Inspiration!

 Hello again.
 The mystery word is "AUTO". A setting on any machine that deserves the fullest respect.

 But more importantly-

 Minutes ago I walked in the door from the miniature figure show at Valley Forge. I am going to post a bunch of photos which have humbled me as a painter for sure! There would be more pictures if my photography was not so shaky. Darn it I wished some of these had turned out better.

  There were plenty of vehicles on display. I really liked the ferry built to invade England and of course the tank diorama is a timeless classic.

 

 



 

 

  The dioramas or vignettes on display were really epic. You could look for hours and see something new. The artists were putting little details in that I was in awe of. Look at the coverings on the jousting horses.

 

 



  Look close at these hand painted details. These knights were about 54mm scale, but still plenty small enough to make these sort of details amazing.

  There were  also a lot of busts with great creative artwork on them. The German soldier's binoculars are so realistic with weathering.

  Some 40K stuff was also in the competition.

  Chariots with some impressive bling. The hand painted Medusa face on the Greek chariot took some effort. All of the hand painted Persian rug and plaid stuff was really impressive.

 

  And of course some fantasy stuff.

  Very inspiring.

  In addition I recently downloaded the entire set of 9th Age rules and printed them out. Maybe it is time to dust of some minis and try it out!

   Since re-prioritizing my time to make more time in the shop almost everything has made a dramatic improvement. The Arburg is up next and I am rewiring and replacing all of the heating controls. Right now it is a chaotic pile of wires with no hope of repair, pretty much an average day.

   All of the other equipment has been cleaned and refurbished. The EDM has all of the missing safety components in place. This Maker space is really starting to gel.

  I will post more progress when I can. All the pieces are coming together, so things are looking great.

  Have a good spring!

 

 

 

The Enigma

   Hello again.

 It is spring time and hope springs eternal once more.


   The past year or so has been a time of gathering my strength for one more push. And working some insane hours at numerous jobs to gather some extra cash. It was all part of a plan.......sort of made up as things went along. And now,  the past couple weeks were spent to rebuild the new machine.

 

 

 

    Here it is all assembled. The filter is replaced and years of crud scraped out of the tank. The drain hose is new. ($88 for a 6' section of hose? Are you kidding me?) The fill hose is new and the upper seal around the window is all replaced. I checked the electo-magnetic tool holder and it works fine. The pump sprays oil as it should. Lights are working now too. You push a button and compressed air floods the tank pushing dielectric fluid up in to the upper chamber. It must cover the work as all cutting must be done submerged to avoid igniting things. There is a copper wire inside the fill hose that grounds out the tank to prevent the gases trapped in there from igniting and blowing the tank apart. Overall it looks extremely safe and the odds of igniting this special fluid seem to be very remote. A cheaper alternative is to use kerosene as your dielectric fluid in which case the odds of ignition worsen exponentially.  I spent the money and went with less-flammable stuff. It seemed prudent as the insurance company now refuses to cover my workshop, for some bizarre and inexplicable reason. I do not understand how they stay in business. I have had loads of experience with accidents and mishaps and yet they do not give me any credit for learning from those situations. Instead they will happily insure someone who has never so much as blew up an outdoor grill. Makes no sense.

 

   Anyhow, so far so good. I plan to do some test cutting next week, depending on how many bases I have to produce to keep things in stock. 

 

BUT...............................

 

  There is one small nagging question that I have not been able to figure out.

 

 

  This switch seems important. It is in a very obvious spot and is claims to define the status of the ram. Sort of like your status on Facebook, although they give a lot of options including no less than 58 genders to choose from. This switch is just one way or the other.

 

    It must have been used heavily by some ham-fisted machinist back in the day causing the words to rub off. Using the same techniques used by Zecharia Sitchin to decipher the cuneiform clay tablets of the Ancient Sumerians, I have concluded that the top word should be "Locked". This means a safe and secured position I assume.

 

  The bottom word is the real challenge. It seems it ends in "O". It could be NO, as in "Do not ever switch to this setting". Or maybe, "Is this locked?"  And the answer is "NO". Still seems a bit strange.

 

    It might be the end of a "D", but I am not certain.  The "O" seems more plausible.  And judging from the location of the "O" it might actually be a 3 letter word.  The only decent 3 letter word ending in "O" is of course "UFO".

 

   At this point it is probably just wishful thinking that the machine has a "UFO" setting. Ruling that out maybe "SLO". Why would they misspell the word slow? 

 

   It has to be some sort of 2-3 letter synonym for "UNLOCKED". Maybe they could not fit the word unlocked on the surface so resorted to an abbreviation of some sort. Of course the top word might not be "Locked" , which pretty much throws everything up for grabs.

 

  It might be best to just turn things on and throw the switch back and forth under various conditions and see what happens.  Learning all of this is going to take a bit but someday it should all bear fruit.

 

   I plan on making another blog post once the EDM machine gets figured out. It really should be a massive game changer. Along with the 3D printer it is a lot of investment in time and money that will someday pay for itself I hope.

