|
|
| From | Message | ||
|---|---|---|---|
|
 Lets get it rolling.WOODWORKING. At school my preference was Metalwork over Woodwork. I have found since that domestically, working with wood is much more commonplace, though knowledge of some metallurgy is handy. Wood turning is a more recent activity having purchased a basic lathe a couple of years ago. I have yet to produce anything outstanding, (or even a mediocre instanding). PHOTOGRAPHY. An early passion from my late teens. A school friend introduced me to the excitement of processing your own films and prints using chemicals. During the 1990's I even went into doing wedding photography and built myself a full colour darkroom in the loft. My personal favourite was to print up 16x20 inch colour prints from 120 roll film (medium format 6cm x 4.5cm). I stopped weddings in 1998 and since then digital technology has forged ahead. My passion for photography has waned a little as it was all about the chemicals and paper for me. MODEL RAILWAYS (eng.) As children, our father built a model train setup about 6ft x 4ft. Nothing elaborate but thoroughly good fun for us (and himself too..!) Its always been something I would like to play with but not enthusiastic enough to make my own setup. CHESS Well here we are. A game I find hard to master and easy to get fed up with, but the company is good. COSMOLOGY This is a topic that has fascinated me for a long time, but more so as I got older. Personally I cannot see there is room in this existence for both science and religion. My leaning is towards science and the employment of empirical evidence there-in. Whilst there will always be much debate and argument on this vast subject, I truly believe one thing for sure. Mankind will NEVER realise the true nature of, or develop a description for, the universe we live in. When all is said and done, and after all the intransigent discussion about the cosmos there will be only one thing I would have to say:- Whilst YOUR truth and MY truth may disagree, the real difference between us is that I can accept that my truth may be wrong. |
||
|
Rolling |
||
|
hy guys!!! |
||
|
You've Seen My Page Then I looked on line for building a lathe. There was a nice YouTube video, with a guy starting out with a $7000 drill press... Right. Like I was going to shell out $7000 to build a $3000 lathe. Finally I turned to Google, as surely someone had a drill powered lathe. I wanted to just stick my electric drill in something and let it crank. And that is where I discovered Sears (which just went bankrupt) sold a little craft kit (drill separate--but I already had that) for $80. Bingo! My later styles of pieces have improved. I also took home big pieces of a maple felled in front of where I work, and had a friend slab it for me. Dried those stickered slabs in a shed for a year, then had my brother-in-law plane them. The plan is to make fold up boards out of those, which I haven't gotten around to doing yet. I should post photos, but until GK fixes the icon/profile problem I don't want to fool with it. Can't believe it has been broken well over a year. Three years, is it now? BC invited me to come here. I don't know anything about woodworking, but I have been having fun turning chess sets. I countersink NIB magnets into the bottoms of each piece. Actually, I countersink iron slugs into the bottoms to give them gravitas, and glue the nib on top. The way I do that is to clamp them upside down to a piece of flat bar wrapped in news print. If I had a source for tungsten slugs I'd use those, just because--tungsten! More awesome than lead. I have access to lead, but just haven't felt like trying to play with it. Iron works ok, and my source is dirt cheap. And the NIB holds the iron slug flush to the flat bar, so when the piece is right side up its center of gravity is a low as I can get it. And I've been turning oak, because it really works great. Started out with poplar, but it scars kind of easy. Oak turns well and is a nice hard wood. Am happy to entertain alternatives, but oak is also inexpensive and locally available. I looked up more exotic dowels. I can order them, but it's nice to have something to play with first to hone technique. Am happy to entertain any recommendations! |
||
|
Lord Regards Don ps welcome, I look forward to meeting many very interesting people along with old friends. |
||
|
Chess Photos www.lostartoriginals.com www.lostartoriginals.com www.lostartoriginals.com I'll have to upload some more photos. I have a few. |
||
|
Sets I have been experimenting with firing enamels onto steel for the boards, which are then inlaid ito the maple. It covers the beautiful grain of the wood, so I should probably devise some better strategy, but I'm also keen on making them all so powerfully magnetic it takes considerable act of will just to move a piece. So the cat cannot interrupt a game. And you could play on a stunt plane. Anything shy of a fighter jet. |
||
|
Shiva Thanks |
||
|
Vetted The context of the second quote is that Stalin said it. |
||
|
Ian I am a very frustrated model rail roader but I finally carved out an 4 x 8 foot area in my clutter and I am going to keep it simple on a flat surface and prefab track in N gauge. The other thing I miss are those great scalectrix slotcars so I bought a bunch of vintage track etc to relive my child hood. When in Moscow one time my digital burned out (220 volt). I bought a 50 year old film camera for $5 dollars and fell in love with film ever since(mostly Russians). Cosmology;Einstein just never got it. He used math to explain observations but never got to the ultimate causality. He rejected quantum mechanics which was only a statistical analysis. he and other mathematicians have the same brain as cavemen. There is no evolutionary drive to proceed to next level. Current scientist just do not have the ability to explain nature with the math they have. Their solutions are ineloquent and convoluted and I do believes that the answers in nature will be neat and beautiful. Nature for a non linear and mathematical process beyond our neural connections. Like taking a dog to the movies, he can see the screen but is not capable of understanding it. Anyway, I could go on forever and not put the puzzle together. Lots of time in the future to pretend we will understand it but we can appreciate the beauty of it |
||
|
Shiva |
||
|
Lens grinding 1. Assuming the power of the telescope is a combination of the optical eyepiece and the curvature of the mirror, how is that curve calibrated? and 2. Is that curvature spherical in nature or parabolic? |
||
|
Grinding Lenses I sand on the lathe. So fast. I also have polish, but haven't gotten around to applying that on the lathe. The reason is that then I can't stain the wood. All my pieces come from the same stock. I do use the darker stuff for the black pieces, but the contrast isn't high enough--I still have to stain them. I'm also experimenting with bleach, to make the white pieces whiter. Oh, I make my own dark stain from black walnut. My daughter lives on a sheep ranch, and in her driveway is a nice black walnut tree. I was peeling them, because I love black walnuts. They have a thick yellow husk and a shell that can only be broken by a big vice. As I was peeling them I noticed how my hands were beautifully stained, and it took a week to wear off. So I made stain from that. Soak the black pieces in it for awhile, which of course necessitates sanding them again, which means another stain application. I may have to figure out how to improve my stain formula, but so far they look great. As for grinding lenses, they want to be spherical. They just naturally go to a sphere, and then you have to very carefully take them OUT of perfectly spherical, which is known as "configuring." I haven't gotten to that stage yet, as I still have not poured the glass. A project for this fall, if all goes well. My wife and I must cast the hexes first. At twenty inches the mirror blank is going to be heavy, so to reduce the weight we're going to pour the glass over refractory material that we'll drill out after we pop it out of the mold. |
||
|
Staining By the way, I was out of line and apologize for last night. Where can I send you photos? Don |
||
|
Water, Yes |
