Time - for Posting?

"There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want."  - Bill Watterson

Ahh, time. It's so valuable to me that I feel I should allow it to be sold on the stock market. Folks could purchase a share of my time and as they stay invested in my time longer, the returns on the amount of shares they purchased would increase in value. Time to me is so sweet that I can almost taste it. I don't mind wasting my own time even if it's to do nothing. But I truly despise losing time trying to "catch up" with things, especially if it's something I just have to do. Take for example the situation I find myself at the school where I teach. In September, I mentioned in my article the challenging start of the school year where many factors had just increased my work load preventing me from really focusing a lot of time on my knifemaking. I mentioned that the program I teach (machine shop) had lost a very valuable part-time instructor to a full-time teaching position at a different community college. This has greatly increased my teaching load for the spring 2013 semester, which is where our part-time instructor earned a lot more hours due to the increased number of courses. If I were only teaching, it would be challenging - but mainly just a lot more hassle to prepare for classes. But because I'm also the dept. head of the program, this puts a great deal of stress on me and reduces the amount of time I can use to manage the program, advise students, participate in recruitment activities, manage the shops (and there are two to manage), and keep up with administration for the school. Because another dept. at our college lost an instructor for the rest of the spring semester due to health, one of our part-time instructors has had to alter his schedule to help make up the lost course load, which means I've had to take on even more courses. As a result, I was teaching nearly twice the number of hours I usually do in the spring. This meant that the already limited free time I had was reduced even further - basically stopping all activity in my shop. So, for the entire first half of the spring semester I've basically done nothing in the shop. I've simply not had the time to hit any projects or if I managed to get a little free time, then I've usually just not had the energy to get back to it. 


I suppose this is one of those times in life when I should be thankful that I have a job considering the current state of the economy and that it's much better to be too busy rather than not busy enough. But I just don't feel that way. Perhaps I'm just selfish with my time. But all too often I've seen some of my colleagues burnout or devote so much of their life to this profession that he/she had the hardest time adjusting to retirement or even worse, continue to teach well past retirement age where their health degrades to the point that they have no choice but to stop working. I'm not suggesting that I don't care about my work, or our students. Obviously I do care. But I also have a life that I know can be cut way short. I've already had plenty of brushes with death, especially in the military. I've had family members and friends die slowly from cancer or die suddenly from a heart attack. I'm not about to be that guy that just wants to keep working "so I can stay useful." I realize that there are no guarantees. There's nothing that says definitively that I will reach the average life expectancy of a typical North American white male. There are odds/factors already stacked against me for that. So, if I make it to my retirement with most of my health intact and hopefully somewhat financially secure, I plan to be highly active in my golden years. And I damn sure don't mean work.


Having said that, and having had to nearly bite my own tongue off to prevent me from strangling someone, this plus all the stress from my current predicament drove me to sneak a little time into more learning when I could. Over the spring break I signed up for a jewelry making course that I took at the Virginia Institute of Blacksmithing. The course was offered through Piedmont Virginia Community College along with other courses in blacksmithing and jewelry making. The course was taught by Karen Friedlander who has made jewelry or been making creative arts for a number of years. It was cold-forming only which means no soldering but I had a lot of fun. We experimented with different methods of creating a patina and we learned different methods of texturing the materials. We mostly worked with just copper (not sure which type) but we also did a bit of Stirling silver and had access to other materials like brass and bronze. I made two sets of earrings and a brooch. Actually the brooch became more of an item for a necklace because it didn't turn out quite as I had expected but still, two out of three successful finished projects for my first try at jewelry making isn't so bad. I had a great time learning basic jewelry making and I can definitely say that I'll keep pursuing that along with blacksmithing and knifemaking.

Materials that I was allowed access to in the jewelry making class. Mostly copper and bronze and a bit of silver.

Use of chemicals or temperature to produce a patina. The one in the center I believe was made with amonia.

 

Texturing examples

This and the next photo were done with a roll press and different pieces of textured wallpaper. The effect it has on the very formable copper is quite nice.

 

This texturing was done with simple hand tools and a hammer.

 

My first set of earrings. I used a bit of the blue patina copper for the "dangling" parts and simple textured copper for the main sections.

These pieces were given a patina then heated up with the small torch to make the copper more ductile. This allowed me to create a peapod shape where I could put some beads in for embellishment. I'm very pleased with the result.

This was originally planned as a brooch or a tie-pin with a layered section having a stylized capital "S" cut out. It became more of a necklace due to its size.

