Navaro album launch gig

On the tiny off-chance that anyone is in St Albans on 26th January, here are some details for the forthcoming Navaro album launch gig…

Plans are afoot to play a load of the new songs off the album, as well as some old favourites from the back catalogue. Special guests are also threatened to appear…

Navaro gig

As ever, more details from the band site here >>

Bike Lights review site

I’ve just found out that my mate Paul writes the following site: www.bikelightsreview.com

Bike Lights Review site

For any keen cyclist out there, or just for anyone that has to cycle home in the dark winters of the UK, this site seems a great idea… Paul clearly takes his subject very seriously and keenly ‘test drives’ all the products he reviews or recommends…

Illuminating! (see what I did there!?)

2011 in review. . .

Once again, those nice people at WordPress sent me this automated report on my blog…. numbers seems up on last year – but I could do better. . .

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 9,600 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Happy New Year!

So, back to reality after the festive season finally comes to an end. . .  Happy New Year to everyone out there – I think we are all hoping that 2012 proves to be an improvement on 2011?!

To get the year off to a good start, I thought I’d share a little present that my old mate GG gave to me for Xmas! Last year we had been discussing soldering irons (like one does!) and I said that I had been looking for a really powerful one for a few little maker-jobs in the shed. Having bought a disastrous cheap ‘gun’ type soldering iron from Toolstation (although I have to say their customer care was excellent and they let me return the faulty product with no questions asked), I had just about given up on the idea. . . However, opening my stocking I received the following:

120Ws of pure soldering power!

The photo doesn’t really do it justice but I have to say it’s a monster!! (as ever the iPhone is there for scale!). Its made by Weller and is a 120W version – the tip is massive and, although I have yet to fire it up, I am sure it will do the job admirably! I have a feeling it’s going to get through a whole bucket load of solder though so I might have to choose my jobs quite carefully!

Stay tuned for a proper review once I’ve given it a proper test run. . .

 

 

Happy Christmas!!

Well, it’s that time of year again! And what a year it’s been…!?

There have been lots of changes here at ‘Star Command’ over the last 12 months or so, but the ol’ Blog has remained a constant and steady companion!

As always, thanks to all who have written in and commented – a very Happy Christmas and Happy New year to you all out there and let’s see what 2012 brings?

Clivey xx

Happy Christmas 2011!

Copper guitar knob project

Some time back I lost one of the knurled knobs from my trusty old Ibanez electric guitar…. having failed to find a replacement anywhere, I though I’d have a go at making a new one from copper and brass – it wouldn’t look the same of course but would hopefully echo the brassy look of the rest of the fittings on the guitar, and also complement some of the other stuff I have made in and around my music equipment (like my copper guitar hanger, etc).

So, here are a series of photos showing what I did and how. . .

Firstly, here’s  shot of one of the original knurled knobs (spot the green corrosion in the knurling – horrid!):

original knob

. . . and here is the one I made by soldering a short length of copper pipe fitting onto an old 10 franc brass coin (the fitting has been cut down a bit to make it fit the height of the existing knob a bit better…). This shot shows it after just a light clean up – I polished the final thing a lot more with wire wool and Brasso before giving it a light coat of spay clear varnish)

new knob

To attach the new knob to the stem of the potentiometer, I cut a short length of inner sleeve from plastic tubing about the right diameter to act as a push fit over the pot stem, and fixed this in centre place within the body of the knob with some hard setting casting plaster (epoxy would have done just as well I guess):

inner sleeve

Here it is in place (note the air bubble in the plaster – oops!). I filed any proud plaster/plastic sleeve flush with the bottom of the copper knob, and slightly chamfered the top of the inner sleeve to have a bit of clearance over the fixing nut of the potentiometer:

sleeve plastered in place

Here is a shot of the finished knob in place on the guitar – they look very different but somehow complement each other I think? (apologies for the rather blurry photo!):

knob in place

One thing I’ve never been that happy with on my guitar is how close the volume knob is to the bridge of the guitar (in the above photo, this is the distance between the upper knurled knob and the brassy bridge/black pick up). I therefore wondered if, having done all this work, it was now the time to bite the bullet and try moving it…  I had a spare 10 franc coin left over, and through that this might make a nie ‘blank’ to fill in the hole that would be left by removing/moving the original volume knob.

