Tuesday, May 12, 2009

wotta week!

What a crazy week! It started with a trip to Potsdam NY to participate in a demo involving armour making. Then the news that my licence to make armour based on that made by a famous artist came through, and I'll have to develop new and interesting pieces to justify his faith in me. The lawn tractor needed its blades sharpened, and that means flipping it on its back to get at them. The result of THAT exercise goes much more smoothly if you drain the fuel, oil, and remove the battery. None of these jobs went well...the oil drain plug was jammed, the battery cable needed to be cut off with clippers because there was no shifting the bolts! Which means of course I had to fabricate new cables AND new eyeletted ends out of scrap brass. And the fuel lines are all dried and cracked. Tires were flat. ARRRRGGGH.
Got some time in the shop...not as much as I would have liked...and made a pretty piece of armour. Hope it is what the customer wants. Its kind of neat and I never made anything quite like it before. Got one (count em, ONE) measely ride on the bike in.
A few school demonstrations will help to cover the mortgage, and we are getting ready for the big show this summer....the Upper Canada Renaissance Festival. Shayne Adams and his jousters will be there, (Yes Jennifer, they are the ones you know from the Ohio show) and this show will be kind of weird because there are two major components to it...the first two days will be all about putting little kids into armour and giving sword demonstrations, and the second two days will be all about selling swords like crazy.
The weekend was full of visitors. I had seven visitors on Saturday, and I was training some of them in the rain. Andrea came back to the forge after class Sunday, and did some fantastic work, much needed labour intensive stuff like grinding spun tops and cleaning the demo armour. We found a couple of broken straps which will need to be repaired before I can put it back into service, but nothing I can't handle.
Today was pleasant...we saw the new Star Trek movie on IMAX. Went to the early show, and I am glad I did....there was quite a line up to get into the later shows. Don't these kids have to go to school? A lunch at Wild Wings, and another convert to the joys of fancy chicken wings. An hour at that warehouse for guys "Princess Auto", made my day off worth while.
So tomorrow, I'll clean out the gunk which is causing my lawn tractor to sputter, and finally get those dandelions under control. Maybe go for a bike ride. Lay out a nice helmet, and get started on that sexy armour.
Ahh...life is unfolding as it should.

2 comments:

Kim said...

Oooh- what's this about sexy armour?! Photos please!

I've heard only good things about the Star Trek movie, and am looking forward to seeing it at some point.

STAG said...

I promise to post pictures of the armour here. The finished stuff anyways...I expect I'll post the work-in-progress stuff on my armour blog.

Brenda thought the Star Trek movie was totally awesome. As usual, I loved the effects, but the characters were way too cardboardy for me to "get into". Kirk was an asshole, even as a child, and a bit too disgustingly distracted by virtually any cute female he runs across. Spock was "conflicted", but getting it on with Uhura was a bit of a surprise. GO SPOCK!
The idea of a group of cadets pretty much in charge of a brand new star ship right out of the dock was explored in a Deep Space Nine episode...but not even DS9 put the flagship in the charge of a group of grads, no matter how good. Oh well...maybe a glance at history will find exemplars.

Oh, and as for the sexy armour, check out www.clydecaldwell.com