A day of drilling (by alaric)

Last Thursday, I had my safety induction for using the laser cutter at Bristol Hackspace, and as my test piece I laser-cut a name tag for Jean. She likes that sort of thing.

However, she requested that it have a hole in the corner, so she can attach it to her school bag. So today we went down to the workshop and I helped her to drill it out.

But I had more drilling to do. A friend asked me on Facebook how she could drill holes through pebbles. It just so happens that Sarah owns a set of diamond core drills, so I borrowed them and had a go, so that I could offer some advice.

I set the bit up in the column drill:

The challenge was in how to hold the stone still while it was being drilled. Irregular shapes are tricky to hold. First off, I tried a simple clamp:

The drilling has to happen under water, to help cool it and to wash away the dust that the stone turns into. I put some scraps of cardboard underneath so that I drilled into that once I was through the stone, rather than the bottom of my box, which would lead to it leaking all over my cluttered workbench:

As soon as the drill cut in, dust whooshed out into the water and made it impenetrably murky, so after a short drilling session, I took the stone out of the water to see what was happening:

It looked good so I tried again, but this time the stone pivoted in the clamp. I tried to clamp it back again but it wouldn't go back at the same angle and kept shifting, so I tried a new approach - gluing it to a piece of wood that was large enough to not be able to rotate inside the box, so I just needed to hold the box steady while drilling:

That worked quite well, but the vibration shook the stone loose after a while, and I had trouble with the wood wanting to float and the stone wanting to sink causing it to flip over in the water. so I glued it more thoroughly (making sure glue came over the side of the stone so it was held in place rather than just stuck in place), and glued a bit of scrap metal to the bottom to stop it floating over:

That worked; now the stone was steady, it was easy to press on all the way. I had to drill a millimetre then back out (with the drill still spinning) to clear the dust out into the water, then press on again. Progress was slow but steady, taking a few seconds to do each millimetre:

Once I felt it go through the bottom of the stone, I had no trouble in peeling the rubbery hot-melt glue back with my fingernails to free the stone. Job done:

So, to conclude:

• Use a column drill.
• Use a diamond core bit.
• Hold the stone steadily in something that conforms to its shape. An ideal technique might be to use something like Plasticene to firmly secure it to the bottom of the box before pouring the water in.
• Drill slowly, backing off to clean the bit every millimetre or so.

When I came back, Sarah was asleep on the sofa:

Aww!

The End of the Festive Season (by sarah)

Today we had our last Christmas visitor, Barbara, so I put out the minced pies and cut up Christmas Cake and we apologised as we seem to have lost her tea towel with Mary's print on it that we were going to give her - so we gave her same homemade jam instead.

She gave Mary some lovely Hello Kitty wellies which is brilliant as it was starting to be a squeeze to get her into the ones she has and the previous bigger set she lost one of whilst we were out shopping one day. Jean got an art casse which she was excited about and Al got cheese which is always a hit with him. I got a pot of tulips which shall be going outside the front door.

Jean also tidied the front garden, litter picking the litter that blows in and sweeping up the leaves - mainly as she is whipping through her worst witch books and wants to earn money to buy the missing ones.

There would be photos of today but unfortunately Jean was taking photos yesterday and dropped it and today it has gone completely screwy 🙁 It was on it's way out anyway which is why I had saved up money to get a good one but I spent it on the TV so that we could use the X-Box, I do not regret this but I do now find myself with out a camera - right at the point where I am trying to launch myself back into things seriously - sigh.

On the other hand I do have a rather serious back log of photos to sort out anyway so maybe this will give me time to do that?

After Al's aunt left we started taking down all the decorations to general chagrin of the kids - Mary was walking about saying 'Oh! No!' whilst Jean was whining that the room was starting to look so bare which we felt too. Somehow Christmas went so fast this year.

It has been a fun one though.

Of course tomorrow I have one of my best friends from school visiting in a sort of post-Christmas/pre-birthday type of way which is going to be ace!

And last night I forgot to go to the pub with one of my local friends which I feel really bad about - It wasn't a good day medically for me but still...

