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I’m still at work on this one. It’s looking good so far. I have most of the run done at this point. It needs the final exit section, and then it will be time to add the supports/legs. At this point I’m kind of wondering at my wisdom in creating the run before building the support structure, but, well, there we are. It’s just going to go the way it’s going to go at this point. No turning back now!
Ugly
Less ugly
Today’s pic o’ the day brings with it – an extra pic! Woohoo! You’re welcome.
I usually try to limit it to just one picture to force myself to learn to make decisions, but today’s post simply wasn’t going to go over so hot without having a “before” shot. And, um, actually, the “before” shot is really more of a “already started, but still ugly” shot.
Shall I explain? I shall. In the top photo in the foreground you can see what looks like a pretty ugly piece of wire. In the, um, aft-ground a wire that looks kinda shiny. That wasn’t like that minutes before I shot this. All the wires looked blackened and scarred up like the foremost one. I wish I’d thought to take a picture before I started cutting things off. Pity. At any rate, there were two main wires for the track that were haphazardly connected to each other with two U-shaped pieces. They were all horrible welds, and some of the pieces were nearly cut in half rather than being welded together. It was a mess, and I didn’t think it was even going to stick together for long.
With my recent success in welding, I decided I absolutly had to fix that aberration. I picked up the bolt cutters and proceeded to remove all manner of nastiness. Then I fabricated new pieces to go in place of the dead ones. It took a total of ten welds to get everything back together, and I’m happy to say that only two of those were less than decent. Unfortunately, you can actually see one of them here (that black dot on the connecting piece is a hole), but an 80% success rate for me is ridiculously high. In short, it was a good night, a very good night indeed. I hope this streak of goodness continues, then we’ll be able to look at photos of me building stuff instead of pictures of welded spots like these.
Did I mention I wanted a punch press yesterday? I’d like one, thanks. And the vertical mill also, still want that. A lot.
Did I also mention that I was looking up geometry on line and CAD stuff and that I looked up the course requirements for a machinist? Yep, losing my mind here, folks.
Tonight I’m also going to meet with someone from my NaNo group and we’re going to go over the edits and suggestions we had for each other after swappping novels. I do still write, you know, lest that be forgotten amidst this morasse of machinery obsessiveness.
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Yes! At long last, a decent weld on the RBS! This single photo comprises my sum total of welding for the evening, but at least I have something nice to show for it. I butt-welded these two rods together (go ahead, laugh. “butt weld, butt weld, butt weld”) and they turned out the way I wanted them to! They’re together! They’re not all knotty and blobby and pitted! ‘Tis a Christmas miracle – or something!
Anyway, I’ve been trying to get the hang of this welding thing for quite some time, obviously, and I’ve been making mistakes right and left on the sculpture. Tonight it was a welcome moment of victory. I’d best hold on to this one. I may not have another for weeks to come. I mean, I totally hope that’s not true, but it’s possible.
On a related note, I’d like a band saw, a drill press, a punch, an arbor press, and a vertical mill. Just sayin’. I suppose I could get by without the drill press if I had the vertical mill. Don’t want to sound greedy.
This is what I did last night. I spent, I don’t know, about an hour working on this stuff. It’s improving little by little. Last night was pretty good. I actually made a weld on the sculpture last night, which I only screwed up a little. Better than that, I understand how I screwed it up. This is progress from a week or two ago when I was A) screwing up, and B) not knowing how I was screwing up. Now if I can just get “A” taken care of, we’ll be rockin’ like Dokken.
