“Right Click” and “Save As” the following links.

http://syridian.id.au/freezer/Politarchopolis_Shield.svg
http://syridian.id.au/freezer/Politarchopolis_Device.svg
http://syridian.id.au/freezer/Politarchopolis_Filled_Griffin.svg

Enjoy using them.

Direct link to Lochac.net

It worked out great, and I look forward to making more.

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}

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.

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. ;)

* The “Button” is the larger opening in the mould where you pour the molten pewter.  It usually gets cut off and recycled.

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.

*The second cause is moisture in the soapstone turning into steam when contacting molten pewter.  This is easily identifiable as it looks like shiny inverted bubbles on the surface of the pewter casting.  It is also easy to avoid by pre-warming your mould before casting in an oven, however I find the easiest method is to just heat the mould over the heat source for melting your pewter, and then just keep casting in quick succession until it stops.

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.

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.

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.