From rq: Before we get to the chapel, I have to walk you through the map tapestries and the odd creatures found therein. Amazing, so beautiful. Click for full size!
© rq, all rights reserved.
Affinity
Art, Fun, & Nonsense.
From rq: Before we get to the chapel, I have to walk you through the map tapestries and the odd creatures found therein. Amazing, so beautiful. Click for full size!
© rq, all rights reserved.
I lied to myself when I said that I will continue even though the blade might not be hardened properly. I just could not do it. Even though the knife will in the end be just ornamental thing, a wall hanger that will never be used, I could not bring myself to making a knife with improperly hardened blade. So I had another go at it. Fail again, the steel was still soft and it was not only surface – I tried to break of the tip and it bent and straightened as if it were copper. So I had another go at it, using water as quenchant – a big risk because in high carbon steel this can lead to the blade cracking or even exploding into bits. Fail again, it remained soft.
At this point I had to reconsider. I was convinced that I did everything correctly, testing with magnet for the austenite transformation etc. and I am already relatively good at assessing the temperature by the glow color, so I did not think the failed quench was due to wrong temperature. The quenchant also could not be the problem, since I hardened three blades in it without problems and one at the same time as this one failed.
So I surmised the problem lies in the steel. Perhaps it was surface hardened file and when I did the test with ferric chloride I had all the hardened steel ground off already, so it could not show in color. Or perhaps I burned off the carbon due to the not-so-well functioning protective coating. I consider the first option to be more likely. Anyway, I could throw this blade away and start anew, or I could do what I mentioned before – surface harden it.
Theoretically this makes for a very good dagger, because under the hard and brittle surface remains soft and tough steel, which means the dagger would not break easily when hitting something hard – like an armor. But it is a long process that burns through a lot of charcoal with results unsure. And the layer might be too thin and get ground off during polishing.
I succumbed, knowingly, to the sunk cost fallacy and decided to go for it in an attempt to save the blade. This is what I have done:
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
First I have cleaned the whole blade thoroughly with angle grinder and a twisted knot wire brush wheel. After that I also scrubbed the whole blade with abrasive pad (similar to Scotch-Brite, only different manufacturer). Whilst doing this I noticed that the blade got slightly blotchy and pitted, so there was definitively more material burned off than I am happy with. Inevitable after three failed quenches. Theoretically quench could be attempted infinite amount of times – but practically the blade would burn away pretty soon.
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
Secondly I took my limited supply of stainless steel foil and wrapped it around the blade forming a little trough. Not wanting to perform more than one experiment in one project I did not experiment with the hardening material and I used powdered charcoal. Any organic material would do, really (sugar works extremely well I might add, and in the future I intend to experiment with bone dust and various mixtures from easy to get chemicals), but they give blotchy, coloured surfaces, and with charcoal I had a best shot to get evenly hardened and evenly coloured surface.
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
After filling the trough about halfway with the powder I crimped very tightly the edges, folding them twice and pressing the folds together in a vice. It is important to get the package as air tight as possible. But the tang was not packed in, because that was supposed to remain soft. Thus prepared package was now ready for heating. For this I have used my improvised setup build from fireclay bricks, but without forced air supply (a fancy way of saying I left the vacuum cleaner in the workshop). I filled the fireplace with charcoal, buried the package in it, lit it and left it to its own devices over night. Under an impromptu cover because it was raining.
The next day the package was burned through near the tip, a bad sign. But the charcoal dust was still all in there and it did cling to the blade very nicely – I had to scrape it off. A good sign. But I decided to repeat the process once more just to be sure.
Today, after I returned from work, the weather was again good so I could have another shot at quenching this cursed thing.
And it is a success. The blade is hard as glass on the surface and there are no cracks that I see after cleaning it with wire brush. I hope no hair thin cracks shows later on.
Tomorrow the blade goes into the baking oven for heat treatment 150°C half an hour. Maybe two courses.
Pepper saying hello to staff at the Smithsonian Castle. (all photos courtesy Smithsonian).
The next time you visit a Smithsonian museum, the first greeting you get may come from a gleaming, four-foot-tall android extending their hand. This would be Pepper, one of 25 humanoid robots that were introduced two days ago to six Smithsonian spaces, from the Hirshhorn Museum to the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Donated by their engineers at Softbank Robotics, the platoon of Peppers is intended to enhance the visitor experience and ensure that daily operations run smoothly.
