Vernal cuffs

This year the "small-things" season started early, with - surprise - bracelets.
I mixed three types of cords. Polyamide (Nylon) satin multifilament has vivid colours and a soft finish. Twisted cotton carries a plain, natural look. Hemp twine gives strength and helps secure knotting.
Four strands are braided into a "Portuguese" sinnet - a simple knotting pattern that results in a flat closely-wooven ribbon-like braid.
To finish the braiding, I turn the end of one or two of the cords in and weave them on the underside (inner face) of the sinnet. The remaining cords are brought over to the starting end of the sinnet and then threaded trought the underside weave too. Before tying their free ends together, I give them some extra length to make the loop adjustable, so the braceletcan slip on and off the hand.
The knotting pattern creates, on the edges of the braid, a series of nested loops that can hold additional ornaments. In the two bracelets shown here, I strung glass (red, black and blue) and metal beads.

Purple drops

A couple of years ago, on a short trip to Brussels, I stumbled upon a small shop selling a collection of hand-made artefacts from central Africa - mostly ornaments and simple every-day apparel. I found most of them really beautiful - and bought a fan-out necklace made of copper for my daughter Kynthia (who seemed to enjoy it a lot : )
The idea to copy the design of that necklace into a low-cost "jewel” of my own making has been haunting me, since. Time has ripened and, voilà, a first attempt, drafted on the violet/purple key.
The rods are made of tinned copper wire: forty-seven (I think) in total, ranging linearly in length from 20 to 90 mm. Each rod carries a small glass bead and a larger one of tin-plated brass.
The latter is soldered on the rod with a tiny drop of the common tin-lead alloy used in electronics – and serves as a stopper. The upper end of each rod is turned into a loop (or eye) and stringed on a waxed polyester thread. Overhang knots are tied between adjacent rod eyes, to keep them regularly spaced apart.

Diode light on wheels

Since bicycle became my main means of local transport, i have been seeking ways to improve its lighting system - especially the brightness of the headlight. A possible improvement would be to replace the incandescence bulb, in the original headlight fixture, by a light emitting diode (LED).
The latter type of lamp features better efficiency (in converting electric power to light), longer lifetime and very robust construction - to name just a few advantages. However, unlike conventional filament lamps, high-power LEDs are far less forgiving in electical supply. If over-powered - be it for a split second - they tend to heat and burn. Then, the main issue is to regulate the (direct) current through the LED, by use of current-limiting electronics. Two popular simple versions are shown here.
In the first circuit, LM317 - an adjustable voltage regulator - powers the LED set in line with a resistor which creates a voltage drop. By construction, the LM317 chip includes a compensating circuit that keeps the voltage difference across its “GND” and “OUT” pins at a pre-set 1.25 Volt. Therefore, choosing the value of the resistor (say R1, in Ohm) sets the current (I1 in Ampere) at a constant value I1=1.25/R1.
The second circuit works in a similar way: the LED is driven by a power transistor Q1 which acts as a variable resistor. Its state (between pass and cut-off) is set by a second transistor Q2 which monitors the voltage drop on a resistor connected in line with the LED. In this version, Q2 saturates (thus driving Q1 into the cut-off region) around I1*R1=0.7 Volt. Again, choosing value of R1 sets the value of I1.
To start with, bike electical systems typically include a dynamo, producing alternating current (AC). On the other hand, LEDs are polarised devices, operating on direct current (DC) - the one i used is a 1 Watt star rated at 350 mA. Both circuits above use a simple AC-DC converter, consisting of a full-wave rectifier bridge followed by a smoothing capacitor C1. The value of C1 relates to the frequency of the AC current produced by the dynamo (which, in turn, is proportional to the bike’s speed). I found out my bike’s hub dynamo (a 28-pole Shimano DH 3N70, rated at 6 Volt / 3 Watt) alternates at approximately 1,7 Hertz per km/h. For a typical speed of 10 km/h, the period is 60 ms, which - combined with an internal resistance of 8 Ohm leads to a rough-cut estimate of an ideal capacitor in the order of several milli-Farad. This is far beyond the space allowance of the fixture, thereby this simple learning: use the largest capacitor that mechanically fits. Point (and pray).
I decided to keep the original headlamp casing and mirror. I removed the original halogen lamp and squeezed the electronics (in this case, the LM317 circuit above) inside the body of the headlamp. For the actual LED element (a 1 Watt star, powered at 3V-330mA), to go through, i had to widen the hole of the plastic cup supporting the reflector. The largest capacitor fitting the fixture was an electrolytic 2200uF/25V.
As expected, the light flickers at low speeds - however, once on the go, the white LED produces a cool bright beam.

