noice!
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Thanks! I’ve got a couple thousand bricks, so I might as well use them. The edging there will get lined with liriope as soon as the mortar is dry. Then azaleas in the bed area.
Was thinking of digging 4-5 feet down, laying a mosaic patio, and burying it for future archaeologists.
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i do love this. brilliant!
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Just like all those people who don’t do improvements or renovations until they’re trying to sell!
Here’s what you do: dig down and create a sunken outdoor area to enjoy, with that mosaic floor at the base, and then before you move out, just fill in with dirt for the archeologists to find.
Have your cake, and eat it too!
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Last night it rained buckets for 8 hours or so, and the whole thing was submerged. It started only 2.5-3 hours into the mortar curing, so I was worried. But this morning everything was solid, so I planted the liriope edging.
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Good luck to them. I spent hours and hours chipping mortar off the 300+ bricks in one of my piles, just to make them presentable as a border.
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this cabinet is over 11 feet long. the living room has this wall with throughways on either side so you can’t put most furniture there or it will block the walkway between the 2 sides of the house, so this giant space was going unused and it looked pretty desolate, too.
each pic is at the end of each day.
the cabinet doors and drawer fronts are being made at the millworks. these doors will be perfectly square, so picture 6 squares across the bottom and then it’ll be painted I’m assuming white to match the walls
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Have you left a spot for the furnace duct work or is that an escape hatch for cats?
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Ooh. An escape hatch for cats!
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yeah, there’s a floor vent down there. the client has ordered a decorative grate to be installed on the lower right end. that’s why that section is closed off and no shelves, the door will only be used for service access and that particular section of cabinet will function like an elbow joint on ductwork
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Looking good!
Do you ever get requests to build in hidden/secret compartments?
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surprisingly no, but I’ve joked about making them in the gap covered by the crown moulding before, which would be pretty easy. but I don’t think any location would be particularly difficult if it was designed from the outset
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trials day in the shop. finally ready to fire up the AtomStack and etch a test patter onto an acrylic plate.
first, i had to fashion a vent cover, because burning/melting acrylic make very nasty, toxic fumes. nothing fancy, just a slapped together box with a shop vac hose going out the window to the vac. here’s the set up:
the test pattern is reversed (flipped) to be etched into the plate, which will then be inked and run through the etching press to hopefully print as right-reading.
here is the (over) burnt plate:
way too deep to print!
back to the settings! have to back off without losing the text. the first attempt was on a thinner acrylic sheet and it cut right through. this 6mm plate was burnt at full power and 10 line (horizontal) per mm at a burn speed of 5000mm/minute. and took 1 hour to complete.
stay tuned!
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update on laser burned printing plates:
going to wait for the air assist before continuing with the etched acrylic. the melted plastic tends to ball up and leave blobs stuck to the surface that cool rapidly and adhere to the work. not good.
going in an entirely different route, i attempted a relief plate burned in linoleuem to print letterpress style rather than intaglio etching plate. the image is my avatar, my logo and my adopted flag - the flag of Capt. Teech. the laser was set to 100 percent power and 1000mm/min speed and 8 lines/mm and burned in 2 passes. result - perfectly cut knock-out image, here (pic is post print):
very clean, straight edges that that ink well with no slop:
yesterday, i printed a small red solid in the corner to overprint with the cut black plate. today, the overprint looks quite nice, IMO.
all done on my 13x18" etching press. here is the setup:
i won’t ever give up hand cutting or hand dry point etching my images - it is just too much fun and it is very much a part of me. this new technology in the printshop is challenging me to create new things, add to my work and the books that i print.
there is a lot more. thanks for letting me share this wierd shit that i have done for most of my life*.
[*] well, without frikkin lasers until now!
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From my own experiences, I could see that image being produced via silkscreen or copper etched printing, but this seems like a whole new gateway for you.
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cool! i’d like to know more.
personally, i do not silkscreen, but have used copper plates extensively in my career. i use copper, zinc and acrylic plates for my dry point etchings now.
one exciting plan for the laser is to attepmt halftone plates etched (engraved) in copper or zinc. i am already trying out the variable multiple settings in speed vs. power to engrave a grey tone image in acrylic. i will continue to update!
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