Pepper, which was designed to interact with humans, is the first bot capable of recognizing our emotions. These models already work in an array of industries around the world, serving as receptionists in Belgian hospitals and even as priests in Japan that lead funerary rituals. While the robot has been on display in museums, the Smithsonian now represents the first museum complex to actually use these wide-eyed automata for their services.
“We see them as a new tool for the docents to use, especially since they are always paired with a person,” a spokesperson for Smithsonian told Hyperallergic, noting that the Peppers are “absolutely not replacing docents.”
Softbank Robotics donated the Peppers for an experimental, pilot program intended to help the Smithsonian solve problems, from boosting visitorship to “under-attended galleries” and encouraging greater engagement with artworks. While the robots can provide helpful information by answering commonly asked questions, they can also indulge in more lighthearted activities for which human docents do not always have the time (or patience); visitors can ask Pepper to dance, play games, and even pose for a selfie. While the robots currently do not have captioned speech, the Smithsonian said that it is working to caption images that appear on their screens and “will continue with our software partners to make Pepper as accessible as possible.”
Very cool! I’d like to meet Pepper. You can read and see much more at Hyperallergic.
This is a very interesting and informative series of three videos about a knightly effigies, what they are, why they were made and how they can help us understand the history of medieval armor from times where very few real exemplars are left. The series takes overall about an hour. Info on Tobias Capwell can be found here -click-
I have baked this just for fun in 2015 for christmas.
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size
Hexenturm means “Witch tower” and according to this plaque it is the oldest building in Idstein.
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size
The only way to approach the tower is through the gate. This is the view of the tower as one approaches it.
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size
And another angle, from the entrance to the castle. And the view of the pavement leading from the gate to the castle and the tower, which looked rather interesting in the evening light.
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size
The name was given to the tower allegedly because there were incarcerated women accused of witchcraft, but according to German Wikipedia there is no evidence for his although the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Whatever the truth, nowadays the tower has a much better purpose – it is a nesting site for kestrels Falco tinnunculus and jackdaws Corvus monedula. We have heard the birds but we did not see them and of course, even had we seen them I could not make pictures.
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size
As I was saying last time, I have given my belt grinder a complete overhaul.
Since now I knew that I can do it and it will work, I was not so stingy about spending money so I bought for about 50€ a few beech wood profiles 50×50 and 50×30 mm, some new ball bearings and a few other thing.
First thing I have done after that was to remove the belt support and compeltely dismantle the idler wheels. I have rebuild them. Instead of using threaded rods throughout I used about 100 mm length of a 10 mm rod on which I cut thread on the ends – on one side just about 1 cm each side . This has provided better fit with the inner opening of the ball bearings. I also shortened the inner spacer between the ball bearings so that I can sink in the nuts inside so it and the rod are flush with the wheel edge.
This has allowed me to to fix the wheels on the future idler on only one side, so I fixed them perpendicular to 50×30 profile and after that I got distracted.
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
The distraction was the spanning wheel, which I did not intend to rebuild. But changing belts was a bit awkward – I had to pull on the lever with left hand and change the belt with the right hand. And I got an idea on how to improve that. So I have built out of plywood a gravity latch that falls into position when the lever is pulled beyond certain point. That frees both hands to put on the belt comfortably and without hassle. When the belt is on I lift the latch, the spring spans the arm and after I let go the latch end lays on the top of the spanning arm without restraining it.
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
With that done I returned to the idler. Whilst I did spend some money on good materials, I did not spend too much time with planning except in my head. So I was still working by mostly piling stuff on other stuff making it up as I go along. I did not bother with precision too much and relied heavily on epoxy to fill any gaps and I added dovels and sometimes screws for strength
The only thing that I actually have spent some time to make precise was the parallelity of the wheels.
On the idler I prepared two screws with wing nuts for fixing the platen, and on the other side are two screws for fixing the support table (not seen here, but the positions are the pale circles in the lower half).
With that done I have cut two platens out of an old U profile that was rusting in my garden for years. Here is the final setup with all threee options visible. Left is setting for 20 cm hardbelt, middle 12 cm hardbelt, 10 cm slackbelt and right is 24 cm slackbelt.
