- June
Image Archive -
6/13/01 -
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For having spent the better part of the
day working in the shop, it sure doesn't look like I accomplished
much, does it?
The face is done save for the eyebars. The skull is ready
to have the crest and brow straps riveted on (brow strap soaking in
vinegar at the moment). The strips for the slat back are
waiting to be cut out and assembled. Other than that it's
done! Hijjus amount of welding was needed on the
backside of the face, and the mustache took way longer than I
expected - new ways of doing things often turn out that way, and I
was trying a different mounting method than I've used before.
Details on construction to follow... |
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| Later on the 12th -
I've decided to forgo the nasal entirely in favor of showing the
nose off. To that end, I gas welded the inside of the nose to
reinforce it (it was pretty thin from all the stretching it went
through) and it's quite stout now. The eyebrow thingy is a
temp - I don't like the shape - and will be replaced later.
The helm will be a simple iron spangenhelm cap, with the face
being the predominant design element. The slat-back skirt will
be mounted later also.
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6/12/01 - Armoury/Vehicle update: For
those of you just tuning in, I've had to spend obscenely ridiculous
amounts of time fixing vehicles lately so that we could have a running car
- important at any time, but particularly so when expecting babies.
I thought the worst of it was over, but toward the end of last week there
came a horrible grinding noise from one of the rear wheels of our main
vehicle, which turned out to be wheel bearings. Not a terrible thing
under normal circumstances, but upon inspection it turned out that the
bearing races on both surfaces of the axle were ruined (or rather would
require machining - which given lack of funds at the moment amounts to the
same thing), and I would have to swap rear-ends with the parts vehicle to
keep it running. At that point, I decided to just get the other
(nominally running) Travelall up to speed - it didn't require too much
time and effort to do so, and again...I thought all was well for at least
a while. Not so. The next day, we hit a bump that snapped a
torsion rod (used instead of springs in the front-end suspension of this
vehicle) and rendered that vehicle inoperative. So I spent
most of this weekend welding up the torsion rod (not supposed to be
doable, and definitely not advisable, but there wasn't much of a choice)
and swapping rear-ends on the other vehicle (still not done). With
the "repaired" torsion rod (in quotes because a
welded-but-not-heat-treated spring isn't exactly a repair in any sane
sense of the word) we have a vehicle that gets us around - as long as I'm
careful - and once I'm done swapping axles on the other truck, we'll have
two running vehicles (until the next crisis).
The reason for the above narrative is by
way of explaining why there're no new and exciting armour pictures.
That and I'm out of batteries for the digital camera. It also
explains why the site's not back up, why I've been remiss about returning
phone calls (Bob!), and why there are dirty dishes in the sink - I've not
had time to deal with everything that needs dealing with. On the
plus side, I'm doing great - and now that I've got the luxury of two
vehicles (well, almost) - I should be able to do nothing but armour for
awhile. I'm sure that everyone waiting will be happy to hear that,
eh?
Last night, BTW, I did get some actual
armouring done. Bob's helm is coming together quickly and looks
great. I got the mustache well under way, and the whole thing should
be 90% done by COB today - unless the cars spontaneously combust and I'm
forced to spend the rest of the day building one from scratch :)
For those of you who have been keeping
track: If I had been able to spend the time working on armour
instead of cars this last month, I'd be mostly caught up with backorders
and would be making money instead of hemorrhaging it. I figure I
make around $20 an hour when I'm in the shop - I weep to consider how far
this has set me back (well, not weeping, but I am annoyed). I like
my Travelalls, and I love working on them, but - damn! - I
could be doing more productive, necessary things right now. Grrr.....
6/5/01 - Site still
broken, but that's to be expected since I haven't done anything to fix it
yet. Below are pictures of an unplanned furtherance of the Sport
Combat Artwork concept. What happened was that I
didn't get much done in the shop until 6pm (yeah, like that's a
good schedule...), due to lots of other things needing to be done.
About the time I got to working, my friend Chris showed up for dinner and
to borrow a tool to work on a project of his own - he's building a muscled
cuirass for a local guy - and we got to talking about repousse' and
techniques and before you know it we were both hammering on the faceplate.
We traded it back and forth a few times, working on the nose - I should
mention that it started with my realization that the face needed to come
out a bit to allow for Bob's nose - and after a bit, seeing as how
Chris was having so much fun with it, I left him to it and worked on the
rest of the helm. After an amazingly short period of time, he was
showing me this incredible nose that he'd built in the middle of the
face. We were both very excited, because this is the furthest that
either of us have gone in this direction. It was one of
those wonderful moments where everything comes together - tools,
knowledge, skills, intuition - and a breakthrough to a new level of
mastery occurs. I knew it was possible to do work like this, but I
had convinced myself that I needed more/different tools and knowledge of
how to use them. To have Chris come in and just put it all together
for me with the tools I've got was fantastic - this is one
of the places I've been wanting to go with my work, and he gave me a
lot of help getting there.
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Today, I'll refine the face more, and decide what to
do about the nasal. Here's what the original design was
supposed to look like. It's composed of elements from a church
door in Iceland ca. 1200 - yes, that's out of period for the
Vikings, but the style is closely based on traditional images
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It'd be a shame to cover up the nose with a wide
nasal.
BTW, it's supposed to be crooked - it's a broken
nose :)
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Here's some examples of skinny nasals
that might work.
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It'd be nice to order a cast nasal from Raymond,
but I don't think there's enough time. Bob will see this - he
checks the page about a dozen times a day - and will let me know ;)
This is Raymond's Upland nasal - $35
and this is his Coppergate - The nasal by itself
is $35.
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Profile views showing the amount of detail Chris
brought to the work. Not bad for a first try, eh?
Head in a bowl
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6/4/01
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Bob Bowker's Viking face helm in
progress.
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Looks kind of goofy without the teeth,
mustache and nasal, doesn't it? Like an old man missing his
dentures :)
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June Archive