 

  And one last note, there are a couple of egg shaped bases in the store. I made these for some customers to rebase their cavalry models. I also lowered the price of the magic tokens. At current sales rates there will still be some left forever. I do not plan on making any more if by any chance this first run ever sells out.

 

  I leave you with a couple of quotes you should never dwell on.

 

  From the 40K book I think- " Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment."

 And from Latrell Sprewell- "Success is just failure that hasn't happened yet."

 

  Life is a little more magical when you take some time and ignore reality and think about the possibilities. 

 

  Take a look at this film-Dudes and Dragons .   A film made by people on a budget. I watched the little "making of"  feature on the DVD and was massively inspired. And actually it was a lot better than it should have been given the methods they used. I give them the utmost respect for the ability to do something like this.

 

 

 Have fun guys. 

 





Inspiration

  You tend to find inspiration in the oddest of places sometimes.  This commercial seemed to sum up things pretty nicely for how things have transpired over the months of tinkering. But watching it has really got my mojo going again.

    It is a very true statement that filling your head with knowledge can sometimes push out the important stuff. Ignorance is vastly undervalued when it comes to discovery.

  BTW.  The EDM machine actually turns on. Still not burning yet, but it hums a little when you throw the switch.

  Oh yeah!!!

Another New Year- off and running.

  Hello again.


  Well a new year dawns and with it my unrealistic expectations of what is possible. Constrained by the draconian impositions of a 24 hour day and the wasteful need to sleep it may be possible to get everything done.

  Fortunately last year sales were pretty much on par with the 2 years before that. Overall retail sales have been growing while contract work has been steadily dwindling. The latter due to the brutally short life span of some hobby start ups. Some things are doing well and others have been gigantic flops. The Magic poker chips may be the worst product ever. Absolutely no one likes them. It was rejected as a news item- (now you know why I need to be nicer to people), and got me banned for life from a forum for even mentioning them. And this was a marketplace forum of things for sale. The second worst product reception of the year, and would have been number one if not for that Sigmar thingy. Last year I ran about 35,000 parts so that keeps me busy. I do hope to make something new this year at some point. Not poker chips I can assure you.

  But things are looking up in a couple of ways.

  I continue the vertical integration strategy with this new beauty.

 It is the EDM machine. All 1350 pounds of it. Some days a fork truck would come in handy. In my feeble old age I was reduced to getting help moving it. What a disgrace. I am running wiring today to connect it. It runs 30 amp single phase. The problem is that it requires a specialty oil to use. I really thought this would not be a problem until I learned it takes 30 freaking gallons and it costs $30 per gallon. I almost needed a kick starter to buy oil for crying out loud. Instead it was some extra hours at construction and I am picking the oil up today. I got a discount code for checkout and saved a bit of cash which helped.

 

  This is the control panel. You can see there are switches, dials, knobs and buttons. Pretty much the entire range of things to play with. Not really sure what any of them do except maybe the on button. Will be finding out soon though. 

   The instruction manual includes the usual cliche safety warnings- "Acid is not to be used to rinse eyes" and other such drivel. It also has these helpful charts.

  Pretty straight forward if you have a degree in calculometry I am sure.  Unfortunately I skipped that class along with all the other ones so Google is going to have to be my friend on this one.

  The real advantage of the EDM is that it should allow me to do everything. It is the last piece in the puzzle, aside form the critical lack of manpower. 

  In reshuffling the shop I took the time to set up a resin casting and paint/hobby area.

 The speakers hanging on the wall are from my old Army days purchased in a pawn shop in about 1986. Kept them all these years and now get to enjoy them while painting. Even got a mini fridge now. The map on the wall is a magnetic campaign map for a failed Warhammer battle generator. The system seemed to work great but the game fell apart when folks got to fighting in real life and the tabletop. I will run this again someday.

   

  The 3D printer is taking some tinkering to get dialed in but results are improving. Tip #1- spray the bed with hairspray to make the first row stick. It helps a lot.

  And finally, the real carnage of a real battle.

  While replacing those leaking pipes I inadvertently opened up a passageway for yellow jackets living in my wall to invade. The ongoing  battle lasted weeks with the bees suffering heavy losses. Every day a new swarm was flying around in the rec room. They seemed to exhibit a primitive tactic of flying in to a window glass over and over again. When pressed, they adapted this to crawling up pants legs and stinging or falling down shirts and stinging. At the height of the blitz there were about 50 in the air at once. Now we are down to the occasional straggler. It seems the hive lacks the resources to launch another full scale attack. That might change in the spring. I have got to patch that hole someday. 

  My goal this year is to recruit some sort of partner, but that is not really likely so we will see what I can get done myself.  The ideal person can work and think. If pressed I will take a worker. Thinkers are out of the question. People who are convinced that thinking alone gets things done are frustrating to me. Thinking about making a sandwich is integral to making a sandwich. But if you don't crack open a loaf of bread you are going to starve to death setting on your ass thinking about it.  

  

   I want to once again thank all the great folks who have helped me along the way. It has been a great adventure so far. Last week  shipped the 5000th order. Really amazing. People have been wonderful with an extremely rare exception or two.   Not sure how many customers read this, but if you are thanks. And if you are reading this out of morbid curiosity waiting for the inevitable implosion, thanks to you as well. 