I know this stuff, these endless pics of pieces of metal with blobby, rusty lines on them are repetitious and maybe boring or annoying, but it’s kind of what I’m dealing with right now. This process is really important, the progress, the improvement. It’s even more slow and tedious for me to do it than it is for you to look at one picture of it per day, but this is the part where I am right now. This is the part where, if my life were a movie, there’d be this montage of me just sitting down at the workbench. I’d put on the welding shield, and then you’d see some flashes of light from the arc, and there’d be lots of images of burnt pieces of metal being tossed on the floor. They’d use some sort of rockin’, yet inspirational background music, like Doyle Bramhall’s “Big” or something, and periodically you’d see me lift the shield and make a face as if to say, “Damn! Failed again!” and then I’d get another look that would be all determined, and I’d wipe some sweat off my brow and go back to work. Then there’d be more pictures of steel bits being thrown on the ground, but they’d start to look better, and then I’d not look so frustrated, just maybe kind of tired but pleased, and we’d be all, “Look! He’s improving! He’s toughing it out! Killer, dude!” and then there’d be some shots of me working on real pieces of sculpture, and then a date would flash at the bottom of the screen showing the passage of eleven months and sixteen days and nine hours and thirty-six minutes would pass in about 2.5 minutes, and then they’d show me standing before a finished and unbelievably awesome sculpture, wiping my brow and going, “Whew! Golly! THAT sure took a lot of work, but, boy, did my patience and persistence pay off!” and then I’d grin and give a thumbs up or something. (I’ve been looking at too many vintage ads online. My brain sounds like a 50s ad for Lucky Strikes or something – “It’s Toasted!”)
Unfortunately, we don’t have the luxury of a montage here, or at least not so much of one. I guess I haven’t shown you every piece of burnt metal that I really did throw on the floor, so you’ve been spared that, and there really are a ton of them on the floor. Some of them I’ve picked back up again and welded more crap onto to save money – like this piece here! It has a weld on the other side, and I just flipped it over and used it for this test.
Anyway, the first weld is sort of decent, and the second one isn’t too bad. After that they start to get kind of squashed-looking, and some holes show up and some rusty coloring. I guess it’s better than some of the stuff I was doing two weeks ago. I actually like the top weld, even though I’d get thrown out of welding class for it, but it’s good for me.
On a slightly different/sort of the same note, I am really, really, REALLY trying to make progress on this stuff, and it is damn near impossible some weeks. This past weekend I got in one hour of practice on Friday night, and that was it! One. Hour. Over the course of the entire week that adds up to one hour and ten minutes. In seven days I got to work on welding for one hour and seven minutes. It is really difficult not to obsess about how long it will take me to improve if I only get an hour and ten minutes each week. It’s hard, it’s frustrating, but what else can I do? It’s really difficult many nights to find free time for it, and that’s even while I’m currently ignoring most of the rest of the daily crap that normal people don’t ignore – stuff like folding my laundry or sorting my mail (my couch has become a mail repository for months worth of unattended mail – good thing the bills are all on auto-pay). Lots of nights I just microwave anything that’s frozen, because sometimes saving that extra twenty minutes of preparing food is the only way I can make time. (I have become a conniseur of the frozen burrito.)
I’ve employed every other time-saving method I can think of. The only thing left to do is to quit my job, and I’m not that crazy. Motivated, yes, but not crazy. I’m feeling boxed in. Stuck. This is all I want to do, and yet I have so little time to do it. There are times when I decline invitations with friends just so I can do this stuff, as it’s the only free time I have available.
The other night, Friday night, the night when I can clearly hear many people in my neighborhood partying, I was welding and looking up basic geometry on the web. Why? Because geometry is the basis for machine work, and I’m interested in doing machine work, having a mill and building nifty parts for my sculptures, fabulously ridiculously unnecessarily complicated parts for my sculptures. I had a night off from the band, and I was looking up geometry. Clearly I’m either really taken with this stuff, or I’ve sincerely lost my mind. Given that my friends and family have not started avoiding me or continually asking me if I’m sure I’m feeling well, I have to consider the sincere possibility that I have not lost my mind, but am just really enthusiastic about building metal kinetic sculpture.
Still, what’s the point? Why am I doing this? Why am I exchanging all this free time and money and energy on this stuff? Well, simply because I like it, because it’s cool, fun, nifty, awesome – all that good stuff!
And that – that feeling of “YES! AWESOME!” is scary. I mean, do you ever have a “yes” moment? One of those times where you discover something or get into something and the only word in your head is “yes?” Those yes moments, those are when you know you’re doing something that is *exactly* what you should be doing in your life. I had moments like that when I first started playing music. It was all “Yes, let’s do that! Yes, let’s find out more about this! Yes, let’s practice more! Yes, let’s buy some records, lots of records and tapes! Yes, let’s get in this band and see what happens! Yes, let’s play that basement party! Yes, let’s record with those guys! Yes, yes, yes, yes, YES!”
