The Belgian Influence

A couple of weeks break from the blog, as I've been off holidaying in my favourite European country (good friends, excellent beer, lovely architecture, fantastic food!) After a few recent hiccups, I'm hoping my life is getting back on a more even keel: The break has given me a chance to try and get a better perspective on my life, its value and the value of those I share it with. A new career beckons - hopefully one in which there is the chance to exercise some creativity, avoiding crushing bureaucracy and pointless process to boot, and maybe one in which the people I work with share a bond that stretches slightly beyond their own self-centered career ambitions...

Anyway, that slightly cryptic short piece of apparently self-referential indulgence out of the way, back to the news of the shack! Well, the two things ARE related, as I came back with a boot full of goodies from the stepfather of the lovely Fiona. A big SHOUT OUT (I'm so wid da kidz) to the very generous Stany! He donated me a set of Stilsons, some bolt croppers, two very useful sealable buckets (time to mix some more oil-sand methinks! The last lot is overflowing the cramped confines of a large Tupperware tub), a water pump with a mains powered electric motor which might well be the future power-plant for an air blower for our planned bigger and better butane powered furnace AND, last but not least, a very serviceable vertical mount for our drill... Lots of goodies to play with - enhanced yet further by our old pal Anthony bringing over a ridiculously cheap jigsaw from our preferred suppliers over at Northern Tool - the jigsaw might be a low-rent model but it actually cost about the same as a pint of beer down the local! Bless Anthony - and a curse upon the taxation policies of the politicians! I'm hoping the jigsaw will be just the job to wade into the manufacture of a load more messer blades...

Whilst John very kindly spent most of his time kindly helping Robson senior fit some parking sensors to his car, I cracked on and finished a new piece and to mull what I'll be doing in iron at the Bullpen next week. Pictures and musings to follow tomorrow!

Art as therapy

Its been a tricky time ... I was about to say recently, but actually, its gone on for more than two years now. Here's a blog toast to my being able to talk of it in the past tense very soon!

Coping with some of life's stresses and disappointments is never easy for anyone, but its fair to say that I've had a difficult time weathering the slings and arrows of the 21st century and have had occasion to battle with visitations from the dreaded Black Dog. Working in the shack on these projects really is a sort of ongoing self-therapy!

Creating art in molten metal seems to work really well for some odd reason: its a wonderful blend of satisfying the creative urge, of problem solving, of teamwork (ya cannae pour safely on your own!), trust ('is the pour full John?' 'Please don't tip that 750oc metal down my sleeve Toby'), adrenalin (opening the kiln to see a glowing crucible full of silvery metal still makes my heart beat faster), comradeship - and, when the finished pieces are on display, of meeting people and sharing ideas. Whatever bullshit, hype or dishonesty that the 'other world' seems to want to keep chucking our way, the shack is our retreat and our therapy rolled into one - helped of course in huge measure by the ministrations of tea and enthusiasm from my Mum and Dad; our hosts and (as its their garden!) patrons.

Here's to friendship - and the joy of creation.

Rocky working on some scratch-blocks

The Grosse Messer - passed with flying colours!

The prototype messer was taken to fight club last night and caused quite a stir of interest. Our in-house cutlery expert and fencing instructor Alan said some very kind words, including 'its the best prototype sparring sword I've seen'! Praise indeed! It also looks like it's secured at least half a dozen extra orders as a result - so a busy June beckons. I'm even hoping to cast and fabricate enough to take some up to this summers 'fight camp' - a gathering of the UKs medieval combat fraternity. Yes, I know that sounds odd, but this is a pluralistic country which celebrates eccentricity!

Anyway, dear reader, if you'd like a messer (historical background in the post below John's) drop us a line!

John in project completion shocker!

Finally, after many months of toil (and indecision) my latest project is complete. Here is the (long) story of how it came to be.

The starting point was a collection of copper plumbing pipes I had joined together for practise on a course I attended.  I wanted to mount these on a base somehow to show off my soldering prowess, but I felt there ought to be something holding the pipes away from the base - partly for aesthetic reasons and partly to enable "proper" attachment (rather than wiring or gluing it on haphazardly).

"What better to hold something than a hand" I thought - hence the idea for the joining piece "Fist".  "Fist" was made by first constructing a master from casting wax.  Using my own hand as a guide (but reducing the scale somewhat), I simply fiddled around with lumps of the wax until I got the slightly naive shape I wanted (it was never my intention to make a perfect replica of a hand or I would have made a mould of one).  Next was to pack it in sand (with the usual hardening agent added) and to burn out the wax in our bespoke burn-out oven (crafted by our tame master craftsman/handy-man Bryn).  This process is SUPPOSED to leave a perfect (negative) replica of the wax master in a rock-hard sand shell, however due to circumstances entirely within my control, (i.e. I messed up the sand mix), I was left with an almost-perfect-but-rapidly-disintegrating negative in somewhat soft sand.  This was NOT good as the wax hand had taken me AGES to make. Anyway, with a significant number of fingers crossed and with the help of Toby's steady hands (and a roll of gaffer tape), we managed to get the sand-pie to the casting table, whereupon we filled it up with molten aluminium. The mould seemed to hold (he rhymed) - at least it looked that way from the outside, so after a minute or two to let the metal relax we cracked her open... and... we had "Fist" - complete, with no holes and fairly minimal damage - success!

With the top two parts in the bag, the time had come to think of the base. Wood? Stone? Swiss-cheese? This remained somewhat of a conundrum until a nearby bohemian (Toby) suggested making use of a concrete block he'd made recently. Not questioning the seemingly random act of construction on Toby's part, I sprang into action chiselling away like a demented (and decidedly less skilful) Michaelangelo.  Some months later I had a roughly cylindrical shaped block with a hole in it ready to accept fist.  Here's a photo of the piece at that stage:

But what now...?  The concrete looked "OK", but it didn't really have a smooth enough finish to warrant staying in this state as a finished piece.  Some weeks of mulling things over and not doing very much ensued, until one day, that familiar bohemian voice squeaked "why not clad it in lead"?  Another genius suggestion from the Robson stable I thought and so got to work hammering flat some lead roof flashing and wrapping it round the base.  As a final touch, I buffed it up on the buffing wheel using one of our older, blacker mops.  This gave a really nice dark sheen to the base and brought "Project Fist" to its conclusion.

What next?  A selection of cast cores based around a central theme methinks ;-)

Until next time.

John