Below is a shot of me marking out a new position for the volume knob, roughly half way between the lower tone knob and the original hole…

marking out new hole position

Here’s me drilling the new hole – the white dust is the hard lacquer rather than the actual wood:

drilling the new hole

To fill in the original hole, I superglued the 10 franc coin in place over it (just to act as a temporary guide) and scored around the rim with a scalpel to mark the position and prevent the lacquer from cracking when routed out. Then using a small routing bit with my trusty Dremel tool, I proceeded to rout out a hole of the right depth and diameter to accommodate the coin. After a  few tries, it was just about right – the shot below shows this work in progress, as well as the volume pot screwed in place in it’s new location (minus knob) .

routing the recess

I stained the outer edge of the hole with a black marker (just to help hide any irregularities) and, having polished and varnished the coin, glued it in place with a bit of epoxy resin glue and here it is!!:

everything in place!

Here’s another shot of the final thing:

the finished item

It’s not perfect, but is now much easier to play, and always gets some interested comments when people see it. Having lived with it for a while I think I will certainly make another new knob to replace the old knurled one – they work ok together visually but would be much nicer as a coordinated suite I think!

Prototype of coppery things to come. . .

Here’s a couple of shots of my latest set of creations –  a series of keyrings or light pulls (depending on the size and weight of them) made in a copper/brass steampunk styling.

Below is a representative sample – I forgot to put anything in to show scale but the relative sized of the various components give one a clue…

Light pull / keyring

shot of the bottom 'dome'

Made as ever from found and recycled components, the core parts are my usual ‘staples’ of copper tube, old coins, keys and range of brass and iron ‘doodads’ for decoration etc (for example the brass domed rivet that fills the bottom of the version shown).  Mix in a liberal helping of ‘secret ingredient’ to hold all the parts firmly together and there you have it…

So far I have a made a large range of shapes, sizes and  styles – some like the above are polished and varnished, some will be left in a raw state to corrode/wheather as time sees fit…

Here is a rather poor, and indeed confusing, shot of several of the ‘work in progress’ ones I am making at the moment, as well as the rather rustic display pole I have been working on to both store and show them off.

Display pole and more samples

My aim is to sell a bunch of these – if you are interested then get in touch and I’ll tell you what I was thinking in terms of cost, delivery etc…

Trio at the Museum of St Albans photos

Last weekend the acoustic ‘jazz’ trio did a gig at the excellent Museum of St Albans. Here are a few photos of the general set up during sound check, taken by the excellent Al Rogers:

We particularly liked the shots with the ice cream van!

Old sculpture photos

I’ve been doing a lot of sorting out in ‘Star Command’ recently (my loft / general dumping ground which is meant to be being converted to my new office!) – amazing what one finds during the course of such activity!

Amongst a million old back-up disks from various defunct computers, here are some old photos of what I think were my first ever welded sculpture attempts. Taken sometime in 2005, the photos are really small as I am guessing that was the limit of my digital camera technology back then!

The first set is of ‘DeerDog’, a hybrid animal that combines the characteristics of a dog and a deer! Made from all sorts of rusty iron parts (mainly old garden implements and a bits of bicycles) I was always really pleased with the ‘cheeky’ look of this little fella – friendly, attentive and playful!

DeerDog!

DeerDog head on

Down boy!

The second set is a of a ladybug-like creation, made from an old wok, some cutlery, parts of an old cooker and a coat hook. I remember the wok was really hard to weld to successfully – I am guessing it is stainless steel? I’d be really interested to see it now and see if the shiny parts have rusted at all?

Bug!

Bug close up

These were made and sited in the parents’ garden of an old friend I have unfortuantely lost touch with – I’d love to know if they are still there and, if so, how they look now!?…

CD player for The Shed!

Walking past a local skip the other day I found this old CD player… (minus the power supply!)

Skip find CD-player

Taking it home, I managed to hot wire it (via an old connector from the bits box) up to an old modem power supply that I’d kept for no good reason, but which seemed to have about the right voltage output. I gave the whole thing a bit of a clean and blow me down if it doesn’t work perfectly!!

It will make a fantastic addition to the shed – I already have a headphone connection lead that allows me to play my iPod through the old stereo system I’ve got installed in there, and this works fine with the CD player too!! (roll ol the next Shed Night where I shall try it out properly with some ‘sounds’!!)

I love being a scavenger…