Found in my backyard: obsidian stone tool

Yesterday, while my wife Ellen was cleaning her horse corral, she found this stone. It is obsidian, like a piece of black glass, which is clearly evident when held up to the light. I've examined it under magnification and it is undoubtedly a napped stone.  This stone appears to be the middle section of a small spear point, or perhaps a scraping tool. I'm leaning toward a hunting point because both long edges of the stone have been napped. I will definitely be looking to find the missing sections of this stone. This is a pretty exciting find from our backyard. Below is a view of the other side of the stone.

Guitar case project: finished

I had this guitar case laying around in my shop half finished for almost a year. I made it for my main electric guitar, a custom made strat-style guitar, shown in the photo below. The reason it took so long is because late stages of its construction involve a lot of heavy duty spray glue and pretty much puts my shop out of use until the glue dries, and it takes up an entire work bench. I had to wait until I had no other projects, or restoration work, in the shop. So, here it is finally finished. The box has pine sides with plywood "door-skin" front and back. Inside, a hardwood neck brace and storage box, short black fake fur lining. The outside is covered with exterior upholstery fabric, all hardware is brass. Total, actual, construction time was about a week. The trick is to build a case that is as light as possible but still strong.

For the guitar nuts: I could never afford a custom made guitar. They are crazy-expensive. One day, visiting Mark Johnson's (MJ Guitars) shop behind a music store, I was going through his scrap bin and I found this blue metal-flake painted guitar body. I asked him "What's wrong with this?" He said it was a bass guitar body routed for strat style pickups and he tossed it because nobody wanted it. We got to talking and in the end I got the body and all the hardware for it in exchange for me faux-finish painting about a half dozen guitar bodies for him. In addition he'd clear coat this body after I painted it. You can't see it in this photo but up close this finish has several shades of blue and violet sponge-painted over the blue metal flake, with flecks of gold running through it. I looks like a block of lapis lazuli. The excellent neck, made by local luthier Jim Surles (in exchange for painting a couple of guitars) is unfinished maple (except for the front of the headstock) and has an ebony fretboard. Locking Spurtzel tuners, graphite nut, EMG pickups, active humbucker at the bridge and a Kahler trem (which I'm not crazy about). Jim assembled it and did all the set up for me. A custom guitar made by two different custom guitar makers! All I had to do is paint some guitars, which isn't exactly a piece of cake, but I can come up with a really good custom paint job easier than I can come up with the money for a custom made guitar. This thing rocks like a Mo Fo!

Folding cube #3.2: with paint

Here's the folding cube from my last post, this time with a coat of paint to better show how this thing functions. Feedback always welcome.

Folding sculpture: folding cubes #3.2

I've been making "folding" sculptures for some time now. I keep finding new ones to build or explore further possibilities of ones I've already made. This week I made a larger version of one of my folding sculptures. It is made up of eight redwood blocks, each one 3.5 inches. They are hinged together with eight standard issue brass door hinges. The eight cubes stacked together make a larger 7 inch cube. I describe the way this unit functions as a "rotating" fold because, as you can see in the video, it has the appearance of continuously "unfolding". Unfortunately, the finished product is very heavy and not a lot of fun to play with. The whole thing weighs in at 9 lbs.! But, it does work as intended. Pictured here is the piece just after completion. Not very pretty. I do intend to paint it, and I'll post another video when I do.
Changing the scale of a piece of sculpture can have a dramatic effect on our perception of it. The original version of this model is made of one-inch cubes. It is the perfect hand-size version and is fun to manipulate. Double that scale and I begin to see the sculpture in a new way. What if each of these cubes was a box with a lid? It might make an unusual jewelry box.
What if it was big enough to sit on? This piece could be an interesting folding furniture design. If each of the eight blocks was a 20 inch cube, You'd end up with something about the size of a couch that could be folded into about a half dozen different configurations. If you had two of these units, you'd have even more possibilities.
Now I'm wondering if I could make a chain of these units. Could it be done? How would that behave? Hmmm. . . . . .

a little Sundial project

I made this little sundial as a little test project. I found an app ("shadows" at www.shadowspro.com) that can make a whole bunch of different kinds of sundials, and I wanted to try it out. I had some scrap metal pieces laying around that, with a little cut and trim and number stamping, using a template I made with the Shadows app, and I ended up with a little sundial that goes on a vertical South facing wall on the back of my house. The app works by using Google Earth to find the latitude and longitude of your house, and adjusting for the angle of the wall you intend to mount your sundial on, it then renders a sundial template, including the correct angle for the style (the thing that casts the shadow on the dial). So, with this little app I could design a template for a wide range of sundial types customized for the exact intended location anywhere in the world. There's also a free version available, so you could try making your own sundial.

Another new mobile'

I made another little mobile' a couple of days ago. This one is all metal, made from a brass candle stick, a big nail and some steel strapping material, all painted a satin black. It's about 9x9 inches. I'd like to work more with metal on these mobiles, and to work on larger projects . . . but . . . I don't have the room. So, I make small mock-ups instead. You can see all my mobiles on my web site: Tesserak Studios.
My mobiles were featured on a public access channel broadcast from San Francisco, on my brothers show, "Jazzcult". Thank to my brother Rich. I hope to upload some of it to my YouTube channel soon. I'll let you know here when that happens.
Ellen is still working on parts for the armor she's making for herself and her draft horse. No pictures to show yet. Will post when I get something to look at.

Back in the studio again: new stuff

I've been away from the studio for a while. I made a trip to the Spokane, WA. area to help out with a family matter. Other than that we've been really busy in the restoration studio lately. That's a good thing. There is also a documentary film maker who wants to do a film about our restoration business. We should start shooting next month. I'm really looking forward to that.
I did manage to make a few new things though. Small projects, mostly personal ones but I'll cover them here anyway.
I made a new mobile', my 35th in this series. This one is a standing model made of painted wood (see photo at left). The balanced elements are arranged in an ascending fashion as opposed to the usual descending arrangement. You can see all of my mobiles on my art web site: http://www.tesserak.net/html/mobiles.htm
My brother Rich has a show on public access TV in San Francisco, CA. and he came up last year and shot some footage of my mobile's and ended up putting it on his show. I'll add that video, or portions of it, on my Youtube channel soon.