Toaster sculpture!

Our toaster broke. Everyone was very sad. Except me.

Nothing personal, Oster T. Toaster, but I've got an oxyacetylene torch with your name on it. I set myself the challenge of making something interesting.

I misled Oster about his name, by the way. But I do like what it does say.

So, after discarding the non-recyclable plastic and saving the wiring and electronics for other purposes, here's what's available.

When there are obvious faces, it seems foolish to ignore them.

First time with the cutting attachment. It is, apparently, wildly oversized for the thin steel I am trying to cut. The preheating flame burned through immediately without oxygen, so I just melted the face away instead. Not the intended result, but an interesting one.

And the direction is set.

Hmm. No.

Yes. OK, time to find the rest of the body parts. Hmm...

And there it is! Time to switch the torch to the welding tip and braze this guy together.

I'm going to need a bigger quenching bucket.

This seemed like the point where adding things would make it worse and not better. So it's done!

There are more and better photos of the cleaned up sculpture in my shop.

Reusing packaging cardboard for shipping boxes

I'm embarrassed to say that it's taken me this long to figure out that the greenest source of shipping boxes for my handmade jewelry is to make them myself of cardboard that I would otherwise recycle. The cardboard used in cereal boxes and similar seems about right.

I opened the box along its seams and cut out an appropriate chunk, then laid out a simple box plan on the inside. The bicycle chain earrings that the box will contain are shown.

I used scissors to cut out the shape and separate the glue flaps, and then scored the fold lines lightly with a utility knife.

After folding all of the scored lines to about 90 degrees, it's ready to glue.

One drop of cyanoacrylate glue on each tab, and just a moment's pressing of each joint, and it's a box. Very quick, very easy, strong, custom, and extra enviro credit.

To ship these steel filings earrings, which have rare earth magnets at their cores, I needed to keep them separated so they didn't grind together throughout shipping. So I just glued up a little insert, into which I put a small bag of filings to renew the earrings on arrival or as needed.

Tool setup for small-batch bead making

I've been making softwood beads out of a weathered old trellis from our garden.

For the last two batches in this style, I kept the sectional dimensions of the sticks and just sliced beads off. For this batch, though, I wanted to make beads that are small enough for simple bracelets. So I milled them down to 1/2 inch square on the tablesaw first.

Slicing beads from the battens is tedious at best, so I set up my benchtop bandsaw with an angled stop and catch bucket to make things easier.

The stop isn't acting as a fence, and the wood is not in contact with it when it enters the blade. But it makes it easy to quickly eyeball each slice, corrals the pieces, and helps direct them toward the parts bucket clamped to the back of the table.

Here's a quick video of the setup in action.

It saves a lot of time to catch the beads.

I set the tablesaw fence to 1 inch and took a corner out of a scrap of plywood to make a quick drill press jig. My first setup had the dust collection chute pointed into the corner, and it whisked the first bead away the moment I released it. It gets all the dust and none of the beads where you see it.

The sliced and bored beads, ready for dyeing and abrading.

New in shop: 7 link bicycle chain bracelet

Today, I listed a bracelet that completes a set of bicycle jewelry of a particular style. Many of my pieces use the bike chain intact, like this series:

But I also have some earrings that use gunmetal jump rings to join partial links for a much lighter effect:

So I made a bracelet in the same style. Like the earrings, it is lighter in both weight and effect.

Now available in my shop.

Setting up and firing a new oxy-acetylene torch kit

Metalwork in general and welding in particular have become more and more interesting to me. I'm excited about the possibilities of integrating torchwork with my woodworking. After studying books and videos, I felt brave enough to purchase an oxy-acetylene torch kit and try it out. I recorded a rather long video about it, embedded here. First flames at four-oh-four.

I'd like to acknowledge the helpfulness and respect I was shown at the welding supply store I chose. I'm used to having to wade through some condescension when I don't really know what I'm doing, but I got all of my questions answered and was sold what still seems like just the right stuff and no more. Show some love to Praxair at 400 and Finch in Toronto.

From burn pile offcut to pretty bangle

I pulled this offcut of roughsawn maple out of the burn pile the other night.

It's about an inch thick, and big enough for a bangle.

So far, the most efficient way I've found to do this is to drill through the centre with a 1/4 inch bit, then drill partly through from each side with a hole saw sized for the bore. In this case, I used a 2.25 inch hole saw. The goal is to clearly establish the groove as a guide from both sides without going too deep and weakening the workpiece.

Then, I cut the blank free with a larger hole saw, 3 inches for this bangle.

The screw chuck I use with my lathe needs an 11/16 clearance hole, so I enlarged the central hole with twist drills and mounted it on the lathe. (A screw chuck lets you just thread the piece onto the drive screw, which is very convenient for bowl and other face work.)

I used a bowl gouge to true the blank, and then roll over the edges. The curve on the bangle is idiomatic to the gouge -- it wants to make that shape.

After a bit of sanding on the lathe, I unscrewed the bangle from the chuck and finished boring it out with the smaller hole saw.

The hole saw leaves a rough finish, so I mounted a rubber spindle sanding attachment to my drill press and worked through a few grits to clean it up, and then hand-sanded the whole bangle.

Finally, it got a rubbed coat of walnut oil and a light rubbed beeswax finish. Here it is, available in my shop:

Stripping down an abandoned television

I also got Dan's help to take apart the abandoned TV that I found on Sunday. He is getting very good at this sort of thing.

Safety nuts, be advised that I shorted out the flyback and capacitors before Dan resumed poking around inside.

I had promised him that he could smash the case if he wanted.

Dan and Uncle Michael figured that this was where the case should go. But it may become a craft project some rainy weekend. Eve was envisioning a backlit opaque acrylic screen -- she has a source of translucent acrylics with really nice texture patterns. We'll see what hapens.

I don't know if I have any use for the picture tube. Anyone know any good tricks it can do?

These are all of the things that Dan felt were worth keeping. A closer look:

The plastic plate and dial are interesting. 2 FED B 13?

I am excited about the flyback transformer. I'll desolder it and read up on ways to drive it. More high voltage hijinks to come!

The television was assembled in 1982, but it looks like this vintage printed circuit board was designed in 1978. It is very interesting looking. More fun views: