computer modeling lessons @ koboshop.

was teaching some basic solidworks @ koboshop workday today. the bigscreen setup seemed to work really well, especially with everyone being able to make the same part i'm making on the big screen computer. my teaching style, well, i'm sure that could use some refinement. its so hard to know what subtleties with software semantics are easy or hard to pick up. was kinda fun though, i wouldn't mind doing it some more.

sure was a throwback to when ricky was showing me how to use rhino, now he knows how i felt. wow, that was 7 or 8 years ago i think. hope he keeps up with it more than i kept up with rhino.

photoshoot@KOBO

no, our leaky roof isn't enough to require umbrellas indoor... well, yet at least. we had a little photoshoot action with some wireless flashes the other week with a talented makeup artist sil silvita. this was the setup in a nutshell. photos to come!

savex manufacturing.

max wimpffen and his father george run savex manufacturing in carol stream, il. super good people. i was over there last week with a client checking out some parts, and snapped a few photos whilst they were chatting. max does super good work, and is very resonable about cost and response time. call them in the afternoon, and max's mother, eva, will most likely answer the phone. she is about the sweetest person in the whole world. its a shame how hard it is for small shops like this to stay afloat these days. here's to hoping they can pull through the hard days. love the pic of the drill press with the plants. i think we need more plants in koboshop....

Hard working Nathans

First run of Nathans are hard at work holding and carrying things on the koboshop table and causing trouble :) Click here for more pix.

flying platform.

i'm still going to build one of these someday, even if its my demise.

wax nathan army.

wax nathan army is slowly rebuilding its forces...

20" blower.

went and picked up the new blower for the plasma table tonight. definetely looks like this one will suck. it will totally suck. just need to wire it up and hook up some venting. a 3hp motor, perhaps a little overkill? who knows. still need a 32" door to hook the venting out of, anybody find one yet??

anvil.

cut the crusty anvil off of its stand to prep it for refinishing. i need to pick up some nickel rod to weld it up, but for right now, its keep the metal on the plasma table from floating away.

kobo tie proto #1.

toshi's here rockin' the tie he made. time for more prototypes and moving forward toward production. good testing of photo setup though. what do you guys think?

tylerlundberg.com

very cool. tyler came by a while ago and shot some pics for one of his photo classes. one of my pics is up on his website. check out his stuff here, very good.

franklin's old beemer.

feeling a little nostalgic tonight. digging through old projects tonight, and ran across this pic i took of franklin's old beemer in the metals building. a single tear has been shed. those were really good times.

Twin Lens Reflex

Digital SLR's all are the rage these days and I very much love them, but I've been on a hunt for an ol' twin lens reflex from back in the days for a year or so now. Personally loving the looks of the more unpopular TLR cameras. Some of them are pretty modern looking considering they're from the 50's. Hope the day I get one is soon. Another day on ebay :)

kobo workshop day.

toshi and i tried out 1st workshop day this weekend. we're still seeing how this will work, but it was good to have everyone's energy in the shop. liz was doing some soldering, paradise was building a bed, i was casting waxes and cutting up anvils, john was sewing, sil was illustratoring, and toshi was making a tie. what a whirl wind. here's a couple quick pics i snapped on ikkai.

winter bike.

this is my commuter in the snow. so nice to have some cyclocross tires back on it for the winter. not that dramatic, as there's not much snow caked on it in the pic, but i'm sure there's more to come this year. and yes, that seat post is still to low for me.

the 3rd & the 7th

the 3rd & the 7th. i'm not sure what its about yet, i've only watch the first few minutes of it, and already think its one of the coolest things i've seen in awhile. thanks for the peep, paradiso.

before the music dies.

watched this documentary today on hulu: before the music dies. pretty good. even though i'm not a musician, i do appreciate music, and feel that the passion they are talking about applies to any other outlets.

chris burden

love this juxtaposition. just the image is enough for me. would love to see it in person. saw via ymfy. link.

what i saw today...

love this post on what i saw today.

dirty new boots.

my dad has been wearing and destroying the same red wings for decades. eventually my feet were as big as his, and i started stealing his backup pair of boots he'd have down in the changing room downstairs. now my mom gets me a new pair of boots when she gets them for my dad. he's probably gone through 50 pairs of these boots over the last 20 years. this is my 4th pair i believe, and they were clean until this weekend... i just seem to destroy everything.

bigOCK!!!

i have no idea where these pictures came from, or how they were on my computer. really. might as well share them with the koboshop faithful...

kobo logo leatherpress!

also machinied the koboshop logo into a piece of aluminum to test out some markings with it. works super well on this piece of 5 0z veg-tanned hide that was wetted down. so cool! now we can leave our mark on everything. well, anything that will hold the debossing anyhow....

al die leather press.

so cool, i can pump these out so much faster now. and, i can trim the edges around the mold, so everything is exactly the same size. getting closer... kinda fun to polish the inside of these molds, but hopefully we'll be able to get better at machining stuff like this in the future so there is less hand work. always learning everytime.

focus.

look at toshi focus. this is like real time blogging, as this is happening right now. whoa.

hotness.

it was hot after casting nathans. makes you feel like laying down on a grassy knoll and taking a nap. i have become addicted to lime green la croix lately, it reminds me of ian during college.

heat press.

frankie and i got this old heat press working today. works awesome for heating up the new aluminum leatherpress dies. no need to wet the leather anymore.

colortran light.

we used to have one of these lights in the studio at college. it was awesome to provide fill light without showing any harsh shadows. well, i couldn't help picking this one up, we'll see if i'll be able to make it work again. should be good for studio shots, and i brought my old gradated backdrop to koboshop too. we're getting professional biotches.

frankie programming.

frankie programming the cam files for some aluminum pressing dies. he's gotten way more awesome at this, but we were talking about how people still think cnc machining is just as easy as pushing a button and then getting a part printed out. it is definitley NOT this easy, especially when you're still learning.

pile o nathans.

cutting the sprues off is a little time consuming, but not too bad. its like nathans auchwitz here.

nathans pour.

frankie checking the molten metal in the furnaces. then some good castings in bronze and a few in aluminum.