I have just posted an article about creating a pewter drinking vessel to the Casting forum of the Lochac Network. For those of you who follow my Pewter casting, you can check it out by click on the picture.
It worked out great, and I look forward to making more.
Whilst reading an explaination posted on one of the few mailing lists I’m still on, a thought occured to me which I must admit I have yet to research. I have oft heard complaint that “The Crown is only open to tournement fighters” from non combatants and combat archers, and this thought if put into action would stop that being an issue at all.
This is not a formal proposal for anything but an open discussion, and I believe those who know me well enough, know that I am always promoting discussion of any kind. So this is just really sticking it out there to see what bounces.
So, the idea? What, (apart from current society law) would restrict a couple from appointing a Champion to fight Crown on their behalf? Realistically at the moment it is not possible, but would it be worth concidering a proposal to make this change? After all, to take on this monumental task this Champion would need to have total faith in the couple, believing that the couple are worth fighting for, and believing that they are worth putting their own reputation on the line for. The Crown would still need to accept this Champion as well as the Couple they fight for as a valid entry into The Crown Tourney, as I believe currently takes place.
If you really think about this, there are already so many checks in place to ensure that The Crown are capable of completeing their reign that I can see nothing but benefits for this suggestion. Was this not a valid period practice? Would this also not be quite honourable and chivalrous, as I believe it would be on the fighters honour as well as those they stand for to forfill the honour of the fighter?
Personally looking at the laws, though very breifly, I believe this would be a very simple change that would not only allow for a much more exciting Crown Tourney, as well as opening up the potential for some amasing new Crown couples who were previously denied entry simply due to lack of fighting ability (Can you imagine Rowan as Queen? I can, as this would make that possible).
Anyway.. As previously stated, this is really just putting forth an idea… I believe it’s a good one, I believe there is more potential good in it than the potential harm it could do. However I am also aware that 40 odd years of tradition is one hell of a big boulder moving downhill hill at incredible pace. Luckily for us, the right brains on side, some thought, and with some of the right type of muscle it is possible to divert that big a boulder.
I’m not trying to change the way it’s currently done, I just believe that this could be a better way.
{Google Wave removed}
I have been getting more and more frustrated by mailing lists of late, in particular The Shambles. There is a reason it is called The Shambles, as it only takes 4 or 5 posts before the subject of any dicussion twists off in all directions, frequently missing the original posters point entirely and starting huge debates on topics slightly left or right of what what said to start it.
However this frustration is with the whole concept of Mailing-Lists used for Discussion of particular topics, so to relieve myself I have unsubscribed from every mailing list that I don’t need to be on. No more Shambles, no more lists that generate branching discussions on the same topic that just go on and on. Maybe that will also mean Less SCA involvement, but lets face it… I have been loosing interest in the SCA for a while now, maybe this is the break that I need to take.
I’ll still look after The Lochac Network forums… still keep adding to them occationall, hoping that others will join me and hoping that they start to take off.
Finally! it’ been a while since I posted a pewter project post, but I have now got a few projects on the go so there will be a number of them coming in the next month or two.
This weeks project has been a personal token for an SCA member to give to those they favour. It is a simple medallion with initials on one side, and a raised representation of a logo/device on the other side.
Usually my medallions are carved into one side of the mould for depth and then the other side is smoothed and has the detail carved into that. For this particular token I wanted to attempt a fully symmetrical moulding process by carving half the depth into each side of the mould. I did this for two reasons, firstly, the one sided method I used previously whilst it makes for a nicer edge, usually needs alot more work to clean up. Secondly it allowed me practice in aligning the two halves of the mould, whilst the old method allowed for misalignment, it meant that the main image was not centred on the finished token, and it would look kind of wrong.
After some experimentation in attempting to get a good quality pour each time (see last post), I managed to find the best combination of temperature and mould tapping that resulted in a great amount of detail showing. This further experimentation also made me realise the importance of the mould tapping and the continuation of it until the entire button* has solidified. It seems that during the freezing process pewter can sill move past other parts that have frozen solid. I suspect this would be similar to the crystals of ice that form in water, they allow water to pass around them, but still hold their shape.
Interestingly this also brings to my attention the creation of another type of artefact on an improperly cast item. This artefact is caused if the mould moves during this crystallising phase of the freeze, and creates a texture like the one in the picture to the left. It is rather a fine texture, however given the choice of all three of the artefacts described here and in the last post, I would rather this one, as the detail of the casting is almost perfect. To reduce or even eliminate this artefact I would suggest the use of either wiring the mould together tightly, or using mechanical clamps to stop the mould from moving during the tapping and pouring process. I may even attempt to make some sort of mechanical tapping/shaking jig so as to reduce stresses on the soapstone mould as well as the chances of the mould moving.
