Winter Projects

Welcome, Welcome, my loyal stalkers and ocasional visitors I am here today to give your second blog this week, yes you heard me right, second. To be honest I figured if I am going to attract anymore followers I better get my behind in gear and blog more so each night I thought of blogging but ran out of time. So before the week runs out and it begins to look like every other week on this blog I figured what the heck, folks just want to see what I am up to so I will give you that.

This week I have been keeping my winter blues at bay by taking on a couple projects to keep me busy at night and let me tell ya, they have been keeping me busy.

Project #1: We are slowly converting the shop to be RoHS compliant and lead free. To help in the transition I made two distinctively different portable solder stations so that there will be no cross contamination. This project mostly was made up of painting but also included some woodworking and gluing. Below you will see a photo of the stations.



Project #2: At the BMW shop we picked up some floor display signs from a local store going out of business. I made custom inserts out of frame matting's for the inside so we can just insert a standard 8.5 x 11" sheet of paper. I haven't taken pictures yet but will tonite and get it added here.

Project #3: Also at the BMW shop we are looking into getting new carpeting for the showroom. I have been working on making a drawing in AutoCad of the floor area and the carpet squares so we can color them in and decide the pattern to put on the floor. Once we get it all hammered out I will post a pic of that too.

So there you have it, another winter week here in Michigan.

Stained Glass Saturdays

Two weeks ago our good friends Starr and Gwedo invited us out to Lowell to walk the downtown area so Betina could see all the little art galleries and shops. During our walk-about we entered one gallery named Glass House Designs. Once inside we found all sorts of glass artwork, and a large workshop area. As I browsed around checking out all the neat glass objects I heard Gwedo sparking up a conversation with the Owner/Artist Susan Molnar. When I made my way around to the workshop area I saw this twinkle in G's eyes and he was gathering information. We said good bye and followed our wives into the next shop. This shop was not so exciting for G and I so we sat in the front windows discussing the stained glass shop. Gwedo produced the paperwork he acquired regarding the stained glass classes and we looked it over while considered attending classes on Saturday afternoons. Gwedo called during the week and made all the arrangements for us to attend the class.

Upon our arrival Susan, our instructor had all the work areas ready to go with all the tools we would need to make our first glass project. She started by explaining all the tools involved and how we were to use them. The tools used consist of a Cutter, Breaker/Grozer Pliers, and Running Pliers to get started. First she had us cutting straight strips of glass to get use to the technique needed for the cutter and running pliers. After we mastered that we moved to cutting curved pieces. That proved to be a little trickier and took some patients. After approximately and hour of practicing we then moved on to make a five part piece of work from start to finish. This project would be made from inexpensive regular window glass to get the hang of all the tools and to take a project from start to finish. After cutting the paper pattern out and tracing the pieces on to the glass we cut all our pieces out. Then Susan taught us how to apply the copper foil to the glass pieces using the fid. Once all the pieces where foiled we then could lay them into position and solder them together. The next step was to wash our projects and apply the Patina to turn the solder black. The last step of the day was to wash our art and polish it. It was a very enjoyable day and we immediately signed up for another class.

This is my first project, nothing special but a great learning experience.

It's Saturday again, time for more stained glass projects. G and I arrive a little early to pick out the glass we will be using for our first "real project". I have chosen to make an Orchid for Betina since she loves those flowers. I select my glass with a little help from Susan and settle in to our worktable. Once G has selected his glass (I can't divulge what he is working on, it's a secret) the two of us were gleaming with excitement, just itchin' to get started. That's when Susan brought us back to earth by giving us some scrap glass and suggested we trace some of the parts of our pattern to practice a few times before trying it on our expensive glass. Ha, this proved to be disastrous, we thought we were professional already and realized these beginner projects where much harder than we thought. Finally after screwing up all the practice glass we move on to our good glass. We both got off to a very poor start but managed to finally get some of the tricky pieces cut out. At the end of class we just looked at each other and chuckled, we thought we would be bringing finished goods home again this week but learned that it is quite the process. Of course we signed up for next Saturday and will hopefully finish them up and then try another one. Below you will find some photos of the start of my Orchid project.

Thoughtless...

ummm... ummmm....
Okay, to tell the truth, I never realized this could happen to me, but I am being "cyber-bullied". Yup, that's right, I have one fan that is stepping over the line, stalking me, making demands that are just unrealistic.
Can anybody out there believe that I got an email yesterday stating "Blog! Blog tonite or else" and then it went on to explain the consequences, and trust me, they are nothing I can post here. I tried to gently persuade this individual to understand that blogging is an art form, and you can not force it, but he seems to think otherwise. So here I am, in a panic after a great night of partying typing this garbage just hoping this satisfies his request so I do not get harmed.

While we are on this subject, if you are a fan, follower (stalker) or just an occasional visitor could you please drop a comment so I have an idea how many of you are out there waiting for me to post again...
Thanks!

Edit: 1-17-09 Great! Two days have past and the only comments I have gotten are from my two hemorrhoids. I guess having two pains in the arse is much better than having nobody read my garbage! Please, if you are just reading this for the first time post a comment.
I suppose if I posted more I would have more fans. Lets see what I can scrounge up for a real post.