  Let's see where this year leads.

  

Happy Holidays

  Hi Folks.

    Where has the year gone? Things have been busy as usual, with much less accomplished than planned. This is mostly the by-product of working 2 full time jobs. Keeping up with orders has gone pretty well, with only occasional misses in products being available. The construction job has gone as expected and has allowed me to amass a bit of reserves to invest in some new stuff.

Here is the new Maker style 3D printer.

    It was a bit of a chore to assemble and calibrate but it is finally working. Here it is printing out a hood for a Firebird.

  The purpose of this item is to test fit everything before molds are created.

 I am hoping to print out some other things with it, such as this fancy dice cup I sculpted-

  As well as the project that has been on my mind for 5 years now. The 70 Mercury race car.

 It has taken a long time to shell out the model and create 2mm thick walls, and frankly I am not expecting to sell these.

  This is just one of those things I always wanted so it is more of a personal project. The car shown above was driven by Wendell Scott. He was a person who I have a lot of respect for, the last of the renegade independent Nascar drivers. After years of struggling with sub-par equipment and no budget he finally borrowed the money to buy a top of the line Cyclone. He lasted 17 laps before getting caught up in a crash that resulted in career ending injuries.  I just got to put one of these on the track. 

 The club was out doing a demo at the fairgrounds show again this year-

  On a more industrial level, one of my collaborators has set this monster up in his garage.

  It is an EDM machine. Something very useful in creating complex molds. I have been waiting for some time to see if it can work in the manner needed and it finally completed a successful test. This one is a 3 phase machine. I only have one place to operate 3 phase electric and a single rotary phase transformer.  After seeing what the machine can do I am going to be adding one to the shop. It is going to be a single phase machine for ease of connecting, and it is a little on the used side.  ( OK, a lot used) 

  Might take a bit to get it operational but it is going to make things a lot easier in the long run. I am taking a trip to pick it up next week. After that I am going to cut back to 2 days a week of working so it allows me more time to be in the shop working on new stuff. 

  So it may seem like nothing is happening on the surface, behind the scenes the infrastructure is being built to support some of the crazy projects in planning.

  And I would be remiss if I did not offer an update on the gremlins wars. The news is not good. After seeming to fall back they have staged a counter attack of epic proportions. A new mold being cut for some figures was ruined by an electrical surge, and after consolidating their position in the shop they have been launching raids.

  First the brakes rusted off my truck. Who cares, it has air bags! I fixed the brakes and then the air bags sensors rusted and failed. Who cares, I fixed the brakes! But then the brakes started getting very soft. I finally had to bight the bullet and trade it in. In gremlin terms this is going nuclear.

  And then there is this-

  Typically when you here the term "wet bar"  it does not mean having sewage water poured over your head while you are having a snack.  This is the second failed pipe this year and 13th since I moved in to this gremlin infested shack. I have torn through walls and ceilings and replaced every bit of copper pipe with plastic. 

  So that should put an end to their unchecked aggression for some time. 

  I hope all of you have a great Holiday Season and hopefully we will all be looking forward to a new and great upcoming Year.

15 minutes of infamy...........

  Well hello again folks and welcome to another collection of random nonsense. Things have been busy as usual, with more or less going on depending on my energy level.

  I have been working on some larger scale models. At work we are building 1/1 scale modern or sci-fi terrain.

 

  Once you get used to all the climbing about it is not too bad. 1/4" steel does require something a bit stronger than Zap a Gap.  This particular piece goes on top of a 60' silo, and the crane to lift it rents for about $2000 per hour.  I can't wait to retire..................

 

 

  In the work shop I finished the Magic tokens. It gave me a chance to play around with color changes. I kind of like making things in colors. It seems like another step in the right direction.  The bad part is you end up with a pile of Technicolor trash as the new color slowly pushes out the old in a swirling mess.

 

 

 

    Next up is going to be a couple of egg shaped bases to folks rebasing their cavalry and chariot to Age of Sigmar.  Progress will be slow.  I am really behind on even keeping up with stuff already made, and I would love to just make a batch of everything. The limiting factor is time. At least for the near future.

 

  I ran across a flier for a local convention filled with old stars- famous people

One of the first folks on the list is Lee Majors. As a kid Lee Majors was pretty much the top of the food chain as far as Hollywood stars. First off he was bionic, he fought against a freaking Sasquatch, and his wife was the hottest starlet on TV. It is kind of cool to see him still out there meeting fans.

 

  Which brings me to another project in the pipeline-

 

  Let's just say I am as excited as a very excitable person who has something really exciting to get excited about.

 

  I look at it as a small step towards a Lee Majors lifestyle. OK, a very small step. Just slightly closer to maybe e-mail communicating with someone who actually may have been in the same office with someone who was potentially in contact with an extra on an online fan based series.

 

  As more things come out I will keep you posted.

 

  Have a great fall everyone.  The meteors were great last month and the best time of year is right around the corner.