Anna's lamp

I made this for my sister's birthday: The base is maple with a jarrah stain, the fixtures are made from copper pipe and fittings, and the globes are CCFLs from Jaycar. The switch on the front is mounted on a small copper plate, and the base is padded underneath with red felt.

Doors and mirrors

We've had these new doors put on at the front of my house, opening onto the new deck. They look really good. They're cedar on the inside, and powder coated steel on the outside (wood weathers woefully). Anyway, the doors came in, of all things, maple packing. I like maple, it's cheaper than other, darker woods, but takes a stain really nicely, and is good to work with, so I kept the packing. I had two very small pieces (about 1200mm together, and 40mm wide) of it that I looked for a use for, and, after not too long, I found it looking me in the face. A mirror! I have this old mirror, without a frame of any sort, sitting on top of a speaker in my room, and I've been meaning to frame it for a while. I started it the other day. It's a very plain, simple design. Mitred corners, mirror held in a groove in the middle of each side. But I'm planning on some interesting flourishes at the joints. I haven't quite decided yet, I'm tossing up between a couple of different ideas I had revolving around brass pins, but, failing that, I'll just go with brass corners. I'll give it a new jarrah stain when I'm done.

Experimenting with etch resists

Today I tried two substances as etch resists for electrolytic etching. Etch resist marker, designed for chemical etching of circuit boards, and black acrylic paint. Neither were great, I must say. The etch resist pen worked, but came off very easily when I brushed the surface to remove copper crud. It could work, but I'm not doing any fine art with it. The second, acrylic paint, was a TOTAL FAILURE. Tip: Never use water-based substances as resists. They dissolve in the bath. Photo one is before etching, photo two is after.








I didn't touch the front surface on the second one before taking the photograph. Once I scraped the paint off, I noticed that the whole surface had been etched the same amount. I reiterate: Never use water based substances. Ever.

Under pressure

Last year sometime I got, free of charge of course, a gas tank, and a car's air-conditioning compressor. I wanted, you see, to build an air compressor. But I procrastinated with it, as per usual, for two reasons: the tank still had propane in it, and I had no safety valves. Well, today I found someone who will sell me the appropriate valves and regulators etc, so I will get cracking as soon as possible. I mean to buy parts on Saturday. Here is my plan of attack:
Note: It's only a schematic, it won't look like that when I'm done.

Card box pt. 2

I have decided that I hate press 'n' peel blue. It will not work for me. I'm probably doing something wrong, but it took me three goes to get nowhere with it, after that I went back to good ole magazine pages and, lo and behold, perfect first go. Tip for young players, don't buy p'n'p blue. Anyway, I etched the front of my card box today, much better than the old card box I must say. Here's the image: