new shears.

toshi got me these badass japanese shears for my birthday. they're supposed to be used for pruning bonzai trees, but i'll be using them to snip leather and thread. totally awesome how they fit in your hand and are all handforged. thanks tosh!

belts

messed around making a couple belt prototypes tonight. went pretty quick. i wanted to start figuring out some belt buckle ideas, but the collar buttons are pretty fun. it'll be good to try these out the next few days. i'm liking this tremp tan expose leather from horween. and finally, a perfect width belt. they be more on this to come in the future. i want to start making my own collar buttons so i can make them out of stainless or bronze or something cooler than the cheap chrome plated look. again, maybe raw steel?

tig brazing

messed around for a few minutes tonight, thinking about belt buckles. this didn't turn out as i hoped, but i still like the look of tig brazing, especially on unfinished steel. i'm liking the idea of using unfinished steel for leather hardware, at least in places where you would touch the thing all the time, the idea being that the oils from the body and from the leather will keep it from rusting. and we want to make things that are used on a daily basis, it'll keep you from leaving the thing on the shelf to rust, we'll see where this idea goes though....

vent update

got another flange made up on friday night. we'll see if this thing clears out all the smoke, seems like i might need a smaller diameter puller on the fan, but not sure yet. still have to make another flange to hook the end of the vent pipe out the shop door.

biz cards coming soon

this is just a mockup, but koboshop biz cards are getting thermography printed on recycled cardstock right now. it'll be cool to see those when they come in. so official.

metal sketching.

this was kind of a bust of a night. trying to see about cutting out repetitive 2d forms that would hopefully quickly translate into 3d forms. it'll work, just not as quickly as i was hoping it would. probably not quick enough to do a series of pieces for production. also i decided to cut this out of bronze, so i'm having to tig weld as i go, instead of spot welding, which was the original plan. the spot welder won't touch bronze or copper, i guess they dissipate heat to quickly to make a weld. works awesome on stainless and titanium though, which would make sense. i wonder if i'd be able to spot weld these nonferrous metals if i had a spot welder with more oomph?

plasma venting.

didn't get a chance to finish this yet this weekend, but its close. that venting is huge, i can fit inside it. i sure hope it sucks enough.

head in a jar.

weird.

stenographer box.

made this box for a guy in my drawing class who is a stenographer, and still transcribes notes using these old accordian folded newsprint reels. i guess he used to use carboard boxes when transcribing that would fall apart and the company who made them no longer does. so he wanted a badass box, and i am physically incapable of saying no. cool to make the whole thing from scratch though. stainless steel hinges, rivets, and sheetmetal. sheetmetal powdercoated black. also cool to be able to take something relatively quickly from computer model to real material. i love it when the computer translates in that matter, seems to be a step that is lost so much in industry. the people who draw the thing never seem to be the people that make the thing. i feel pretty lucky to be able to work on both sides of that translation.

powder coating.

finally got the powdercoating setup up and running in koboshop. finally got my own powdercoat gun. kiln works really well for cooking the coat, but will need to do some more testing on it, as it seemed like the top of the piece would get hotter way quicker than the bottom. i miss my old glass kiln...

spot welder

seriously used the spot welder for the first time last night putting together the parts for the plasma vent. this thing is so freakin awesome, what a great way to tack metal together. thinking about some future work using spot welded construction.

plasma cuts.

thought i'd show a couple simple things cut on the plasma table. "myson" - top "uffizi" - bottom uffizi was powdercoat test piece tonight.

bus porn.

just a little something to get you thinking about what you shouldn't be franklin. ;)

randoms.

cleaning the photos off the phone today. some randoms inspiration. like emerson's quote. think positive.

iphone mugs.

gratuitous iphone pics. these 2 pics look oddly similar to me for some reason.

dirty workbench.

love it. that means stuff is happening.

photog toshi.

toshi seeing which pen is most photogenic.

nathans of different races.

frankie was doing some surface finishing tests for me on a couple nathans. i can't wait to get these in the mail and get it figured out.

square box, round hole.

spent a majority of today making this sheetmetal loft for the plasma table vent. getting seriously close to getting that little mother effer hooked up and running. bout time, its been over a year since i've had it, and i'm itching to cut some parts. little metal trivets for every household in america right? thhhpphhhhh.....

kobo keyfob.

toshi's been exploring the idea of keychains lately, i chose to throw in a try, albeit a much less thoughtful version. cut some keyfob blanks @ aG's shop, wetted the leather, and pressed this logo frankie cut for me into it. been giving the pieces we cut a few weeks ago quite a workout this weekend franklin. anybody want one?

new wallet.

aG was kind enough to let me use the laser cutter this weekend. whilst i was cutting out some other files, he drew up a pattern for a wallet, so while we had the leather there, i cut an extra one of his patterns out and sewed it up by hand this morning. i've been wanting to make a new wallet for a while, we'll see how this one breaks in. certainly is pared down from my last wallet, time to live more high speed low drag. its made of horween's waxed-flesh chromexcel, one of my favorite leathers.

p.s. handstitching is a big long pain in the ass. if you ever by something that has been stitched by hand, i hope it wasn't cheap.