I spent a day cleaning up the scroll work and putting a nice polish on it in preparation for setting the stones. It looks rather nice all shiny. I spent today doing a few practice stones to make sure when I start setting tomorrow on the hilt that I have my game on. I initially tried a thin piece of brass that turned out to be harder than diamond impregnated steel (or maybe it just seemed that way). That was not very successful due in part to the stones sticking out the bottom and getting messed up accidentally. I was just free handing the piece. I didn’t have it shellac’ed down or anything. I attempted to pour a brass ingot today which was only partly successful. I think part of the problem was I had to make do with at casting crucible and not a pouring crucible. Anyway, I did get a piece that was big enough to be useful and after 4 tries, I finally re-acquired my bead setting mojo. Tomorrow, I will be working on the hilt stones. I did send off the soundboard for repair on Tuesday. Hopefully it won’t take too long…..
Archive for October, 2011
I have been working on plugging those stupid holes for several days now. I finally got 8 discs to fit the 8 holes. I even laid them out in order to minimize potential screw-upability. That, unfortunately, was merely delayed and NOT minimized. However, I did get all the discs in place. Several of them magically decided to NOT FIT RIGHT. So I have spent ALL of today trying to fix the holes and seams and pits. Since the scroll work is tubular, it is VERY difficult to get the solder to flow right. I have tried and tried and tried. Some of the patches look OK, but is painfully obvious which ones do not. In all fairness, I will be re-drilling holes through the patched areas, but I am concerned that it will look bad despite that. The scroll work does fit fairly snugly now, which is a good thing. But it isn’t snug enough to leave off the screws.
I will be back at it tomorrow…..
Yesterday was a pretty good day. I continued my quest to get the switch box in mechanical working order. I did finally get a pair of switches adjusted to fit in the space allowed. For the aux switch (the round green one), I used one of the switches with a plunger that I filed down to the right height. For the main switch, one of the standard button switches did just fine. Now they click and the actuators move back and forth in response to pressure from the finger. The main switch is a little wonky still. I had to adjust the guide walls and one of them I took out entirely. I may have to mess with that some more.
Today, I tried to fix the soundboard. That was a resounding failure. I got the resistor in place and NOW, I don’t even get the boot sound. Apparently there is more wrong that we had hoped. I guess I will be mailing it off to get repaired by a professional. That’s likely to run about 50 bucks plus shipping, but it’s better than buying a brand new one.
Next I started preparations to begin the stone setting process and, surprise, surprise, surprise….MURPHY reared his @#$%$%#$ head ONCE AGAIN. I cut through the solder joints in the scrollwork and filed both sides of the former joint down to where the tube fit fairly snug against the aluminum. THEN I discovered that the holes in the border section that the screws are supposed to go through no longer match the holes in the aluminum that have threads tapped inside. My head was about to explode at that point and someone mentioned that I should have bound the scrollwork originally with steel wire. Of course originally, the aluminum mandrel that I was making use of was ONE size and the tube that got powdercoated had been turned down further, making it a COMPLETELY different size.
I settled on trying to plug the holes with brass circles that will have to be soldered in place. I finally decided to call it a night, when, after 45 minutes of messing with the first brass circle, I still couldn’t get it to fit right. I’ll be back at it in the morning….
I finished up the round hole in the switchbox this morning and had the rectangular hole finished by lunch. That was all well and good, until Glenn pointed out that I would need guide “boxes” on the underside of the switchbox to insure that the switch assemblies go up and down and NOT side to side. I am happy to report, however, that I succeeded in fabricating the round tube for that purpose and I actually used the two brass brackets I had originally made for the brass bezel which ultimately got scrapped. Furthermore, on top of that (Dun, dun, DUN DUN!!! Don’t love ya anyway!!!), I got them all soldered down to the bottom of the switchbox with only minimal frustration. I did make the round one too tall on purpose. In fact it needs to be about 2/3′s of the height it is now, which means, I guess, that I will have to take a burr and remove material. It’s actually right at the height of the plate right now. The actual switch is recessed just slightly by the groove in the emitter piece, but not enough. I shall be busy working on that tomorrow. Hopefully I will have the entire switchbox assembly in working order by the end of tomorrow afternoon…..
Also, Tom, the electronics guy that came out and looked at my soundboard with me, stopped by today. He had a bag of 100 ohm resistors and he gave them to me. I thought that was very nice of him!
