I miss my President so much

This is my president. I miss him so much. I miss his grace, poise, humility, humor, and intelligence. He gave a lecture today in South Africa on the occasion of what would have been Nelson Mandela's 100th Birthday. For the full video go here. 

Weekend Workshop

I took a fantastic workshop this weekend, Gilding and Toolmaking with Brien Beidler. And I'm exhausted! Last week I started working full time at work because there was a grant that will pay me through January for that. Bad timing though with this workshop. I'll be full time for two weeks straight. But really there is nothing to complain about. I learned so much and am very happy with my take-aways. Tools and a pretty nicely gilded spine.

Brien is an excellent teacher. The class was unique and he did a great job with all of it. 

Step one: drill holes into the handles so they can be soaked in water. 

 Then the "fun" part. Filing the brass stock into shape. It had to be tapered just so. We were instruced to remove 1/5" of each side from the base. 

Mine is the one on the left - on the right is Brien's. I've got a way's to go! 

This was probably the most exhausting part of the workshop. So much physical work filing four brass bars into the perfect taper. ooof. 

Finally the last step is to polish the top for the design. 

My first tool went well. I made this art deco inspired shape. 

Tested it too. I think it looks pretty good! 

The second tool, well, let's just say I put about five different designs on the tip of that thing and filed them off until I finally settled on the circle. When the brass stock was finished we whacked them into the wet handles. They went in smoothly and the wood will shrink around the stock to hold everything in place.  

 I was even able to replace the handle on a tool I already had. The handle had burned out and the tool was held in place with cotton wadding.

 

Brien brought a lot of examples for us to gain inspiration from.


Day two:
Well, I woke up early so that I could make one more stock tool. I made a little dot. I'm very happy about the dot. Then I dashed off to get to the workshop at 10am.

Today was gilding day. Wow, I learned so much.


The principle of gilding is not difficult. Put egg glair down. Put down an extremely thin sheet of gold. Use a hot gilding tool to press a design into the leather. Wipe off extra gold, and voila! Beautiful.

In practice, this is an entirely different matter.

Working with the gold leaf is really something. It is gravity defying. It is so beautiful to see a 4x4 square of the foil floating on a gold knife, but the slightest breeze will cause hell with it. Cutting it to size and transfering it to the spine of a book is quite a challenge.

Brien prepared wood blocks with leather on a rounded spine for us to practice on. The entire spine is polished then covered with the leaf. I was so excited I forgot to take pictures of the process.

In the end it looked pretty good but there were two spots where the gold didn't stick. Easy to repaire just put a little glair on add gold scraps and try again.

I was successful! 

 All of our class examples. They look so nice!

 The nicest part of the class was one person who remarked about how they used to be so judgemental about the gilding on spines of old books. But now she knows better. I agree with her completely! It is so hard to get a design to be even on this surface.

something for me

I finally did something I've been wanting to do since I moved in - replace the top of my stove. 

Doesn't look too bad, right? Look closer, especially the left side. All of those black spots are where the enamel has chipped away. This is the stove that came with the house and it cooks great. But it looks awful. 

I don't know what the previous "user" (tenant) did with it, but both sides were rusted and cracked, not badly but still. Over the years of my using the stove and putting really heavy stock pots on it, the cracks have gotten worse. I've had horrible visions of my giant stock pots full of water and goodies caving into the whole appliance. That wouldn't be good. 

I'm glad I've had enough life experience to ask the internet if it was possible to just purchase a replacement top rather than having to replace the entire appliance. Sure enough, Sears sells the top that fits my stove. 

It was not supposed to arrive until next Friday, but when I got home today there was a giant box in front of my door! Happy Day! 

I was excited to pop it on and cook my first meal, but I soon realized it wasn't going to be that easy. There were things to unscrew and to pry off like the prop-up-thingys incase you need to clean inside or relight the pilots:

and the oven vent.


I decided to cook one last meal on the old top instead. And deal with this project when I was no longer starving. First I wanted an omelet, but that quickly morphed into a frittata. Bacon, onions and carrot greens (yes really! I looked it up last night) They just taste crunchy.

Done!

Eating first was a good idea. There was a lot of cleaning that had to happen. It took me about an hour to deal with all of it. The trivets had to be scoured so that they wouldn't immediately leave dirty marks on the stove and all the knobs needed a good cleaning. I got a little bit too ambitious with the oven knob and so now I can't tell what temperature it is anymore. Guess what I have to purchase tomorrow?  

I'm also not quite finished. I still have to unscrew the prop-up-thingys but I need an allen wrench. I have a giant box of them I purchased at a flea market years ago. Too bad the box is at work for a project there and as I left today, I thought to myself, I won't need those this weekend.