{"id":6919,"date":"2021-09-23T16:28:11","date_gmt":"2021-09-23T23:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/?p=6919"},"modified":"2021-11-19T09:57:29","modified_gmt":"2021-11-19T17:57:29","slug":"entertainment-during-corona","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/?p=6919","title":{"rendered":"Entertainment During Corona"},"content":{"rendered":"

It has been a very long time since I’ve written here. Some of that’s getting out of the habit. A larger part of that is that … well, there’s just nothing happening. I’ve been singing and working on windchimes, pretty much. But I realize that I’m not even sharing about the windchimes. So, here’s a story about windchimes and how I make them.<\/p>\n

I’ve had a windchime calculator<\/a> for quite some time, but just never really got to it. I found impetus to move to titanium from brass because of this video<\/a>. His chopsticks look beautiful, and onlinemetals.com<\/a> would ship me some titanium… and so we began. General process:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Find yourself a decent chord at https:\/\/www.onemotion.com\/chord-player\/<\/a> <\/li>\n
  2. Look up the lengths (chime length & length of the hang point) <\/li>\n
  3. Cut chimes to lengths <\/li>\n
  4. Drill them <\/li>\n
  5. Polish the bejeezus out of them <\/li>\n
  6. Spin them up on a high-speed drill, while heating them with a torch <\/li>\n
  7. Use a polishing belt to strategically remove stripes (yes, while everything’s still running) <\/li>\n
  8. Hang them up (after they’ve cooled) <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \"Metalworking<\/a><\/p>\n

    Above is what one looks like while in progress. That silver titanium will quickly oxidize to a “gold straw” color, because the metal’s already hot.<\/p>\n

    The least fun in this hobby is the sheer number of drill bits I’ve broken. I bought a drill press, which should help a little bit at least, just by keeping the drill bit straight. We’ll see. It’s definitely the bottleneck in the process.<\/p>\n

    Next up as not fun is that I really ought to get a band saw. I’ve got a jigsaw (pro tip: a “fine metal” blade on the end-grain wood setting<\/b> is what you want, for titanium – just chomps the metal out beautifully). It works well enough, actually. The band saw would be a luxury upgrade, when I still haven’t solved the drill issue.<\/p>\n

    \"Metalworking<\/a><\/p>\n

    It’s the blowtorch stuff that’s the most fun, of course. Developing new techniques, seeing what works and doesn’t. Using a large torch to get a base color = a consistent heat platform to build on, whereas just hitting it with the small torch will give much more variation in color.<\/p>\n

    Making little decorations to go along with the chimes (I’ll work with brass when I’m frustrated with titanium – brass is like butter, in comparison) is also quite peaceful.<\/p>\n

    At some point I’m going to buy an SMT Micro Anodizer<\/a> (have a look at some of the examples there), so I can lay down straight-lined patterns, one-color patterns, or can hook it to a paintbrush and paint with electrolyte.<\/p>\n

    That’s kinda what things have been like around here. Finish work, sing a while if it’s hot, make some chimes if it’s cool. Rinse and repeat.<\/p>\n

    -D<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    It has been a very long time since I’ve written here. Some of that’s getting out of the habit. A larger part of that is that … well, there’s just nothing happening. I’ve been singing and working on windchimes, pretty much. But I realize that I’m not even sharing about the windchimes. So, here’s a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artsy-things","category-metalworking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6919"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6921,"href":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6919\/revisions\/6921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}