and used a 3/16th” round over bit to round the edges. This leaves about ~125um error at the crest of the domino curve compared to a true 5mm bit, but I’m pretty sure this is within the error the dominos are manufactured with. The domino stock I made fit very snug, so I’m happy.

[Scott_Blevins]

Took @Lordrook’s 2-part ‘Pen Mold Making/Resin Pen Blank Casting’ class. Mold & Pen Blank (pictured) allowed me to make this pen, which contains Cypress needles from my backyard. And that’s not white spots on the pen; That’s reflective metallic powder inside the pen.

Fun class & highly recommended!

[mblatz]

Neato, Ryan. If you have any issues with the joint, please let us know. I believe Festool uses Beech and scores their dominos with intent: 1) Beech is softer and absorbs moisture from glue better, and 2) the scores/lines/ridges help ensure there is enough glue in the joint; tight, flat dominoes tend to scrape all their glue off on the way in. But great idea and thanks for the guidance.

[rshill]

This is actually a huge area of debate:

Domino Strength Test

I actually plan on doing some tests for fun to see how the strength compares. The debate seems to be that those scores/lines cause less surface area for the tenon to be in contact with the mortise. Should be fun to try out anyway…

[John_Marlow]

Three cherry wood chairs, 1/12 scale, unfinished. I need one chair, which will be painted white and “aged”. This is more or less a replica of a chair from my great grandmother’s kitchen, circa 1936. The other two chairs are spares for some future unknown project, so they will remain raw until I decide where to use them.

Since set-up is half the work, it made sense to make a couple extra chairs while I was doing this. OK, correction. Everything is angled; everything below the seat has compound angles, and the front and rear legs are different angles as well. Making the assembly/drilling fixtures was half the work. Set-ups were another 20%-ish of the work. Actually making the parts was a fairly small percentage.

I used the DMS lasers to cut components for pin routing fixtures. I milled complex angles for the holding/drilling fixtures using a Sherline mill (mine) with a vise rotating plate and an angle plate (all of which we also own here).

Each chair has 15 turnings; 0.040" diameter at the ends of the 11 smaller spindles/stretchers. All of those (and beaucoup extras!) were turned using a lathe duplicator on my Taig micro-lathe (similar to the Sherline). (A lathe duplicator is conceptually similar to a key cutting machine. It takes a light hand and some manual clean-up). I’m glad I chose cherry wood, even though the chair will be painted. The cherry held up well on the tiny turnings.

EDIT: Finally painted/aged this thing. See below.

[John_Marlow]

This is a (removable) extension table for my sewing machine. The top was laser-cut at DMS from 1/4" Baltic birch. Many thanks to @Kriskat30 who showed me how to use the new router to round off the edges. It’s not fancy, but it’s sturdy enough to support a nosy 20-pound feline helper.

I also laser cut some echo guides that press fit around the ruler foot.

[hon1nbo]

Tonight I (mostly) finished my 5 point harness bar for my gen1 Ridgeline.

The bar is made out of 1-1/4" x 0.120 wall Chromoly tubing, with 3/8" plate conforming around the existing restraint bushings on the B-pillars. The tubing was bent in the metal shop (just ask if you want training on the bender!) and the angled struts were cut on the notcher then TIG welded in place.

Photos taken fresh out of the oven from a powder coat and after reinstalling it. It currently has one coat of Black Jack from Prismatic Powders). I’m debating if I want the next coat whether it is going to be another layer of the black, or one of the clears. (got a lot of color swatches on the way).

I had also welded some nubs to prevent the harness inside-shoulder straps from slipping down the tube before buckling in, which was problematic beforehand.

Cheers,
-Tails