Odds & Ends

These are some small, weekend projects that I have completed lately.  I sold some of them at the Farmer's Market, and learned lessons from others...

Wood-burned designs!

String art sunflower as an experiment.

Heraldic device of Eärendil to practice engraving.

Restored and refurbished Greek xiphos.

Attempt at a painting of a bridge.

Making a guard for a fencing sabre.

An interesting new way to spell cocoa.

testing lamellar plates

forging arrowheads

My dad has been helping me make a forge.  It is a lot of hard work and is taking a really long time.  It is also hot.  But then I will be able to make some of the metal pieces to go with my costumes.  My mom says I look like my dad used to in this one picture.

“Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, you all had great moments, but you never tasted the supreme triumph; you were never a farm boy riding from the fields on a bulging rack of new mown hay.”  ~Grant Wood

This quote by Grant Wood shows quite well how even the greatest of men can miss out on the smallest of things. Grant Wood was an American artist and was particularly well known for his regionalist works. Regionalism is a naturalist modern art form in which rural countryside and small towns are depicted as stylized and with all lines crisp and defined. Regionalism began during the great depression and into the 1940s but was relatively short-lived as far as styles go. Grant Wood was one of the three big artist that produced the regionalist works.

Grant Wood grew up in a small town in Iowa and learned to paint at a small school there. It was here that he would later revisit and create the famous portrait of American gothic. It is also most likely here that he came by the inspiration for this quote. Since most of his work was completed during the great depression, it is reasonable to assume that Grant would have a deeper appreciation for the simple things in life that most people take for granted. In Grants mind, the great people like Caesar, Napoleon, and Alexander never knew what is felt like to not only feel triumph, but also feel satisfied with their position. When people like Napoleon and Alexander achieved victory it was never complete more was always needed, but to people like Grant, they could feel victory enough enjoying the simple pleasures in life and appreciating what good fortune they have rather than chasing a thirst that will never be quenched.

Ancient War Technology : Siege Tower

Wooden Siege Tower for a Lego War!

Supplies :

• Siege Tower Kit
• Glue
• Lego knights

Directions :

• Learn the history of siege towers with this cool DVD that shows you all about ancient war technology.
• -OR- Read about it, you like books better.
• Follow the instructions in the kit.
• Line up your good guys and bad guys and have an ATTACK!!

Greece : Vases

  We live in a world of steel and concrete. Our structures, our machines and our jobs, are built around these two fundamental parts of modern life. It is difficult to imagine a world without these two materials. We would have no cars, cans, or electronics. There would be no roads, foundations for buildings, or bridges. In short we would be more primitive than our ancient predecessors; living out of crude wood houses with mud or wood floors. Yet we have forgotten where all this remarkable advancement came from. In fact we often look down upon this seeming simple item as being as primitive as those huts and serving no more purpose to people than a bow and arrow does anymore. If indeed they think of it at all, they may think that it once was important but surely things like the car or the radio were far more noteworthy. Thus it is looked over in museums, ignored at gardening stores, but this simple little item built civilization. I speak of course, of the simple ceramic pot.

  It is the tendency of people to think that clay pottery is simply mud that has been shaped and baked in an oven or kiln. And while to a degree this is true, it is far more than that. The material used for making pottery often called clay has a simple enough make up. It uses either a carbonate of silicate based mixture with various oxides and trace minerals that affect properties such as strength and hardness. Mineral pockets like these run in the ground through veins in most areas of the world. These minerals form tiny crystals in the shape of tiles. The addition of water can loosen the tiles from each other allowing them to slide over each other. It can them be molded and shaped as the artist pleases. When it dries there is still a small amount of water left in between the crystals and while this may not affect the pot when in ideal conditions, when wetted there is still aa large enough gap between the crystals that it will dissolve. Soon, people realized the clay could be baked to draw all the water out. This caused the gaps to get much smaller blocking the water so the clay would no longer dissolve. Now our ability to understand the molecular structure of these ceramics has grown greatly. While people tend to think of them of fragile, one of the hardest materials known to man, tungsten carbide, is a ceramic and used in hundreds of items.