In a happy coincidence when I was checking the email to confirm that I had gotten the commission done as requested, I noticed that I was missing a vital part of the Dragons. So the above information about the tapping/shaking process was only discovered after the wings were added, and the entire batch recast. I’m sure my customer will be much happier with the better detailed casts than he might have been with the previous batch, specially as his Dragons are now actually dragons and not Lizards. ;)
It’s about time I got back to some real Pewter casting and the reporting of, so here’s my latest. I have recently been working on a token commission and actually paid attention to the detail of the results of the castings this time, so I thought I would write about it in an effort to further muddle it through in my mind as well as help the one or two of you out there.
When casting there are two main problems that cause artefacts on the cast item. The first is air pockets, and the second is pewter shrinkage due to the freezing process. Unfortunately in period soapstone casting, the solution to one of these problems is also what causes the other, and a balancing act needs to take place to minimise both effects.
Air pockets can be caused by two reasons that I have been able to work out, though I believe the second is another issue which can be fixed separately*. The first is a lack of air escaping the mould before the molten pewter freezes, either by air flow dynamics causing restrictions in air flow out of the mould as the molten pewter enters, or the pewter freezing before it gets a chance to fill all of the detail. This can be minimised by using a hot mould that allows the pewter to run into all detailed parts of the mould before it freezes, you may need to still play with the air flow dynamics on some moulds to ensure that the pressure of the liquid pewter entering the mould isn’t causing an air pocket in the mould to be trapped.
The secondary artefacts created when the molten pewter freezes and shrinks is a little harder to control, as the easiest way to control that is to have a cold mold and a quick pour of the molten pewter into the mould. The cold mold freezes a skin of pewter allowing the detail to remain. Freezing the pewter from the outside just a touch faster than it would with a hot mould this allow a harder skin to retain the detail whilst the pewter freezes and shrinks. Another way to stop the shrinking from effecting your finished casting is to have a large enough sprue connecting the pouring button with the cast product so that there is enough room for the shrinking pewter to pull down more molten pewter from the button, however this is not always easily possible, as this sprue needs to large enough to allow the sides to freeze before the centre.
Another method of minimising the effect of shrinking on the casting is to rapidly tap the mould on a wooden surface as you are pouring the pewter. This has the effect of increasing the pressure in the mould and effectively hammering the molten pewter into the details. It needs to be done as you are pouring, and you need to be very careful as you don’t want to move the mould parts, or splatter molten pewter.
These details leave me with the conclusion that in order to get a perfect casting each time from a gravity fed, non-pressurised soapstone mould casting there needs to be a very delicate balance between the temperature of the soapstone mould and the temperature of the molten pewter. If I were more serious about this process I would attempt to investigate this further with more period techniques for estimating the temperature of both mould and metal, however I believe that knowing that the balance exists and some means of minimising it’s effects are enough for me to continue. The art of getting a perfect casting from each pour is one that whilst very rewarding, is not necessary with the ease of turning out pewter castings it is often better to do the best you can, and recast the ones that don’t work. Of course, if it’s the techniques that are causing the artefacts in the first place, then these techniques do need to be addressed.
Well, it seems that today I sold my first Pewter badge on Ebay. That would be great if it hadn’t taken about 2 years at roughly $15/month to do it. ;) Stupidly this is totally my fault for not actually doing anything with the Ebay store, just leaving it there each month paying the fee. I guess what I should do is actually use the Camera I bought specifically to increase the stock in my ebay store to take photo’s of other things, and add them to the store. This I should do now that I have some time… In fact this I should have been doing since I was made unemployed as that was the only pathetic excuse I had back then. Feel free to hassle me into getting stuff on the Ebay store!
So what have I been doing in my unemployment instead of doing sensible things like selling stuff on Ebay? I have been getting armour and stuff ready very slowly in an attempt to start fighting heavy. It’s another one of those things that I have been procrastinating about for ages, so I have been doing bits here and there to get prepared for it. Today I spend an hour or two modifying the faceplate of my helm so that I can get the legal 1″ apart bars welded in place. I have also needed to change the way the helm and faceplate meet, so it shall signifficantly change the look of the helm. Last week I made a Boss for my shield, and once I manage to find my acrylics I shall paint the shield and finish off the edging.
Like always I think there is always a better way to do something and I experiment with everything. When my helm was originally made I used boot polish to prevent it from rusting as I’m not a fan of the shiny helm look or the look of painted metal but I do enjoy the look of bear rough metal. This provided a happy compromise, giving the metal a dull grey, but still metallic look. It has lasted really well only showing sings of rust where friction had rubbed the polish down to metal from the canvas in my armour bag.. My latest experiment is to make a shield edge that lasts longer than the normal shield edges I have seen… Now I must admit to start with that my experience of shield edges is very limited, so I won’t confess to knowing whether this has been tried before or not. The shield edges I have seen are either aluminimum channel then hosepipe then tape, or just the channeling with leather edging over the top. What I’m going to try is to silicon on a rope around the outside of the aluminimum edging. I’m hoping that this will provide enough of a buffer between the blow on the edge and the wood to stop the wood from starting to split. It should also increase the life of the leather going around the edge as the leather will no lnger be hitting directly onto metal. Anyway.. that’s the theory. ;) Time will tell, and there’s also the fact that being a newbie fighter, my head is likely to be taking most of the blows, not the shield edge.
