Well, it’s been a long, interesting and (at times!) challenging year!

I’ve really enjoyed the second year of my blog – it’s been great receiving the comments and feedback from you all out there…

Season’s Greeting to you all, and here’s to a peaceful 2010…

Happy Christmas!!

Hi..

Just received this from the very talented Karen – a new band poster with my face now included with theirs!

The Cakes Poster

Acceptance at last! They have also out a couple of tunes up on their MySpace page – listen here >>

This weekend I did my first gig with the fantastically sublime King Alfred’s Cakes band…

This is a new venture for me, as they girls have just lost their guitar player and asked me to step in as a possible replacement. Despite my initial reservations that I wouldn’t be able to do it (time restrictions, that I wouldn’t be up to it, that they needed a fingerpicking guitarist rather than a plectrum player etc..) I gave up worrying, learnt a few tunes and stood in with them at a local gig. . .

In that we had only a few, very brief, rehearsals, I have to say that the gig went really well and the sound they make is lovely – a mixture of very traditional folk tunes combined with a bit of Handel.  They have just set up a MySpace page, which doesn’t contain any tunes as yet… However, stay tuned for more information and hopefully a few samples of the wonderful music they produce…

King Alfred's Cakes

Here’s a little sculpture I made ages ago… It’s a rustly old man, with his arms held up in resignation – “I Give Up” – he is saying to the world.

It pretty much sums up how I feel most days, and the current week has brought it to the forefront of my mind again…

I Give Up!!

Not only do I have man-flu (honest, it’s really bad), but my central heating is broken (just as it is getting towards the cold part of the year), my roof is leaking like a sieve (in the wettest November for years here in the UK) and I am tired and generally stressed out. Not only that but Christmas (my second least favourite time of the year) is nearly upon us, followed quickly by New Year (my least favourite part of the year / my birthday!).

Coupled to this, I have today spent a long time trying to improve my ability to learn tunes quickly (I have a lot to learn at the moment, with lots of hopefully exciting new projects underway) by fitting my old DigiDesign MBox 2 to a new Intel MAC – only to find it doesn’t work, and indeed will never work unless I spend lots of money updating the Protools software it runs on (which they should update for free if you ask me!?). Not only that, but I then returned the trusty Mbox to my old system only to discover that I have clearly blown it up in the processes.   Goddamn!!!!  Anyone out there got any good ideas??

. . . and people wonder why I spend a lot of time cursing, despairing and rocking myself back and forth with my head in my hands. . .

MBox update – apparently I had replaced the Firmware…? The what now?

After the success of Inaugural Shed Night, GG and I decided it was about time for Shed Night II. . . (Return of the Shed?)

Shed Night II

We changed venue this time as GG had just spent several weekends installing a fantastic new bench in his, rearranging the layout and generally making his shed ‘the place to be seen’! He had also just got a very posh new MIG welder for his birthday, so I was keen to give that a go.

Armed with the usual apparatus (warm clothes, safety goggles, a cooler of beer and the promise of fatty take-away food when we were done!), we set to. . .

I also had a specific project in mind – the creation of a welded set of legs atop of which would sit a wooden block candle holder I had recent purchased for £2 in my local charity shop.

Here’s a WIP shot, more on my Flikr site here >>.

Using the MIG

My favourite shot of the night however is this one of GG welding – ‘Looking into Hell’ I call it:

'Looking Into Hell'

Look out for Shed Night III (This Time It’s Personal), coming soon to a shed near you. . .!

November 5th in the UK always gives me a legitimate excuse to have a stinky bonfire and burn things!!

If anyone recalls an earlier post about me re-vamping my trusty copper half-cistern and dustbin lid garden bonfire, here it is in action on this year’s Bonfire Night. The improvements I made back then have been really successful, and it’s now even got a new lid (courtesy of a second metal dustbin lid), ideal for keeping the rain off or to let the last of the embers safely burn themselves out. I never did get around to burning the filigree into the upper regions, but there is always time before next year, I guess!

Here is a shot in full flame, and also in its cooled state (I love the blackened outer layer – hard to recall when still looked like copper!):

Burner in use and cooling down

Here are also some of the things I got up to with it that night:

Melting lead

I love this shot of some lead melting in an old saucepan – what doesn’t show very well in the photo is that the metal of the old saucepan itself was glowing red! I’m always amazed how hot the burner gets… The lead was then ladled out and used to fill in the base of my latest steampunk lamp (full details to follow when it’s completed).

In the meantime, here are some (upside-down) shots of the lamp base being constructed – the smaller top part partially filled with lead to hold the copper tube shaft in place (left), with the larger second part screwed over this (see the copper shaft protruding through and the larger hole I’ve cut to allow the lead to flow between the two sections (middle),  and a final shot of the lead having been poured in and set in place (right).

Base of new lamp being filled with lead

Here’s my favourite result from the night however… I had an old saw (found, as always, in a skip) that had a broken wooden handle. Rather than trying to unscrew the thoroughly rusted screws affixing the two parts, I thought I’d simply burn the wood off in the burner.

