I have recently been discussing options with people about some sort of Award system for Wars in Lochac…  At the moment it’s just a very open discussion about ways to get it to work, and how to make it work with as little an increase on overhead as possible…

The idea is to provide an incentive for people to get onto the field at wars other than just the “Woohoo War!” incentive.  

The seed of the plan was to provide collectable tokens to the marshal in charge, to award to the winning side, and possibly a number of merit tokens to be handed out by the General in charge for valour on the field.  These tokens would also account for points which would be tallied through the year.At the end of the war year, at Festival, the person with the most tokens could be awarded with something like “Warrior of Lochac” or even a fictious rank such as “General of Lochac”, there could also be an award for the Household, or fighting group with the most points.

This is at the moment, just an idea…  one which needs alot of discussion…  But it could be the seed of something bigger.

Seems in my stupid half asleep state I managed to ruin a good friendship… 

I will not apologise for who I am…  but I will say sorry for what I said, and the way I said it…

I can’t seem to sleep at the moment…  I’m either too tired and strangely it’s keeping me awake, or I have too many thoughts bouncing around in my head which won’t let me get to sleep…  so I’m going to write a bit of nonsense in the hope that it will make me sleepy.

So, what’s bouncing around in my head? 

Hmm  lots… 
I was dreaming up ways to put my new helm together on the weekend… 
I was thinking about a naughty conversation with a friend that I had this afternoon… 
I was thinking about how it’s strange how some people can think they know others better than they know themselves… 
I was considering options for tent-age at Festival…
I was thinking how naughty and hypercritical I am for always wanting people to tell me their thoughts, yet occasionally keeping thoughts to myself…  
I was thinking how perspective controls so much, and how so many people fail to see that perspective can be an illusion… 
I was thinking how life is never what it seems from the outside looking in…. 
I was considering my options for world domination, or at least  starting small and working up to it…
I was fantasizing about people…
I was wondering about an issue I have, and how to fix it without offending a friend…

Considering all of those thoughts rattling around in my head…  I think I can safely say that I know what was causing my lack of sleep.  Maybe if I head back to bed now that I have expelled them out to the ether, I might be able to put it all behind me until tomorrow and get some sleep…

…maybe not.

Well…  yesterday I just happened to be in the Marrickville area again, and Thought I would stop by Reverse Garbage and the Organic Markets they have there for a look.  Whilst I did spend close to $20 in the markets outside…  In RG’s I only spent $7.50, and came home with a gamble…  I bought a HP Laserjet 4000 complete with added Jet Direct card.  I was thinking that this might be a waste of my $5 (the $2.5 was spent on other bits), and that the printer would be faulty or not working at all when I got it home.  It turned out that it was a worth while gamble, as this office grade printer fired up, and printed it’s config page perfectly.  My experience with Laser printers is that they are usually very robust, and will work for years, and whilst it might not produce the best quality images, and might need a new toner shortly, the printer itself has only printed less than 42000 pages.  Not bad concidering that they are asking $50-$200 for similar printers on ebay that have over 90,000 pages under their belts.

As you might be able to see…   I’m a happy chappy…  I’m evening thinking of upgrading the RAM so that sending large print jobs to it is so much faster.  Now if I could just find a cheap duplexer unit for it, and maybe a second tray, I’ll be even happier. ;)  With a Duplexer, I would be able to print the Next edition of Folia from home easily…  as well as other things such as my pewter casting booklet.

OK, so after have many issues to solve with trying to quickly make the Double R’s for the Rowany chain’s, I thought I might share a few tips and hints to make difficult productions possibly a little easier.

Keeping your soapstone mould very hot helps to get the detail and also helps the pewter to flow into the extremities of the mould without too much trouble. Sometimes however, there are other issues involved in preventing a good pour.

When carving think of the flow of the molten metal as it passes through the cavity made by your desired mould. Frequently air pockets can cause issues making pour after pour fail to produce a worthwhile casting. Air pockets can be reduced by providing bleeder scratches which channel the air out of the soapstone but are too thin to allow pewter through before it sets. Sometimes however, it is not exactly possible to provide these bleeder scratches, as there is nowhere to take them that allows air to escape. This was indeed the case in the double Rs for the rowany chains. There was a loop at the end of the trailing leg of the R which build up enough pressure to hold back the molten pewter, not allowing it to complete the loop. various attempts at bleeder scratches taking the air out couldn’t get to the heart of the issue. In the end, the easiest meathod was to drill a 1mm hole through the soapstone at the centre of the loop, and provide bleed scratches into that. The down side is that if you drill directly through, you end up ruining the back side of the soapstone so that you cannot utilise that for making more moulds. To fix this, you could attempt to drill partially through from the mould face, and then in from the edge of the mould. This option provides an air passage, however preserves the rear face for more moulds. There is however another downside, should pewter get into the air hold, it will likely block it, and be a real pain to remove.