That it from me tonight, but remember feel free to hasle me about either looking for work, or getting the Ebay store working better.
Well… Work has finally started progressing on one of my pet projects, the Lochac Network Event posting bot, which is planned to be an event stewards one stop shop for advertising events in Lochac. By filling out the one web form, the event steward or bookings officer can post an event notification to not only their own local list as well as the Lochac Network forums, their formatted event notification will automatically go to local groups within their area as well as the Lochac Announce list. The form will ensure that all of the important information is filled in before it allows the send button to be pressed hopefully helping to remind the people sending it that there is information that needs to be provided.
The part of the project I’m doing at the moment involves collecting as many Local Group mailing lists as possible, as they seem to be scattered across 3 main servers (The SCAA server, the SCANZ server and Yahoogroups). I currently have a basic form working that allows emails to be sent as well as posts to the relevent Forum on the Lochac Network, once I have a few security measures in place and have subscribed the bots email address to the relevant groups (which gives control of recieving the Bot’s emails firmly into the hands of the List Administrators), I can start looking into automating the form so that the sender only has a few options to select in order to advertise an event, rather than the current 30 odd lists to select from.
For those IT professionals out there who may freak at a form being created to send to that many lists, you need not worry, the form prevents header insertion, and the POST information is free of email addresses as all of the email addresses are stored elsewhere. Once I manage to work out the authentication on the forum, users wishing to utilise this form will be required to be registered on the Lochac Network forums and their connected IP details will be recorded as well as added to the bottom of any email sent to a list. However, as I am not actually a programmer and am just working through this with the help of friends who are and the resourses of the Net, please feel free to contact me to ask to see the source code if you are worried about this connecting to your server/list.
Just back from the 3rd Radburne War and I must say, the people of House Radburne have exceeded all expectations yet again. This little war started off as a a group wanting to increase the experiences of their fighters by encouraging fighters to come out to them, and it has fast become a great event on the Lochac Calendar and one worth the 6 hour drive for. Whilst technically the War is only a single day, the radburnites cram a lot of stuff in there as well as not over filling the time table.
Being such a small group of people, and most of the Radburnites being the one family, they have been able to achieve so much in the way of construction to the site, this year extending the fort, adding outpost archery towers, building a bridge as well as extending the tavern/hall to include a better servery and washing up facilities.
I heartily recommend Radburne War to anyone whether new to the SCA or old, this is a lovely little weekend away run by a group that is so friendly and helpful.
Calling all period archers in Lochac.
The IKAC scores for Lochac could do with some improvement and I know that Lochac has more Period Archers out there. It would be great to see more and more people choose to shoot period and also shoot the IKAC to elevate Lochac’s rankings.
As such, I shall be providing a prize to the highest scoring period archer in IKAC this season. The prize is a hand crafted pewter drinking vessel which will comemorate the victory. To be in the running you will need to make sure your scores are entered into the Lochac IKAC online scoring system at http://scores-sca.org/.
The season ends in December and I shall forward the prize to the worthy archer once the final scores have been added.
I have been tinlkering of late with constructing pewter drinking wares, as I have been wanting to experiment in that area for a long time and just never got around to it.
My housemate has been attempting to convince me to mould a cup in a single piece, however I have been tinkering with constructing one from sheet. This meant making sheet pewter, as it’s rather dificult to get pewter in sheet form. Those of you who read my site regularly will remember the post earlier in the week where I discussed wooden moulds, and making a mould from two pieces of flat pine.
The pewter I cast from that mould has since been beaten into a truncated cone, and had the seam welded to form a nice cup shape without a bottom. If all goes well during the coming working week, I shall fit a bottom to this and then clean and polish the raw cup before attempting some decorating on it.
Still can’t forget those Radburne War tokens as well…
Yikes! It’s time I started concentrating on the Radburn war tokens, as I promised that I would once again supply the tokens this year. The general consensus is for a Tower, and being an archer I am quite keen on shooting from towers, so I think a tower it shall be. I am conflicted about how to make a tower better than the gate that I made for them last year, but I am keen to continue the fort motif from last year.
The other alternative is a Radburn shied, which I have in mind so that it matches the sword from the first year. I may keep that one for next year though, I guess we’ll see how I go with the Tower first. So I now need to contact the Steward and find out how many are booked so I know how many tokens to make.
