More Laser Cutter Fun, or Organizing your GraverMach tools

November 19, 2009

So I have a GraverMach power engraver.  I also have a fair number of engraving tools for it.  They all come in quick change mounts, which is great, except that the little round holders that GRS sells don’t organize them that well.  They don’t really grip the shanks, and they tend to dump all the […]

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Berlin Years

November 9, 2009

November 9, 1989. As I’ve said, I normally try to keep this blog focused on things that are at least tangentially related to metalsmithing, but for the second time in the past few months, not today. November 9, 1989. The day the wall came down. I just felt the impulse to go back and correct […]

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Organize Your Wolf Tools

November 7, 2009

Do you have a can (or four) of Kate Wolf’s wax carving tools? Do you teach?  Do you need to make sure you have as many tools at the end of the night as you did at the beginning?  Do you have a laser cutter?  (Well why not??)  If so, this post’s for you. The […]

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Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

July 21, 2009

The first Earthrise ever seen by human eyes. Normally, I try to keep my musings here at least tangentially related to metalsmithing, in some respect.  Not today. 40 years ago today, two men stood upon the surface of the moon.  For the first time in all of history, our species stood on another world.  To […]

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Blade Runner Blues

July 14, 2009

I know the title of my next series of pieces.  I just have no idea what they look like. A bit of background.  Surprisingly, I’m something of a geek.  I’ve always enjoyed the movie Blade Runner.  Borders just had a half off sale on all their blue-ray disks.  They happened to have the ‘Final Cut’ […]

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A bibliographic note

June 8, 2009

An interesting point came up in class last week.  In various of my recent blog posts, I’ve made comments about silversmithing and jewelry skills that can’t be learned from books, they have to be passed along through physical repetition and training. Lest someone mistake me for an anti-intellectual, I’ve got more books on metalsmithing and […]

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What would you save?

May 13, 2009

As the readers of this blog may (or may not) know, I live in Santa Barbara.  Normally, I describe it as the closest thing I’ve ever found to paradise.  Sometimes, it does a pretty good impression of hell too.  Last week was a hell week.  Tuesday afternoon, the hills above town caught fire.  Again.  For […]

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Maybe the Doomsayers Were Right

May 3, 2009

A couple of days ago, a young silversmith from the UK contacted me asking for information about post-graduate studies in the US in silversmithing. I ended up having to send her a fairly negative assessment of the educational opportunities here in the States, at least in regards to the study of serious silversmithing in the […]

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Shakespeare was right.

April 19, 2009

Shakespeare was right: “First thing we do….kill all the lawyers”.  (Henry VI, Pt2, Act 4, scene 2.) Hardly a unique or original thought, even in his day, but every so often it does have a certain attraction. Today’s exercise in fantasy juricide is brought to you by way of trying to write a handout to […]

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A Walk in the Woods

March 6, 2009

A walk in the woods. (or: no sh-t, I think I graduated from Hogwarts.) Most of this was written while sitting in the departures lounge of the Columbus airport, waiting for my flight back to California after attending Gary Griffin’s retirement party at Cranbrook, in June of 2006.  I sometimes write as a way of […]

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