The casein handles on these old dinner knives tends to go kind of crappy over the years, especially if, like me, you don't take good care of them and submerge them in hot water repeatedly.
However, the steel is good -- flexible, and holds an edge -- and it's worth the short time it takes to give them new handles. Also, with a little attention from grinder and diamond paddles, they make really good paring knives.
If you are a business, and you want a piece of art work for some commercial purpose, it is tempting to stage a competition. It looks like a good way to get to choose the best of a wide range of offerings, while paying peanuts.
What it is in reality is a cynical exploitation of emerging artists' desire for publication.
You're asking a whole lot of people to do a whole lot of unpaid work in the hope that you might reward them with a handful of beans and the publication of their work somewhere.
How about you actually put in a bit of work yourself, do some research, find artists whose work resonates with you, and actually commission them to do the job? There are a multitude of sites on the internet that are ideal for seeing a huge range of talents to choose from. It would be more honest, and less exploitative, to source your commercial artwork that way.
You might retort: Well, what about the EXPOSURE?
To which I reply with a hollow laugh.
The only shot-glasses I could get locally are double-shots, and it's really a bit tall. A single-shot (30ml) glass would be better. I'll keep an eye out for one on my travels.
It could do with a cap of some sort to help stop the ink evaporating and thickening, but for the moment it will be a use-it-and-wash-it thing.
I did find some 30ml shot glasses, so I modified the wooden carrier to fit one.
The notch out of the rim is just there to tidy up a chip that broke out when I was thinning it down enough to fit the new glass.
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| Blender screenshots |
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| Antique inkwell with its new reservoir in place |
I have an excellent nickel inkwell from the '30s, with a sprung domed lid that slides out of the way when opened.
Regrettably, its original reservoir was made of bakelite, and over the years it had got cracked.
I did briefly use an aluminium insert made from an old case for some fairly fancy fountain pen cartridges, and that worked just fine, but in the end I decided to design and print a brand new reservoir for it.
I had to print it in resin, as FDM isn't reliably watertight, and also it seems to disintegrate when in extended contact with indian ink. Hopefully the resin will fare better.
Way back in the distant past (2011), I made this chessboard table. In a failure of foresight, when I attached the top to the carcase, I glued it as well as screwing it to battens. That was a mistake.
The table is too low to be comfortably usable, so it would be better if the chessboard was detachable, to be used sitting at a table.
So today, at long last, I achieved that by the judicious application of brute force. The damage is all underneath, where it doesn't show, so that's good.
Next step is to formulate some method of attaching it to the carcase in such a way that I don't have to unload it all and turn it upside down to unscrew it (and replace it). I think I have a plan.
I've added a collar moulding in sapele around the bottom of the chess board. It fits snugly against the carcase and holds it firmly in position, but can be taken off at whim. If I ever have to have it more firmly anchored, I could put a couple of screws through the moulding into the carcase, but I doubt very much that will ever be necessary.
The moulding also acts as a foot for the board to sit on when it's off its carcase.
I've become very lax about drawing, not least because I tend to waste my life away these days on the goddam internet instead of doing anything productive.
I really need to take myself in hand and get back to drawing every day, even if it's just nonsense like this.
These two guys I drew in Indian ink, using a couple of dip pens.
My hands are not as steady as they once were, but I'm sure that a bit of practice will help with that — or at least let me figure out how to work around it.
Here's another box I made, another presentation piece for somebody who's leaving a job for pastures new.
The lid has two sets of magnets as a latch — they're strong enough that I can pick up the whole box by the lid and not have it fly open, but not so strong that I have to struggle to get the lid open.
The walnut is all out of one board, about five feet (1.5m) long. There's a considerable difference in colour from one end of the board to the other, which I found a bit odd.
The jar itself is a big plastic peanut butter jar.
The black thing was designed in Blender and printed on my Ender 3. It has an inset ring in it that I've squished a bit of closed-cell foam into, and the foam has a hole cut into it that the head of the airbrush pushes into. It creates something of a seal around the airbrush head to minimize spray leakage.
I cut a matching hole in the lid of the jar and hot-glued the nozzle-sphincter to it, and drilled some little holes on the other side of the lid from it to release pressure while allowing a minimum of the spray to escape.
I can just load up the dirty airbrush with a solvent, jam it into the foam sphincter, and spray it through until it's clean. And there isn't a great cloud of aerosol solvent floating around my workroom.
Eventually, I'll have to empty it, but it will do quite a few rounds of cleaning before then.
The paper is nothing special; just 110gsm cartridge. The ink is Flint water-based black.
I didn't remember until I'd already started cutting that I hadn't finished flattening and sanding the lino, so there's some speckling apparent in the solid blacks. Ah well, I'm sure it won't be the last time I make that mistake.
Am I happy with it? Well, I'm never 100% satisfied with anything I make, but I will go this far: I've done worse, could be better.