What I hadn’t banked on was the saw blade bending in the heat into a lovely subtle curve. When cooled it has, amazingly, lost none of its springiness! Given a coat of spray varnish to protect the rusty patina (it’s actually a lot darker than this photo shows but I had to push the Levels up a bit on order to show the blade off properly). So now, what to do with it?

It looks great as just an ornament, or would look wonderful mounted on some sort of pole in a upright position as a bit of minimalist sculpture. My favourite idea at the mo’ is to mount it on a wall at 90 degrees on its side, sticking out as some kind of artistic ’shelf’ . Will see how that works and post some shots up . In the meantime, if anyone has any other ideas, please let me know!

Curved saw blade

Look what my friend CCBB has just given me !!! (no steampunk aficionado should be without some, apparently!)

Goggles!

Rather than a niche fashion accessory however, these are Gas Welding Goggles, of a Shade 5 strength. As such they may not offer enough protection for my general arc welding (I think around Shade 8 or so are recommended for that purpose?) but as general safety goggles seem most excellent!

Not only do they secure firmly around the head (leaving both hands free for general tasks), they have built in ventilation slots to prevent fogging and, best of all,  you can flip the dark shades up to reveal the plain glass lenses for when you need to see normally.

I tried wearing them around the office the day she gave them to me – not only did I look particularly cool, but I discovered that the whole world seems a much calmer/less stressful place when in near total darkness!!

. . . because you never know when it is going to come in handy!?

This philosophy has been the tenet for most of my life (and hence why my tiny house is so full of stuff!). Anyway, here’s a recent story that reinforces the idea…

Years ago a friend of mine into IT gave me an old Yamaha Sub woofer unit from a set of PC speakers. I’d never used it, had none of the right cables, none of the accompanying speakers and, if truth be told, no real use for it either. I’d finally consigned it to the loft a few years ago, and during a recent futile attempt to de-clutter my life, had even contemplated simply taking it apart for ‘bits’, giving it to the local Freecycle site or even, heaven forbid, sending it to the local tip (scandalous!). . . Then, something happened (stick with me on this one). . .

Original woofer!

A couple of weekends ago I did a little gig at the excellent Hitchin Folk Club (winner of 2005 Folk Club of the Year, no less!) with Navaro, supporting Little Johnny England. We’d done a sound check, sat around for a bit, and then decided that we should use the intervening time wisely by having a quick run thought of some newish material we were doing that night. The rest of the band were all ok for doing this (they had acoustic guitars, their voices and even a tambourine!) – I on the other hand (playing as I do in that band a solid body electic bass guitar, completely inaudible without some sort of amplification), realised that I had absolutely no way of playing along with them / being heard (band bass amp being already set/miked up on stage and hence unmovable).

The only way I managed to play along with them at all was to rest my front teeth on the upper bout of the guitar body so that I could ‘feel’ the notes (a bit like the feeling one gets if you hold a tuning fork in your teeth!). Not only are my teeth getting too old for that sort of thing, it looked ridiculous, gave me a pain in the neck / back and was clearly a waste of time for the others.

What I need, I thought to myself, is a tiny little amp capable of being carried anywhere at will (just in case it’s needed), which doesn’t need to be too loud, yet can handle bass frequencies without shaking itself to bits. Eureka! Enter the redundant bass woofer unit – essentially no more than a purpose-built solid box, with its own little built-in amp and a sturdy bass-friendly speaker – it even has a little bass reflex tube for added bottom end!

With a quick bit of modding (I added some feed on the side so that it can be stood and carried in a more space-saving upright position, made a handle out of some old bits of cast off metal, soldered together a lead to allow a standard guitar jack lead to plugged on to the thing and voila! It’s never going to make an appearance on a stadium stage, but as a portable, ‘go-anywhere and simply be heard for rehearsing’ amp, it does the job. And more importantly, it’s now put to good use rather than adding to landfill!

Here’s a few photos:

Handle components

Handle assembled

The new 'Bass Amp' woofer!

Note the new handle, cable and cable tie

After the success of Inaugural Shed night, some friends and I are working on booking some more dates into the diary (particularly now GG has bought a shiny new MIG welder we all want to have a go on!). . .

We decided we ought to ‘brand’ the event in some way, so that emails / general communications about it to each other (and others)  are instantly recognizable – a bit like the Bat Symbol being shone into the night sky to announce the event!  (Too far? You might be right. . .!).

So, here’s my first attempt – it may be open to tweaking in the months to come, but it does the job for the mo! (GG said it should be more grungy but I didn’t have time to draw a crushed beer can!). It’s got a few gears and cogs on there however, so hopefully will keep my fellow Steampunk fans happy!

Shed Night logo!

So I’ve just found this in my local charity shop. . .

I know it’s some sort of lamp, but exactly what kind and how it works is stumping me. It is missing any inner ‘gubbins’ (for example the reservoir, wick etc) so I really can’t figure out how it is meant to be lit, regulated etc? There is a black grommet of some sort on the side near the bottom, but again, I’ve no real ideas. Is there anyone out there can help – please send me any comments / suggestions!

New lantern

Sorry, I yet again forgot to put any sort of scale on there, but it’s quite small, only 15cm high and about 5.5 cm diameter at the base.

Apart from that, it looks absolutely spiffing, particularly when sat next to my porthole, which has a very similar look/feel material and style-wise!