3/27/09 Open shop
The shop was busy Tuesday night. Shortly into the evening Maelgwyn decided to drill out some of the rivets in his gauntlet since it didn't articulate quite how he wanted to at Gulf War. The drill bit wasn't particularly sharp, but it did manage to break off and gouge itself into his index finger. He's a tough bugger, so after he got patched up he went right back to working on his gauntlets even though he bled right through a band-aid. 
Sir Ysfael and I assembled his legs, and here he's trying one of them on:
We didn't mark them well enough before they were fired (they're 4130) and I suspect we transposed two lames. We got them to work pretty well anyway.
It's probably not everybody's best side, but this is honestly what I shoot to get at every armouring session- everyone hard at work. Left to right we have Maelgwyn sanding a rivet out of his gauntlet (it's safer than drilling kids!) Centurion Eleanor rolling the edges on a spring steel Churburg #13 for her husband, Artorius (Maelgwyn's son) working with Ysfael on his helmet) and Robert planishing an elbow cop.
Ysfael helps Artorius flare out the bottom of his helm:
In the foreground you can see the offset Y stake that Hal made for me recently to do greave work on.
I finally got some new tap handles done for the beer fridge. The outer two are walnut, and the center one is redwood I found laying around our old back yard in California. It has some funny little boring beetle holes in it that add some interesting character. The handle on the right started its life as the body of a shawm I was playing with almost two years ago. I chopped it down and made a brass cap to cover the big hole down the middle. The nails were a roaring pain, and I ended up having to trim them all shorter to get them to stay strait. The handle on the left is just some walnut scrap I had laying around. I hit the edges with the router, and gave it an artsy slant. I tried to do some metal inlay in it, but discovered I have much to learn in that department.
Last weekend Zoe and I planted two Venus grapes vines:
They claim to yield nice seedless table grapes that also make good juice or wine. On the label they're blue like a Concord grape, so if we're lucky they'll taste like Welches grape juice. Stef and Zoe have been planting big gardens and I got a little jealous of all their fun.
I did some work tonight on some soup cans for a lady in Artemisia. I'd been pounding away at a couple of them for a while, even annealed one of them before I realized the pattern I'd made for them was just crap- it was entirely too tall for what I needed. After trimming one of them down it pounded together quite quickly. I still have some planishing and fine shaping to do before I flare the edges, but I think this could work out fine.
Sir Ysfael and I assembled his legs, and here he's trying one of them on:
We didn't mark them well enough before they were fired (they're 4130) and I suspect we transposed two lames. We got them to work pretty well anyway.
It's probably not everybody's best side, but this is honestly what I shoot to get at every armouring session- everyone hard at work. Left to right we have Maelgwyn sanding a rivet out of his gauntlet (it's safer than drilling kids!) Centurion Eleanor rolling the edges on a spring steel Churburg #13 for her husband, Artorius (Maelgwyn's son) working with Ysfael on his helmet) and Robert planishing an elbow cop.
Ysfael helps Artorius flare out the bottom of his helm:
In the foreground you can see the offset Y stake that Hal made for me recently to do greave work on.
I finally got some new tap handles done for the beer fridge. The outer two are walnut, and the center one is redwood I found laying around our old back yard in California. It has some funny little boring beetle holes in it that add some interesting character. The handle on the right started its life as the body of a shawm I was playing with almost two years ago. I chopped it down and made a brass cap to cover the big hole down the middle. The nails were a roaring pain, and I ended up having to trim them all shorter to get them to stay strait. The handle on the left is just some walnut scrap I had laying around. I hit the edges with the router, and gave it an artsy slant. I tried to do some metal inlay in it, but discovered I have much to learn in that department.
Last weekend Zoe and I planted two Venus grapes vines:
They claim to yield nice seedless table grapes that also make good juice or wine. On the label they're blue like a Concord grape, so if we're lucky they'll taste like Welches grape juice. Stef and Zoe have been planting big gardens and I got a little jealous of all their fun.
I did some work tonight on some soup cans for a lady in Artemisia. I'd been pounding away at a couple of them for a while, even annealed one of them before I realized the pattern I'd made for them was just crap- it was entirely too tall for what I needed. After trimming one of them down it pounded together quite quickly. I still have some planishing and fine shaping to do before I flare the edges, but I think this could work out fine.
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