Here I am again, and this feels like one big “yes” moment. Nothing in my brain is telling me that anything about this is wrong for me to be doing. Aside from letting my spending get out of control, there’s nothing I could do wrong with this. It feels like a very natural thing to do.
But what the hell do you do with it? I mean, what are the practical purposes? If I want to devote so much time to it, how, uh – am I supposed to think I’m going to make a living with this or something? Really???? Have I lost my mind? I’m not at the point where I’ve just decided to throw all caution to the wind, go in to work, announce I’m quitting immediately, and saying, “I’m going to make a living as an artist!!!” Not that crazy, because I like to eat and have a house and all that, but I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve set many other things aside in life in order to pursue this. I mean, who was here when I announced that I had decided to sell my extremely cool and vintage guitar amplifier just so I could buy the welder? We do remember that, don’t we? That amp, I held onto it for YEARS not using it, but not being willing to let go of it, and suddenly it wasn’t even an issue. It was like, “Oh, I need to buy this welder…NOOOOOOOWWWWWWW!!!!!! SELL THAT FRIGGIN’ AMP AND BUY IT YESYESYESYES!!!!!”
Like that.
I don’t know what you do with these things when they come up in life. Oh, scratch that – I know one thing to do. You follow them. They’re scary, but you follow them. If they’re positive and healthy and they make your life better, then following them is the thing to do. If they make you feel better about yourself and your life, you follow them. I kind of have to follow this. It just feels too good. Yet I don’t know where it’s going, and that’s a frightening thing.
I don’t know, kids. I just don’t know what’s going on here. I’d love to see into the future on this. Until I achieve that ability (and I’ll let you know if I do), I’m just going to keep welding. And probably being kind of scared as well.
Got it!!! I know this doesn’t look like much. It looks like some grubby little gray sticks, but I assure you that this is some of the most gorgeous crap I have turned out in weeks! It’s not perfect, but, man, it’s MUCH better than it has been for months! And, really, the thing is, although I have made some good welds previously, this time I was able to repeat the process seven times! THAT is progress! And…AND!!! – when I grabbed them and wiggled them in all kinds of directions, and nothing broke off!!! SOLID!!! That is what we want!!!!
That stuff written above the practice piece are the settings on the welder for the amperage and the size of the tungsten electrode that I used to make these welds. I thought I’d never forget it, wouldn’t need to write it down, but then it occurred to me that weeks ago I’d done some welds that looked just as good as these, but hadn’t written anything down, and then I spent weeks trying to get back to this, so, can’t hurt, right?
Anyway, I could bore you with a long story about how I figured all this out, but let’s just say I practice, and practiced, and practiced, and practiced, and in between I asked for a lot of help and did a bunch of research. Now, finally(!!) I can do some solid work of which I will be proud, and which I can use to make decent sculpture. This type of welding right here is the basis upon which all my work is done, so having achieved this I have an excellent starting point from which to grow.
In short, this is really awesome. Really, really, really awesome!!!! Woot, says I.
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I keep practicing. After screwing up a number of welds on the sculpture itself, I figured I’d do a test piece like this and make a zillion practice welds (okay, ten or twelve) on it and see if that helped. The reason I didn’t try to take a better picture of the welds here is because they’re pretty crappy. You get the idea, though, that I’m doing this repeatedly. It’s not pretty, but it’s necessary. This is progress. In years past I would have thrown this all out and been really disgusted, and maybe even given up on welding all together. This is the sort of thing that would have stopped me dead in my tracks, or would have kept me from just simply keeping at it for another hour or two that evening or the next day. It’s the sort of thing where I might have thrown it angrily in the trash (or on the floor), and just walked away for a week, a month, a year.
Well, I’m not overjoyed or anything, but at least I’m not setting unrealistic expectations for myself (maybe?). This is the way things are for me right now, and they will improve if I keep after it, and I’m going to keep after it!!!!
So I went to my steel fabrication sculpture class this past weekend, and it was A-FRIGGIN’-MAZING!!!! OMGZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ! (There will be more pictures and explanation later, promise!)