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
After this was done and tested – which I have done by truing the platens by alternating them as support/workpiece against each other on the grinder – I gave the whole thing a new coat of paint. The machine blue and the detacheable idler arm pale grey.
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
It is Amazing how a simple paint can improve the looks of things, isn’t it? I am glad to say that it all works as intended.
Next step is to make second detacheable arm with changeable wheels of different diameters, for hollow grind an fullers.
Rathaus has of course nothing to do with rats, unless you mean politicians. Which would be insulting to rats, I guess. Rathaus is from german words for a counsel (Rat) and a house (Haus) and means town hall.
The building is nothing extraordinary in the context of the town, but to the right side of it is a beautiful gate to the castle. Unfortunately you can only imagine the gate, because it was being repaired at the time of our visit so I could not take good pictures of it . And I did not have time to spend with the various plaques around the staircase either.
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
From rq, click for full size!
© rq, all rights reserved.
Today, after finishing with my bonsai trees for now, I got an hour or so to use and get a shot at hardening the blade.
I was so stressed from working almost non-stop the whole weekend and trying to manage to replant all my outdoor bonsai trees that I forgot to take pictures of the process and only could take pictures afterwards. So here is a picture of my setup. I was hardening two blades.
Blade hardening setup.
Slight contrast with Marcus’s fully equipped workshop I guess :-). On the right is gas mini-forge where a future kitchen knife was heated up most of the time, on the left is a charcoal fire between fireclay bricks for the dagger and in the middle is quenching oil. This is the main reason why I cannot harden blades in bad weather – I have to go outside to do it.
And here are the blades after hardening and before tempering, covered in burned oil and, in the case of the dagger, slag and scale.
Blades after quench.
I am not all together sure It was a complete success. I am sure it was a 50% success. I definitively successfully hardened the kitchen knife. Which is slightly strange, because the kitchen knife is made from N690 steel that is allegedly difficult to harden in impromptu settings, whereas the dagger is simple carbon steel that should have been easy-peasy. The kitchen knife is completely without deformation, the dagger got a very slight bend that I was able to correct after tempering the blades in kitchen oven at 150°C for an hour. In fact, it was maybe too easy to correct. File skids on the kitchen blade like on glass, but it is possible to make a shallow bite with it into the dagger.
The problem might be that I tried to coat the dagger with an experimental anti-scaling solution that unfortunately did not work as intended. Back to the drawing board there I guess. So it might be that the blade is hardened, but a few tenths of a mm on the surface have slightly lowered carbon content due to decarburization. The N690 steel blade was not covered in the solution, but was covered with stainless steel foil that burned through towards the end.
I have no way to measure the hardness of the steel, and I am probably not going and try to re-harden the blade. I will proceed and we will see what comes out of it.
I avoid business travel like the plague, but it is unavoidable sometimes. This week thursday I have spent in the beautiful town Idstein. Most of the day was of course spent with traveling to the location and then spending a few hours with the actual business, but we managed to finish at about 4 p.m. so we had still plenty of time to have a look around the town.
I knew I have to expect some splendid medieval architecture, but I did not take my camera with me because… reasons. So I had to do with my phone which luckily is up to the task of making passable pictures in good light. And the light was splendid. The spring did not come this year, winter morphed directly into summer. Only shadows were a little long because of the time of day, but I think you will all enjoy the architecture nevertheless.
For starters here is the town square near the hotel at which we resided.
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
All of my garden has woken up, but none of the figs or pomegranates have shown even a budding leaf. I got so disheartened at this that I had to go and do something fun. So I went to work on the dagger to lift my spirits at least slightly.
I have decided to grind the bevel higher up to the spine, but not the same way along the whole blade – I ground less towards the tip so it remains strong. This has meant that the blade has a bit complex geometry which meant I could use hard belt most of the way, but I had to switch to slack belt for the tip. Luckily I have kept the option of half hard/half slack belt setup on my improved grinder.
I also ground the spine at approximately 45° angle to take off some weight. But again not all the way to the tip, so the tip is reinforced.