Later during the semester, I took a glass-blowing course. At the time I knew very little about glass-blowing but I learned that it is definitely an art form. The instructor is an actual glass-blower. That's his job as an artist. He works only in glass. To make a little extra money he offers people a chance to learn his art or use his studio. He has several stations setup for working with glass but he keeps his classes small (about 4 or 5 per class). This gives him the opportunity to do a bit of work in the studio while students are working on their projects. I enjoyed the class and for once it wasn't so far for me to have to drive that I needed a motel room to stay at while taking the class. Glass is in my opinion quite finicky. It doesn't take very long for it to reach its critical temperature where it can be worked. However, the window of opportunity to actual work the glass is very short compared to metals. Metals like steels do not have good thermal conductivity so they're slow to heat up but also slow to dissipate heat. This gives steel a lot more time available to shape it while hot. It was a fun class but I learned one very important thing. Glass-blowing is an art form that I will not pursue.


So, what else did I manage to squeeze a bit of time in to learn? Well I took another blacksmithing course. I've had courses in the past at other institutions but this was taken at the Virginia Institute of Blacksmithing again. Previous courses I've taken in blacksmithing were fairly open-ended. Not much was done to prepare the students to learn basics, or to have materials ready. But this time was much different. I have to say that the instructor, Dale Morse was very good, patient, and well-organized. Materials were already prepared and awaiting the students. Dale gave very good demonstrations and worked closely with students that were obviously challenged at learning the content (most likely myself included.) His partner, David Tucciarone was also equally helpful and has a great sense of humor. This shop is setup to run coal forges. They're actually quite clever in their design because each forge is a piece of a larger forge that can hold 4 stations. Each station has its own blower for air. And to help manage temperature of the forge metal, there is a water cooler that runs beneath the forge. My project (at least the completed one) was a wall-mounted coat rack. 

These pieces were supposed to be assembled into a candle holder but I ran out of time and couldn't complete the project. It was still fun to work with these pieces.

This material is quite thick and challenging to heat to a temperature high enough to work it.

I'm also really pleased with the texture.

The completed wall-mounted coat and hat rack.

One of my first rivets.

I worked with 1/4" steel round bar stock and 3/8" steel flat stock or plate. To get the effects of the twist in my "J hooks" I squared a section of the rod by hitting it with a hammer at the anvil and then rotating the stock 90 degrees and repeating. Then I heated up that squared section to its working temperature and put the work piece in a vise and used a large wrench on the "J" part and simply twisted the end. Since the end mounted in the vise can't move the hook twisted up quite nicely. 

Fairly asymetrical in its appearance but that's okay.

I learned a great deal more at this course than at previous courses. One important detail I learned was that coal forges are damned dirty. The dust literally gets into anything and everything you can possibly think of and even into a few things you might not realize. At the end of the day, even if you cleaned yourself thoroughly at the sink or in the shower, there is still coal somewhere on you no matter what. So for future reference, say if I were thinking about the possibilities of building a shop for myself, I'll most likely use a gas forge to provide any long-term open heat source. It's probably more expensive to setup and build a gas forge and I'd imagine that maintaining fuel for it costs more than coal. But the shop environment will be so much cleaner. Plus, coal fires require constant attention. Once my work piece had reached the critical temperature to allow me to work it, I would take it to the anvil, hit it with a hammer (which is quite therapeutic) and shape what I can while it's still hot, then as soon as I took the piece back to the coal forge to reheat, I'd have to tend the coals. I think that it'll just be much easier and cleaner to maintain a gas forge than a coal forge. Which is why I signed up for a basic welding techniques course in continuing education at my school this summer. Now I've actually already had some basic welding experience mostly Mig (Metal Inert Gas) and a small amount of Oxy-Acetelyne. But that was nearly 18 years ago so I'm  a bit rusty. But the instructor Luke Guthrie is a former student and graduate of the Welding program at my school and he's very good at what he does. I learned and remembered a lot. No major projects at this time with it. I took it mainly to refamiliarize myself with Mig welding techniques and to learn a few that I didn't know. But already I can see an application for this in my knifemaking. One of which is obviously the gas forge. But, that'll be awhile yet before I'm comfortable at building it. 



Now that we (might) have an actual additional full-time instructor in my program starting this fall, I might even get the opportunity to (gasp!) study more knifemaking. I've already signed up for 3 knifemaking courses for this fall, two I've taken before. Not only that, but I have signed up for a basic silversmithing course (weekend only) in Greenville, South Carolina July 20th and 21st. And I might get a chance to squeeze in one more blacksmithing or jewelry making course before I'm expected back in August. And to top that off, I'll actually have a chance to get back into the shop and finish up some projects! I've got a knife grinding fixture that's ready for me to try out for creating flat grinds. 

The fixture isn't completed yet but if it works then I'll have a cool knifegrinding fixture that I can duplicate and use repeatedly.

Also, I've purchased a lightboard for drawing/designing my own custom folder knives which I'll put together and show a bit of design process in a future article. And guess what? The fun doesn't stop there! Because I came upon some old pocket knifes buried in a flea market that look like they would make an excellent restoration project! And in my spare time...