We built stuff! We cut stuff using FIRE!!! There was an oxyacetelyne setup and a plasma cutter and a MIG welder! It was awesome! I will post pics soon as I’m able. I built about half of a rolling ball sculpture in three hours. Yes, shock and surprise there, right? A bunch of people looked at it and were like, “What…is that?” One guy in particular kept looking at it. I’m wondering if he’s not going to start thinking about building one. He had this funny look on his face, like he was really considering something.
This whole welding thing – it was just so great! My one or two meager efforts at stick welding in the garage gave me some familiarity, and the practice of soldering actually prepared me for some of processes used in welding, so I was kind of online already. But the whole thing, just – it was incredible! I have been told, and I believe it’s also in the Artist’s Way, that when you’re really tuned in, when you’re really doing what you’re supposed to be doing, you forget all about everything else around you. Time flies by and you don’t even know it. You become terrifically focused on what you’re doing.
That’s exactly what happened. I was wholly drawn in to it. On Saturday we basically learned how the shop works. On Sunday it was, “Have at it!” day, so Saturday night I went home and took the steel rods I’d bought earlier that morning and I bent them up into spirals so I could spend my time welding on Sunday and not bending stuff. I was working on it without even being there! Then when I got there I got so into my work I didn’t even realize I hadn’t taken a picture until the instructor told is it was time to start cleaning up. I was all the way into it. It was the greatest thing ever!
But what does this have to do with letting go, you ask? Moving on? Well, the experience with welding was so awesome, even the parts where I screwed up, that I’m now clearing out anything around my house that I can find that I don’t need so I can buy a welder! From the outset of this whole rolling ball sculpture exploration I’ve wanted to weld, work with steel. Actually, I still have pieces of scrap metal, old car parts, that I cut up expressly to build a sculpture with. However, I realized not long into the project that I was taking a huge bite, and not sure I could chew it. I scaled back to copper just to get my feet wet. My feet are fairly soaked now, and this welding workshop solidified my suspicions from years past: I WANT TO WELD STEEL! I NEED TO DO THIS!
I know what material I want to use: stainless steel. I know what I want to do with it: build rolling ball sculptures. I need precision and detail. For this I need a TIG welder. Well, I could get by with less, but I’m not going to hamstring my efforts by getting what *kind of* works, not when I could pool resources and get what I *know* is going to do exactly what I need it to do.
At first I was just kind of desperate, like, “Ahh! I must get one! I don’t know how!” Then I went, “Dude, you know how much they cost, and you don’t have that kind of money….damn.” Then I went, “Hey, there have got to be one or two things lying around the house that you don’t want or need anymore. Maybe you can put enough of them together to make ends meet.”
So I started looking, and I was surprised at what I found. I dug through my back hall and found a bunch of music gear that I either never use, or use so seldom that it’s probably best that I just let go of it. It’s all going on Ebay here shortly. I already put a little bass amp on there, a practice amp, and there are a couple more old tube guitar amps that are probably going to go up as well. I may have already sold one of them to a friend, sans Ebay. Cheaper for both of us!
I’m on my way. I’m letting go of all kinds of stuff that I’ve been holding onto. It’s time to turn that over into something that I can use and enjoy today. They say that the things we own can end up owning us, that we can become trapped by things, stuff. I know that in the past I haven’t sold these things because, “Well, I might want to use it someday,” or, “But what if I regret selling it a year or two or ten from now?” Well, what if a year or two or ten from now I go, “Man, I really wish I’d bought that welder ten years ago. Just think where I’d be now if I’d started back then! Why did I wait?”
If I’m not using these things, someone else should be. They were created to be used, not to sit in a dark corner. I’m putting them back out into the world where they can be enjoyed…and then I’m going to purchase something that *I* can fully enjoy today, right now!
Finished at last! I forget when I started on this thing, but it seems like weeks ago. I think it was nine days hence, but I was figuring it would be wrapped up in no more than a week, or perhaps even less.
Yeaaaaaah, right. I don’t think it’s likely that I can do something simply and quickly, although that last one wrapped up pretty quickly once I was able to put some time in on it. Okay, it’s possible. Not likely, but possible.