After I ground this basic shape It took me about an hour to get through four ceramics belts (60, 80, 100, 120) and the final was a zircon 120 grit where I stopped. This is actually a fairly difficult and delicate process and it is still possible (nay – easy) to mess up the lines and irreparably ruin the blade geometry, so easy does it. Because I am not too experienced with the belt grinder yet I had a few heart-stopping moments, but I managed to correct all the blunders in the end. From my previous works I know I have to be extremely careful up to approx 600 grit. After that messing up the lines in hand is not possible. But on my previous dagger I found out that on belt grinder that level moves up to 1000 grit, possibly 1200.
A lot of eyeballing was involved. After certain point I could no longer use the masking blue color and scribing tool, so to check whether my grind is symmetrical I used a folded piece of paper that I cut with shears to two aligning points. When I folded it around the blade I could see whether the lines are in the same position by putting the point on one side of the blade on the line and checking the point at the other side. After the final grind I scrubbed the blade lengthwise a bit with coarse abrasive pad to remove the quickly building rust and to scratch through the grind marks.
©Charly, all rights reserved.
The future cutting edge is now approx 1 mm thick. Next step will be hardening the steel. For this I had to check whether this file was carbon steel throughout or case hardened. That I have done before polishing the whole shape by dabbing the spine and one side of the blade approx 5 cm from the tip with ferric chloride because in this area is preserved steel that was near the surface of the original file as well as steel that was deep inside. If the file was case hardened, the steel that was originally near surface should turn grey, while the steel that was deeper should be shinier. If the file is carbon steel throughout, it should all turn grey.
It has all turned monotone grey, so it is carbon steel throughout. That is good since it makes the hardening process easier. It is possible to make a cutting blade from case hardened file, but it requires to perform again case hardening, which takes more time and resources.
© Nicolas Bruno, all rights reserved.
The matters of our psyche and our dreams, in particular, permeate the work of Nicolas Bruno not only as a phenomenon but moreover as the articulation of personal experience. The allusive, surreal and haunting works he creates are embodiments of the state in between waking and sleeping. They are an effect of the artist’s torment; the situation in which he is constrained to embrace the subconscious and its perils while being paralyzed in bed. Although the works of Nicolas Bruno are quite personal and might seem hush, bizarre and even violent, they are explicitly suggestive and are calling the observer to participate in the sense of enrolling their own associations or perhaps dealing with their own anxieties and fears.
© Nicolas Bruno, all rights reserved.
Photography As Therapy.
Nicolas Bruno was born in 1993 in Northport, New York, a small harbor community located on Long Island. He studied at Purchase College and received his BFA in Photography in 2015. His studio is located in Northport, so practically all of the preparations for the shoots are taking place there, as well as postproduction. Since all of his practice is very much devoted to the symbolic of dreams, the artist keeps the dream journal and starts each new series by analyzing previous experiences. As a matter of fact, his creative process begins with in-depth planning, but the very shoot is far more spontaneous and open to experimentation.
© Nicolas Bruno, all rights reserved.
The Sleep Paralysis of Nicolas Bruno.
The foundation of his photographic experimentation lays in Bruno’s struggle with the sleep paralysis, from which he has been suffering for almost ten years. It is a common phenomenon occurring in between wakefulness and sleep, in which the body becomes immobile and it often causes severe hallucinations. This state of inescapability forced Nicolas Bruno of finding some sort of solution and with the advice of a therapist he found it through creative expression. Therefore, he started working on surreal self-portraiture as a therapeutic translation of night tremors in order to cope with these fears and simultaneously share these familiar emotions of anxiety, suspense, uncertainty, and danger.
© Nicolas Bruno, all rights reserved.
Nicolas Bruno’s works are haunting, evocative, and terribly poignant. They not only express the explicit fears brought to Mr. Bruno in his paralyzing sleep, they also express implicit fears and anxiety of people in general. Each photograph is a masterpiece of unspoken fear, and when viewing, you simply cannot help but to feel, in a very small way, what the night and sleep is like for Mr. Bruno. Sleep Paralysis is not common, and unfortunately, not well understood either. Many people do have an isolated incident of sleep paralysis. I had a period in my teens into my early twenties of sleep paralysis, and it’s terrifying, to say the very least. Nicolas Bruno has come up with a unique way of dealing with it, and I think he deserves a much wider audience for this amazing work.
You can read and see more of Mr. Bruno’s bio here, and his portfolio here. There’s also this all too brief video: