Finished! Well, almost!

After great labour, I created a "chrome" polished bayonette. I built a scabbard out of brass, and plated it. I cast and finished pewter handles for it. They are not plated yet, but I was doing a test fit, and figured I would take a picture. Not too shabby! When the pewter comes back from the plater, it will be as shiney as the rest of the unit! I am even getting the screws which join the two halves together plated! This might get interesting if the nickel messes up the threads on the screws! But I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

As usual, it is hard to photograph a mirror! You can see the reflections of the yellow curtains in the scabbard! Yup...its shiny all right!

Click on the pictures to enlarge...

Cleaning up the castings

These two pics are of the same items...the blue painted one eventually got filed into the one in the middle in the top picture.

Now the real work starts! I sit down at the bench with my little triangular jeweler's files, and clean up the whole casting. It needed every single point to be re-freshed, and all the flat surfaces to be cleaned up with files, sandpaper, and eventually, a high speed buffer. The above picture shows the original black plastic handle, a handle which is well into the process of filing it clean, and the one on the right is what it looked like when it came out of the mould. I spray on blue ink so that I can remember which parts I have done...it all reflects light and is hard to focus on. I was well aware that one sloppy stroke of the file could ruin hours of work!


I understand the proper name for such a casting is called a "finding". That is...something which is actually produced in a "foundry".

I got complacent. I did one perfectly in what....14 hours or so, and the next one went a little faster, only 12 hours. I figured I knew what I was doing, so I cut off the sprues with the hacksaw, and carved the saw into the casting, ruining 12 hours of work in two saw cuts! Doooh!
The third one came along quite well, but because I had already used the two best findings for the job, it took a lot longer, about 18 hours, to finally clean up the "checkering" on the sides, cut the sprues and drill them out, and generally decide I was satisfied with the job.

The second picture up there shows the original, a casting, and my finished filed handle half. This pic was actually taken before I had done the final buffing, and I note that the usual problems of photographing mirrors is coming into play! The bottom edge looks rough, but actually, what it doing is reflecting the rough surface of the cloth it is sitting on!

Bayonette finishing

The first part of making a handle out of metal is to make the mould. I used a two part material called ATV325. It mixes like epoxy, and forms a rubber like compound which surprisingly enough, is quite resistant to heat. Useful since I would be pouring molten pewter into it! I used the existing handle halves to form the mould. Those are the black handle halves you see in the above pictures. Unfortunately, I didn't know how "rubbery" it really was, and its jello like consistency caused some problems due to distorted moulds. Well, that is the learning process I guess! I tried a couple of ways to pour....through the side, through the top. The top picture is of the mould wrapped up with a leather thong ready to use, with some of the cute little handle halves I made. I eventually made about 12 of them, of which 3 were good enough castings to actually use, and another six which simply got tossed back into the frying pan to melt.

There are things about pewter I never realized. For one thing, there is the "fizz" which comes out of it when it is poured. Like bubbles in soda pop, they seem to come from nowhere, and the bubbles come up the "sprues", making the sprues really porous. Ruins the surface of the casting as well...you can see how rough it makes the casting in some of the pictures above.

The end result of a couple of days trial and error (its not like I ever did anything like this before!) I got a nice bunch of nice hard shiney pewter handles, covered in pits from bubbles, oxodized from overheating, several little blisters on my hands, and a warm feeling. No wait, that was from the hot plate I forgot to turn off!

Click on images to enlarge.

Big project...Bayonettes!

The challenge was to take the standard issue bayonette and chrome plate it. The purpose of a chrome bayonette is to fancy up the funeral party for the re-patriation ceremony for our fallen soldiers. This seemed like a job I could respect! The ones they had been using up until now were from the old Belgian "Fabrique National Canadian Model One", the famous FNC1 which had been in use for most of the last half of the 20th century...but enough people were wondering why the funeral party wasn't using the modern bayonette...after all, they were using the modern sidearm! Well, the answer is simple. Plastic scabbard. Plastic handles. Impossible to plate!
Or is it? There seem to be a LOT of chrome plated plastic out there...my motorcycle seems covered with it. Well, it seems there are plastics which can be plated and plastics which cannot be plated. Nobody was sure if the C7 bayonette plastic bits were actually of a type which could be plated, and nobody cared for an order under a thousand units! So, I jumped up and said...hell yes! I can make a scabbard out of brass which will be impossible to distinguish from the plastic one. No really! I can do that! And I can cast the handles out of pewter, and plate those too!

Imagine my surprise when they took me up on it. So, I made them. I figure I am making less than a buck an hour on this job, but hey....its worth the effort! For these guys, I wish I could do more!

First step was get the brass. Cut it out, and roll the edges up and around a metal blank. Then roll the half scabbard in the english wheel in order to flatten it. Then make the button for the "frog"...a little cylinder of leather with a slot in it which holds the bayonette onto the uniform belt.

The tricky job was to solder the brass halves together. I use a solder which is about 30% silver, and 60% tin, with some other metals mixed in to lower the melting point. The picture shows the bayonette after I had polished and nickeled it (on the right), and the progression from left to right of the soldering.

This took me about 26 hours. Per scabbard. Counting the half dozen that failed and ended up on the scap heap!

Tomorrow, I'll take pictures of the bayonette itself. All polished up...looks fantastic!

successful project

Brenda hates having her picture taken. Too bad. Because actually, this was HER project. It was a set of shields covered in felt that the kids visiting Rideau Hall could build up as part of the "Children's Activities". Brenda did the whole thing...I only made the shields and some stands that they shields would sit upon during the activity. The lady in the picture is Camille....the co-ordinator for children's activities at Rideau Hall. And I was looking as cleaned up as I ever get...after all, we were visiting the residence of the highest political rank in Canada, the Governor General. The project was in honour of the new Governor General Michaëlle Jean , originally from Haiti, and so her coat of arms is a crown (for the monarchy) and a sand dollar (for Haiti). A very simple coat of arms. The red one is the shield for the last Governor General, Adrienne Clarkson. She was of Chinese origin, hence the red, she had made a new life in Canada as a broadcaster, hence the phoenix and the lightning bolt. All in all, a very complicated coat of arms. The new one is much more sedate.

This was quite a prestigious contract, albeit a very small one. Gets me out of the house. Don't get to meet the mucky mucks though. In fact, I doubt she even knows there children's activities at her house....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governor_General_of_Canada

The war goes on!

Overshadowed by the big terrorism bust in Toronto, is this little item, about a joint Canadian Military, RCMP, and others regarding the biggest drug bust I have ever heard of! Even bigger than the ones we monitored from the Trackers back in '95! 20 tonnes of hash! A metric tonne is about 25% bigger than a US ton. Wow! And the repercussions are no doubt still falling out! I can imagine a whole bunch of drug lords in Pakistan are going to be looking for safe havens. Lets not bring them to Canada eh! And I am betting this will spell a serious blow to the "West End Gang". (Oh well, I expect they will just raise the price of table dances to cover the loss...)

(Wonder if they will burn it. I may have to find that smokestack!)

So why am I putting this on this blog? Well, it seems most news agencies don't want to report the good stuff, the successes! So I will. So, "WAY TO GO" Commander Courtourier!

cut and past from the hero's site...
Frigate part of high-seas drug sting
Last updated Jun 6 2006 09:03 AM ADTCBC News
A navy frigate helped RCMP seize 20 tonnes of hashish off the coast of Africa, which investigators say was destined for a Canadian market.
RCMP announced the drug bust on Monday, three weeks after it occurred.
The team spent 43 days at sea, according to RCMP, with HMCS Fredericton assisting in the investigation.
"We do have sensors that are unique to the navy that no other maritime platform can provide, which allow us to see what's happening and listen without actually being close by," said Cmdr. Gilles Coutourier, who is in charge of the frigate.
The hash was processed in Pakistan, put on a boat, and transferred to another one off the coast of Angola, said RCMP spokesman André Potvin.
But RCMP officers were crewing that boat.
"We were simply given a location off the coast of Angola to meet up with the tugboat and then to receive the 989 bails of cannabis resin from their ship onto ours. And from that point on, obviously, control all of those drugs to come into Canada," Potvin told reporters.
The shipment was destined for the Montreal market, said Sylvain l'Heureux of the RCMP.
Officers transported the hash into Canada, according to RCMP, even loading some of it onto a truck and delivering it to an unnamed location in the Montéregie area.
RCMP deliberately waited till the illegal drugs hit land before making any arrests.
Three Quebecers were arrested last week, including a father and son, who investigators say are connected to Montreal's West End Gang. More arrests are expected in the coming days.
RCMP say more than 250 officers from six provinces, including Nova Scotia, and close to 200 navy personnel took part in the investigation.

June

(click on the image to see it in all its glory!)

It is harvest time; scantily clad peasants wearing hats mow the wide meadow in unison. Every detail of the operation is carefully observed and rendered. The freshly mown area stands out brightly against the untouched grass, and the already fading shocked hay is still different in color. In the foreground two women rake and stack the hay. The grace, one might even say the elegance, imparted by the fragility and flexibility of these simply dressed reapers is typical of the mixture of perception and charm that characterizes the Limbourgs' genius.The view, from the Hôtel de Nesle (the Duc de Berry's Paris residence and the present site of the right wing of the Institut de France which now houses the Bibliothèque Mazarine) encompasses the fields on either side of the Seine and the inner facade of the Palais de la Citè.The slate roofs of the Palais rise against a blue sky, providing a large dignified background for this rustic scene; the minutely recorded details of this interior facade are particularly precious.We find ourselves before the buildings whose roofs were represented in the month of May: the corner pavilion, the Conciergerie towers, the Tour de I'Horloge, the double nave of the Grand Salle, the Tour Montgomery, and the Sainte-Chapelle in all its refined splendor.Before this facade, we glimpse trees in a garden partially hidden by the enceinte. These walls terminate at the left in a curious door opening onto the Seine. A boat on the river bank completes this scene of the month of June, to which the artists imparted both rustic grace and grandeur.

Copyright Christus Rex et Redemptor Mundi and Michael Olteanu, MS,
The whole site can be viewed here....http://www.christusrex.org/www2/berry/berry1.html

The Hotel du Nesle is famous. A story about it and the three young ladies you saw in the previous month of May is here. Be advised, all stories about the Hotel du Nesle are a little risque, and almost always revolve arount the tower, the famous Tour du Nesle.
http://www.paris.org/Kiosque/feb00/nesle.html
A print of the clock tower is found here.....which shows how it looked in 1852. http://www.relewis.com/meryonclocktower.html
And of course, the history of the Montgomery Tower is diverse and remarkable... http://www.ca-paris.justice.fr/cour/fr/visite/uk/page/c_histoire_royal.html


Have a nice June!