Blog Archive
Week Four
September 26, 2007
Today I worked on a limestone pole. I experimented on the naval brass some more.
I tried to get a new machine to work, but I must not be doing something
correctly. And I updated a page on this web site about
carved cedar peace poles, which could be
out of date again by the time you read this. (Of course, there were other tasks
today that are not crossing my mind at this moment).
The naval brass is going to be darker in color than the bronze that it is replacing, except for the text. The text will be about the same. That helps the translations to stand out more. The text receded under certain conditions on the previous bronze poles. On this naval brass I don't think it will.
By the way, naval brass is a bronze, and a true bronze, but I refer to it as naval brass to be more clear about the specific alloy that it is. It is even more corrosion resistant than the previous bronze and so forms a patina differently. If someone wanted, I could make it very dark, which could be nice for some settings. The photo below is of the edge of a letter on naval brass that has been pushed to a medium darkness.
September
28, 2007
Besides the time spent preparing Chinese characters for a custom translation,
and the time spent on a limestone peace pole, I worked on this copper engraving
today.
September
29, 2007
At last, a trial run of the custom Chinese translation on naval brass. I'm going
to push its patina further, until I've ruined it, to see where that line is,
where it becomes worse.
September
30, 2007
Taking it in a different direction.
October 1, 2007
Bronze (naval brass). The one at right, with the deep reds and blues under
the green, is getting closer to being something worth keeping.
October 2, 2007
Some days you work all day and have nothing to show for it. It's preparation -
ordering chemicals, cutting and preparing materials, getting things ready for
another peace pole. Of course, so was all the work the last few days on how to
get a certain patina out of naval brass. It was preparation too, but at least it
created something of which I wanted photos to keep track of the results.
October 3, 2007
I have been around war veterans who had been traumatized to the point where, for
the rest of their lives, the best they could to do was to find something manual
to do for a living. I didn't go to war, but criminal acts and the aftermath put
me into a similar state.
But
for me, the boredom of routine manual tasks is no escape. Fortunately, finding
solutions, whether artistic, archival or process, can lead my mind to better
things. Archival means increasing the longevity of the peace poles. Process
means figuring out a better way to make them.
Which brings me to today's purchase. It's only a staple gun, but peace poles ten feet long or longer usually need to be shipped in wooden crates that take a long time to build. I'm hoping this staple gun will cut some time off of that.
I
wish I could have the crates shipped back for reuse. Since 911 there are
security issues for shippers. They are reluctant to pick things up from
locations with which they do not have established accounts. I've tried asking
the recipient to open the box in the presence of the shipper, remove the pole
and let the shipper take the box back right then (which would have the added
benefit of having the contents inspected in the presence of the shipper). So far
it hasn't worked it out. Also, I am not sure which is more ecological, using the
energy it takes to ship one back (sometimes from 2000 miles away) or building a
new one. In the absence of a better solution, I bought a staple gun.
Does this create issues for the recipients? When the boxes are screwed together, they are harder to knock apart with a hammer. So this might make disposal easier for them. If they use an ax, this wouldn't make any difference. The lids still will be screwed on for easy removal, but perhaps I should send some follow-up emails to learn how people deal with the boxes.
October 5, 2007
It might not look much different to you than the previous ones, but to me it
looks like "finally."