I had much better luck constructing bezel assemblies in sterling. I soldered the detent on the outside of the rectangular bezel without any problems. The round bezel was short enough that it doesn’t require that detent. I did have a little trouble with the corners of the rectangle, so Glenn suggested I take a saw blade and run it down a little to help the 2 sides converge easier. That worked pretty well. I did some layout work today and started drilling out the hole for the round one. I thought I had burrs big enough for the hole necessary (which is about 6 and a half millimeters) but alas, either that burr is MIA or my memory is even shoddier than normal today. I used a smaller round burr to carefully widen the edges of the hole. It’s very close to fitting, but not quite there yet.
Another 3 days of banging my head repeatedly against the top of my bench…..
I spent Monday and Tuesday trying to fabricate a bezel mount for the amethyst. After multiple tries I finally got a box out of it. Somehow, a 6 mm high box (off the base plate) is NOT high enough to effectively hold a 4 mm high stone. That must be some weird goldsmith math. I also spent hours trying to figure out the seat that goes inside. I tried brackets. I tried an oval. I tried a funny looking oval-ish thing. I could NOT get the stone to sit flat, no matter what I did.
Missy recommended starting over in silver because it is easier to work with. She also recommend going even thinner on the bezel wall. So I rolled out some of my silver sheet to about 25 gauge. It took me all day today, but I think I finally have the basic box put together. I ended up soldering a second seat in the walled portion before I soldered that assembly to a piece of sheet. I am gonna have to put some kind of extra detent wall on the outside of the bezel to restrict its upward movement. I reckon I will be doing that tomorrow, plus working on the other bezel assembly.
I spent Thursday working with the screws and screw holes for the switch box. The first set that had been drilled is basically fine. The screws go down where they are supposed to. The other 2 holes were more problematic, but I prevailed in my quest. I had to cut off another pair of screws that were just ONE thread revolution longer than the first two I tried to use. I wouldn’t have thought such a small bit of a screw could make such a difference. But with the holes in places where I can just drill further, I made do with what the scenario I have. The tap of course is still broken. I may talk to Glenn about that too. I found a bunch tap related supplies in the Jantz catalog that randomly showed up at my doorstep last week. I need to buy him one and myself one (or maybe 2). Glenn helped me do the hole in the emitter piece for the wires. It isn’t all that pretty, but the switchbox will completely cover the un-pretty up, so I am not worried about that part.
I am delighted to report that I finally had the powdercoating done yesterday (Saturday, for those not near a calendar). It looks fantastic, in my opinion. The aluminum parts are now a gorgeous shade of medium green that nicely accentuates the brass scrollwork. I can’t wait to see how it looks with the stones set.
I also broke down and purchase a new tablet for my laptop. I had another pen go bad on me and I happened to see where Wacom has just recently released the next version of the Bamboo (which has been my tablet for 3 years or so now). I found one on Amazon for a good price (and free shipping), so I went ahead and ordered it. I must say, the new Bamboo Create does NOT disappoint! The functional area is twice the size of the old one. It has touch capability too, which is a little odd. I’ve never liked the glide-point things on laptops, and this essentially is a GIANT glidepoint in that mode. I love the new pen. It has replaceable nibs too, which is great. The tablet came with Photoshop Elements 9, Corel Painter Essentials 4, and Autodesk Sketchbook Express. 3 amazing programs AND they have tutorials for them on the disk as well. I have spent most of this weekend doing Elements tutorials and Painter tutorials. I have a much better grasp of how to make things happen in Elements than I EVER have before. I am looking forward to doing better quality artwork all the way around!
My switchbox has finally come to fruition, after a week and a half of slogging through 5 attempts at fabricating it. I was worried to day that I had uncovered a large series of pits but the solder had built up in that area. Once I filed it down to the brass, it was fine. There is a noticeable solder joint (I used silver solder). Also, when looking at the saber, it seems that no less than 4 separate alloys of brass are in the mix. Bill and Missy think it’s fine. I DO NOT think it’s fine. It looks weird to me that the brass parts don’t match amongst themselves. I am trying to decide whether to try plating them all with 18 K yellow gold or just leaving them be.
I am getting so close to the end now. I just have to get the powder coating done (FINALLY), drill the wire holes, fabricate the bezel setup for the switches, set the stones, and install the electronics……
I told myself this week would be different……so far, NOT so MUCH. I spent ALL day long on the 5th incarnation of the switch box. The only task I seem to have accomplished is getting the top piece solder in place. That took the entire afternoon. I don’t know why things seem to be going wrong at such a spectacular pace. At least I didn’t melt it this time. I am gonna have to take another pass with the torch (and more solder) tomorrow. It is mostly in place. Instead of doing a fit inside the tube like the other times, I put the last piece on like a cap on TOP of the tube.