Anyway the good thing about the decorations coming down is that I am in the mood for Spring Cleaning to be honest. We started today with putting hooks up to hang various house type things up, such as sun catchers and wall art butterflies and the broom and duster and carrier bag suasage.

Today also marks the constructed language Lojban's 25th Birthday - this is the language that Alaric has been learning for the past few years and that he has been teaching to Mary. So we have begun work on a little language comic type thing - we came up with the idea ages ago but haven't had the time to act upon it!

Apart from that we made bread in the bread maker and made our own sauce for the chickpea hodge podge we had for dinner - January is already a month of highs and lows but net effect seems to be positive at the moment.

Merry Christmas On And All (by sarah)

Merry Christmas on this dreary Christmas Eve!

Here at the Snell-Pym Household we are recovering from mulled wine and minced pies with friends and are about to under take some lovely craft activities followed by christmas food prep!

Until then here is the outline of the Cathedral I have drawn for Percival's Christmas Wish. I have only so far managed two complete drawings both in outline but will attempt some more later on! I have a confession - I'm not very good at drawing buildings - I've never really done it to be honest and it took a lot longer than expected and I'm not entirely happy with it but it will none the less be going up on Wiggly Pets with the story a little later today!

The Dawn of a New Age (by sarah)

The Dawn of a New Age marked by Solstice Light - the Singularity is coming.

On this the darkest day of the year - sunlight is streaming in through the windows and through my garden crystals as seen above. I am steaming forward with my projects whilst welding rods are baked in the oven instead of Christmas Cake but then I have made chocolate christmas trees and finished the most complicated out line sketch of Percival's Christmas Wish. Life is odd but good and with the production of the DOOMSDAY COLLECTION it led me to think that yes this is a dawn of an age one in which I hope our species comes into it's own and stops killing and hurting one and other.

Technology and a greater understanding of the world and universe we live in, more minds coming on line via cheap tech who can interact and learn, and talk and solve problems. Give a person a loaf and you feed them for a day, give them farming tools and they feed themselves until the next drought, give them a cheap knock off i-pad and watch them find their own solutions.

It is already happening, even when the tech is in different languages and given to kids who can't read, within weeks they are making their own improvements to the tech. With such tools they can find the info they need to drag themselves and those around them out of poverty.

I am... Hopeful.

The Homeless Babies (by sarah)

Today I am doing the front cover of Percival's Christmas Wish as part of my Draw-a-thon to raise money for Shelter. I have only been sponsored £10 so far but that is half a family who wont end up homeless in the first place! So it is all good though making it a whole family by the end of today would be brilliant 🙂

In total I need to draw 14-16 pictures before Christmas Eve! I am currently on number three which is the hardest of the pictures as it is the one for the cover as well. So far all pictures are only sketches and some of that quiet rough but I am going out later to pick up some new colouring pencils as mine were damaged in the move.

I would like to just emphasis that there are over 75, 000 homeless children this christmas the likes of which has not been seen since the 60's! I know it seems like a sea of faceless people but it's not - those people are people like you and me, things can change so quickly where finances are concerned.

Also last week a baby bunny was dumped outside a pet shop near us in a cardboard box, which we said we would take if it was adopted by yesterday - it hadn't been adopted so we now have a new addition to the Snell-Pym zoo - Fluffy Obsidian!

Guess which part of the name was mine and which bit was Jean's? :/

She reckons that rock names are too hard in that they are not fluffy and they are hard to say! She gave Alaric the option of Hedgwig or Fluffy for the rabbit and he opted for Fluffy as a bunny isn't an owl and though it is also not a three headed dog it's genetics would be closer to that than a bird.

If we could adopt the homeless kids we would but they don't need adopting - they need to be with their families and taking them away would be taking us straight back to the horrors of Victoriana, therefore we help the whole family. I am really hoping that someone will donate another £10 so that we have helped one whole family instead of just half.

Here is a donate button.

And thankyou so much for the donation/sponsor that I have already received 🙂 The money goes directly to Shelter so they can start doing stuff straight away 🙂