So this one was supposed to be pretty simple and quick, and I suppose, compared to the 30-day builds that I’ve done in the past, this one WAS pretty quick, but not as fast as I’d planned, and, well, really…not as simple. Concept, yes. Execution, no!
Basically there’s a spiral that dumps onto this backwards-facing incline, and then the marble gets carried to the top by inertia where it stops, rolls back again, passes the point where it fell from the spiral, and then continues on through the rest of the sculpture. At its most basic it’s just a spiral and about a foot or so of track. In the real world, not so simple.
But enough of that! Check out the results!
Above you can see the unique aspect to this particular sculpture, the brass ramp. Said ramp is made out of the reed plate of a Hohner harmonica. I removed all the reeds and bent it into a shallow U-shaped channel. The track that it mounts to extends for quite some distance before it is anchored to the base. For this reason, when the marble lands on it, it vibrates a lot and looks like it’s about to fall off at any number of points. It also sounds kind of cool, because it’s brass, gives it a nice little clanky, rattley sound. I would like to get some video of this one in particular. I don’t have a camera, though, nor does anyone I know offhand. I’m wondering if maybe my goal should be to sell several of these so that I can afford a camera. After all, the whole point of these sculptures is that they actually move. It’d be nice to show that aspect to people, particularly when it’s a weird one like this one.
Here you can see the extension of the ramp a little better:
To the lower left of the above photo you can see some more brass. This is where the non-spiral portion of the track is finally anchored. This is also where minor insanity set in. I’m guessing there are about ten inches or so of free movement before the track reaches that anchor point. This is necessary for the agove-mentioned wiggling and clanking and whatnot. It just HAD to be done that way, or it would have really taken the fizz out of the punch, so to speak.
Getting that brass cut properly and soldered on there was a PAIN! That was an entire day of my life, and after that entire day, I failed quite spectacularly at the soldering. I had to leave it sitting there all blackened and lumpy, go to bed, and come back to it the next morning. The following day I realized that, if I were to have any hope in completing it as I had envisioned, what was going to be required was that I clamp the entire assembly onto a 2×4 board *vertically* so that the solder would flow onto the joints properly. Note: This is the part of the sculpture where things went from simple to “Hey, wait a minute! How did I end up doing all this work!” ‘Twas totally worth it though, kids, as it turned out freakin’ sweet!
Here’s the final photo showing some more detail on the curved supports for the spiral. Those turned out kind of nice, though I was torn about them for a while. I made them all and then wanted to scrap them and do something else, but instead I made a few cuts and bends and figured they looked pretty decent anyway. Here you can also get a better look at the upswing on the end of the whole affair. It does a nice job of slowing the marble down and bring it to a more gentle stop where it just kind of settles into the curve and waits to be picked up again.
By the way, didn’t my dad do another killer job on the base? He’s pretty awesome. I should probably get hold of him and ask for more for future projects. I have three left, but by the time I’m done he’ll probably just be finishing up another order for me.
So, fun, right? I thought so, anyway. I’ve never done anything previously with an active element like that wiggling ramp. I think I dig it. I’m going to try something like that with the others, some different kind of element for each one, maybe throw in a little more brass while I’m at it. It’s a bit of a pain to solder, but it looks nice when it’s done.
So that’s it! Pretty cool, eh? I’m jazzed. I hope the next one is as fun as this one. Completing this was rewarding, as it negated all those feelings of frustration that I had while I built it. When those brass pieces refused to solder properly I really did want to scrap that whole part of the plan, but I took a deep breath, called on some patience, and it came through just fine. We all have these moments in our creative endeavors. Remember to “Never judge a fledgling piece of work too soon.” That’s Artist’s Way stuff, kids. Learn it, know it, live it! It’s better than a pile of bent copper wire!