Sick of the cold? Join us for an afternoon in the Park, followed by a warming Tavern Style winter warming feast of Stew – but watch your back!
Lucrezia Borgia is giving a feast in honor of her father, the Pope, but beware, there is poison in the air. Caution is your only hope. Come to the feast and see who will be the last noble standing in this game of trust and betrayal. For those that wish to come and just watch the spectacle, items will be provided to ensure your safety. There will be a cap of 45 tickets sold, as the Pope is in his elder years and large crowds leave him ill.
When: Saturday 15th August
Where: Downer Community Centre, Frencham Street, Downer
Time: Tourney from 12.00, Feast: 6pm
Booked Price: $12 members/ $15 non-members / Children U10 Free
At the Door: $15 members/ $18 non-members. NB. Bookings urged as limited space available.
Bookings and dietary requirements to the Steward: Honoré Corbaut (Georgia Winter) winter.georgia@gmail.com, 0414 726 262.
Bookings required by no later than 7 August.
Please take note of the Baronial Bookings Policy
I have been experimenting more with short term wooden moulds for pewter work these days and I suspect that it was used in period for pewter work more than has been documented. The pine store-bought wood I have been using holds up remarkably well to multiple castings and even when it does seem to burn, it seems to retain it’s integrity reasonably well. Using the wood allows larger filigree type works to be created reasonably quickly with a sharp carving tool and some skill. the wood seems to allow a remarkable amount if details and because of it’s insulating and porous qualities seems to be a great medium for making larger flatter pieces as the molten pewter flows to all extremities of the mould before freezing.
Earlier on in the week I used a wooden mould to create a piece of flat sheet that I could turn into a cup by rolling and then soldering the seem and the base in place. I suspect with a little more care in creating the mould I could make this sheet a lot thinner and much smoother. Though the other consideration for making flat sheet is to use sheet metal, and make a 3 piece sandwich with a sheet metal blank sandwiched between 2 pine boards.
I know I should change my chosen metal from Pewter to silver as more and more of the things that I want to make are much better when made in silver, and I could also cast the silver in the soapstone moulds I already have. However it seems that my skills are more and more being used to make event tokens which is far more rewarding, as tokens seem to get kept, and they have a larger audience rather than special silver thing’s that are only special to those they were made for. Anyway, I haven’t done much these days, so I shouldn’t worry too much until I get to a point of needing to evaluate.
I’m working the afternoon shifts this weekend, so am not available for any events. :(
The lovely folks of Radburne are having their 3rd Radburne War and Camping weekend and I’m planning on heading out there.
Ulric of Ambledune, our wonderful Captain of Archers is organising a Novelty shoot for this 5th Sunday of the month. So come along and find out what fun and exciting things Ulric has organised for us all to shoot at.
This is a Garbed Event as far as I am aware.
Yay! It’s a Tavern event in Polit for all to come along drink and play games. Just realised that I won’t be able to make it though. :(
So my nice 45Lb Longbow has been loosing some of it’s kick lately and it’s kinda leading to me not enjoying shooting it as much and opting for the Recurve. It’s time that I either did something about it or retired the bow and saved up for a new one. So on the weekend I took the plung and took to the bow with a woodworkers scraper, taking off all of the previous varnish and taking it back to just pure wood.
From there I cut and layered on 2 layers of a nice heavy linen backing with outdoor aquadhere, this was then stretched along each of the upper and lower limbs and left for 4 days to harden. on the 4th day I cut off the excess, strung the bow and ensure that it was still the same, then I left it until Yesterday before attempting to shoot it.
It’s well… Smoother… Seems to have taken out alot of the kick, but unfortunately it also seems to not really increased it’s poundage at all, which was the hope. Further testing shall continue, as will actually testing the draw weight, but so far it doesn’t really seem to have made a huge improvement. Might be time to make my own bow like Lorccan and Mercurio have.
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So I have just found out that the Barony of Storm Hold is holding the next College war, and I’m kinda interested in going, but does it make me a big old lecherouss pervert? Maybe if I offer to teach Pewter Casting or something? I mean… it’s not like I’m going down there to perv on all the young collegians, thats just an added benefit. ;)
Anyway, Some Basic details are below, but head over to the baronys website to check out all of the details.
Make sure you come to Midwinter and stay for College War!!
This is a fully catered, full accomodation event to be held from Wednesday 8 July to Sunday 12 July.
at Rowallan Scout Camp which is at 6 Kent Road, Riddell’s Creek, Victoria
Cost: no more then $110
Please book for this event with the College War Booking Officer by email to collegewar[at]gmail.com
Book (and pay) for Midwinter Coronation and get a $20 discount!!!
For more information on Midwinter Coronation and College War, visit the
event page.
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