  Then came the discovery of glazes which is similar to a glass coating over the pot. It was in this way that people discovered the secret to making glass. Soon people realized that they could add minerals to the glaze to change the color similarly to what they did with the clay itself and that when fired the glaze would change color. As people continued to experiment with glazes sometimes they would begin to see a bead of shiny metal form on the sides of their pots. This was the origin of smelting. Certain metals make bright colors when used in a glaze. Often when it was heated to a high temperature the metal oxides would break their bonds and pool together at the bottom. Since metal is so much heavier than its impurities, when it reaches its melting point, it runs down and joins with other molten metal. Eventually metallurgy broke off into a different art. It began with copper evolving into bronze. Soon furnaces could melt iron and steel was born.

  Long before concrete was the preferred building material people used brick. Bricks, like pottery, were once just make by packing mid into a mold and left in the sun to harden. But like early pottery these mud bricks dissolved in water so could only be used in dry arid climates. Also like pottery, they discovered that firing bricks could make it resistant to water damage. As people experimented further, concrete and mortar slowly evolved and often both were used together with bricks. Fragments of pottery and straw were used as binding agents and mortar was used to cement bricks in place. In a traditional idea that continues to this day, brick is used for facing by creating two thin parallel walls. Then a mixture of concrete and scraps of pottery and rocks are poured in the gap making a strong water resistant wall. Whereas stone once had to be cut from a quarry and transported to a site to be shaped, now stone could be molded in place. At last the day came. Pozzolana was a roman concrete based on volcanic ash. Most concretes at the time had to dry to cure but pozzolana didn’t cure by drying. It cured by a chemical reaction similar to the way plaster can dry underwater. This was one of the first great steps in concrete development. Now foundation could be poured in the water. Columns and pillars could be cast instead of cut and stacked. Modern concrete itself is not much different and follows the same type of chemical reaction. In combination with steel bracing like rebar concrete could be used to make beams and cables where stone could never be used before. The concrete protects the steel; the steel holds the concrete together.

  Very few people know this remarkable story and even fewer realize what it means to a world like ours. The foundation of our technologically based world has its origins in a hole in the ground, some fire, and a curious human. The influences of this primitive art have wormed its way into every aspect of our electronic life. So next you see a skyscraper, and see its impressive modern design of a concrete skeleton, reinforced with steel, and panned with glass, think back to the humble pot and it startling influence on a world we take for granted.

Ancient Greek Pottery

Supplies :

• Play-doh
• Clean soup can
• Black paint
• Greek Myths coloring book (has good stories and good designs)

Directions :

• Roll the play-doh out into a long rectangle, very flat.  Keep a little bit off to the side if you want to make handles.
• Wrap the play-doh around the soup can and mold it to the can.  
• Create a handle for your pot.  Mold it onto the pot.
• Have your mom put it into the oven at 100 degrees for about twenty minutes.
• After it cools, use black paint to put designs on your vase.
• Let the paint dry, then have your mom stick it in the oven for another twenty minutes.
• Now you have an antique vase!

From the Vault

My parents made me thin out my collection of artwork in my bedroom last weekend, but they said I could take some pictures of things.  So here are a few things I've made in the past that had to go away.  I made these when I was about seven or eight.

This is my A-Frame where I was trying out different architectural styles to see what would hold the most weight for a catapult.

This is my sculpture of one of the terracotta soldiers from the Chinese emperor's tomb.

This is my Viking ship and it's oars.

This is my Chinese calligraphy mat.  It rolls up.

Woodshop : Picture Frame

Woodshop : Picture Frame

I made this as part of my cub scout requirements.

Supplies :

• 1/2" thick strip of wood that is 1 1/2" wide
• (length should be the perimeter of photo plus six more inches)
•  saw
• measuring tape
• wood glue
• tacks
• nails
• photograph
• wood sander

Directions :

• Measure and cut two pieces of the wood to the length of the picture.  The outside edge should be approximately one inch longer on each side, if you use a 45 degree angle for the corners.
• Measure and cut two pieces of the wood to the width of the picture.  The outside edge should be approximately one inch longer on each side, if you use a 45 degree angle for the corners.
• Sand the edges until smooth.
• Stain or paint the pieces, and let dry.
• Glue and nail the four pieces together to create your frame.
• Tack the photograph to the back, once the frame is dry.