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You’d think I’d have all kinds of crazy tools and whatnot sitting around to help me make these things, but such is not the case. What you’re looking at are the basics of what I work with throughout the construction process. Those clips with the black bases – those things are very important! It really would be hard to do a lot without them. Those are called “third hands” in the biz. Model makers and crafters use them to basically just hold stuff still while it’s being worked on. You’ll notice a couple of pairs of Vice Grips, which I don’t mind plugging here, because they generally are made of awesome, although here they are performing the rather mundane task of simply being heavy and holding one end of the sculpture still and upright while I goof with other stuff. I use them for their intended purpose quite often, however, when soldering things in place or bending wire. The other tools just amount to various kinds of pliers, a hammer, wire cutters, and some soldering tools, maybe a few large clamps on occasion. Oh, and let’s not forget the all-important Sharpie marker. I use that thing ALL. THE. TIME. I sometimes think it’s one of the most important tools I have. This stuff isn’t fancy by any stretch, but it gets the job done.
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RAM chip, chord book. Totally related, right? Well they are, sort of. Here on the blog where we are all about creativity, it’s no surprise that both of these are linked to my creative growth. Well, that, and I ordered them both off the interwebz, if you need one more obscure way they’re related. I know the mail media link is a thrilling one, but let’s put that aside and look at the whole creative thing, since that’s pretty much why I write on here all the time.
The RAM I hope is going to be a huge help with my photo stuff. You’ve no doubt noticed that the photo posting has slowed until it seems as if it has stopped altogether. It has not, I assure you. I’ve still been taking photos (almost!) every day. I have all of them either on my hard drive or on my camera. However, processing all those photos gets ridiculously time consuming, particularly when I have over a hundred to go through and I want to switch back and forth among five or six of them and pick the best one. Right about the time I start doing that, the virtual memory in my lappy kicks on, and then everything…slows……..to……….a………….crawl. It can take me two hours just to pick through ten photos. Granted, I’m a perfectionist, but the slowosity of my hardware isn’t helping things any.
Enter my brother, who informs me that the whole slowness thing is caused by this virtual memory issue, and that if I got more RAM I could whip through dozens upon dozens of pictures as well as run iTunes, Word, and my web browser all at once and never have a hiccup. This sounds like more than a good deal to me, so I only kind of reluctantly shell out money I don’t really have to get this stuff which should perform what is really an invaluable function: that of making my creative efforts more easily accessible and enjoyable. This is pretty key stuff, as in the past I’ve hamstrung creative efforts by trying to get by with the minimum. Then I’ve been unhappy with the results, and then I’ve called the whole thing a failure. I’m pretty much done with working against myself these days, and I realize that my creative efforst are important enough and valuable enough that I actually DO deserve to spend money on them.
This sort of thing – purchasing the RAM – is the sort of side-effect that working toward a goal has. I didn’t set out to update my computer when I decided to take more pictures, it’s just something that has come with the territory. I didn’t set out to learn more about how my computer operates, but it happened. The same thing was the case with my outboard hard drive – just happened as a matter of course. It’s really interesting to see how all this stuff comes about when I pick up on something and go after it.
The same sort of thing has happened with my drawing stuff. I started with a handfull of pencils that a friend had given me. Now I have a whole box full that I’ve bought for myself. I also have a sketch book and some regular lead pencils for other types of drawing. I’ve been hanging out a lot more with a friend of mine, because she likes drawing. I’ve been noticing visual art more and taking a greater interest since I started drawing. There are some other projects in the works related to this subject, and I hope I’ll have some other developments to report on in the coming months. It looks like I’m going to learn matting and framing in the near future as well – not that I planned on that, it…just happened. I think there’s a trip to the art museum coming up as well related to “refilling the well” as the Artist’s Way puts it, and that will be an outgrowth of all this drawing stuff too.
The guitar chord book – well, that’s kind of obvious, now isn’t it? I…didn’t really plan on buying that, but they guy who is teaching me things, he said that’s the book he first used over forty years ago. I wanted to learn a few things, so I’m going to give this a shot. Working on guitar stuff has led me to listen to music differently and led to new conversations with new people. This interest was also responsible for my nephew getting a ukelele from me for his birthday this year, in a weird sort of related twist. The people who are being affected by my interests are not just me, which is a cool thing to note. (If my nephew ever ends up on Youtube singing Jason Mraz tunes, I’ll be sure to let you know.)
Now, off to work on some photos or guitar or whatever the heck else…