Estival bracelets: res parvae

As always, some merit lies in the small things. In the case of 2011 summer bracelets, i found out that the grommets on the ready-made barrel clasps tend to deform and let one or more strands go loose. For a more solid solution, one can make full-loop grommets using brass (or similar alloy) wire.
The end of the wire that goes inside the barrel can be secured by tying it in a knot or, simply, bending a small number of folds. This way, the grommet can turn freely inside the barrel clasp (which facilitates fastening the bracelet on the wrist).
The other end of the wire is shaped into a (single or double) loop, some five or six mm in diameter. At the closure of the loop, the wire is wound once or twice around the "stem" which exits the barrel.
By the way, i am only glad to report that the bracelets have been a success - demand keeps rising!

Estival bracelets

Summer is a great season for small projects. I use to come up with a craft theme every year. This time round, it's simple, colourful jewels - ladies' bracelets, to be exact.
I start with a length of waxed polyester thread. It comes in many colours, is relatively inexpensive, very strong, resistant to wear and easy to work with. Polyester melts under heat, so the end of the thread can be conveniently shaped (e.g. flat to slide in a needle's eye or in a thin rod to string a bead). I have been using waxed polyester for leather stitching (handsewing) for years and it never let me down.
Craft shops hold threaded barrel clasps for bracelets, necklaces etc. When properly screwed-in, they are quite reliable. Made from brass alloy, they usually come in silver and gold colour. Typically, on their "outside" extremities they present wire loops (or "grommets") to attach a thread or wire.
The rest is just beads - spaced at will and according to taste. In this case, i used coloured oyster shell fragements, short pieces of 1/16" brass tubing (for the two bottom examples in the photo) and glass and silver beads (for the green bracelet on top). A simple overhand knot on each side of a bead fastens it in place.
Each bracelet has seven or nine thread runs (each approx. 16 cm long, for a typical female wrist), i.e. three- or four- and-a-half loops of thread around the clasps' grommets. An odd number of strands means that threading finishes on opposite ends of the bracelet. The rest of the thread is then used to tie the loops together (e.g. with a couple of half-hitches around the bunch).

Dragonfly acrobats

I recently "discovered" an age-old toy of Asian (probably Chinese) origin. Sticks of bamboo or banana wood are shaped into the body and wings of a dragonfly and arranged so that the whole "statue" balances gently on the tip of its nose.
Intriguing! I set to develop (that is "copy", in layman's terms :) a version of my own. Initially, i used poplar stirring sticks (contributed by the local coffee-shop). Later on, i noticed a kind of palm tree, quite common as a decorative plant in my neiborhood.
Near the base of the trunk, branches carry a paricular version of leaves: they are nicely needle-shaped and, once dried, quite solid. I file or sand-paper five of those to a rounded edge. Four are cut to equal size, to serve as the dragonfly's wings. The longer and stronger one is left to original length: this is the dragonfly's body.
I cut a hole through the body (using a pointed file or a milling hand-tool, as in the picture), some 2 cm from the tip of te "head". The opening has to be large enough for the pointed ends of all four "wings" (two on each side) to fit - approx. 6 mm in diameter will do, in this case.
Once assembled, a drop of epoxy glue bonds them solidly together.
After a number of tries, i decided to make a rig out of corrugated cardboard, to keep the pieces aligned while the glue cures. Epoxy takes on well to wood and provides an adequately strong joint. The quick-setting variety bonds in less than 10 min. (which still leaves ample time to enjoy a glass of milk :)
The rig boosted production pace, so i ended up with a swarm of wooden insects. They were decorated with gouache paint and finished with two generous coats of nail varnish.
To achieve balancing - in some cases, when an adjustment of the weight was necessary - i glue clippings of copper wire under the tips of the wings. Also, i decorate the head with 'eyes' made from glass beads glued on the ends of a 1.5 mm dia. piece of scraped-out bamboo stick.
They can perch on practically anything and are quite keen trapezists: the gentlest breeze has them floating gracefully, on and on...

Manufestae

Work is love made visible
Kahlil Gibran, "The prophet"

As a child, my head constantly echoed with my parents' warnings "Don't touch! Keep off!". Indeed, no sooner did I lay eyes on something, than I was reaching for it: to touch, to feel, to sense. Often, in my over-eager clumsiness, resulting in damage.
Because, more and above providing instant tactile gratification, everything turned out to be somehow 'composed' of parts. And - behold - everything had a story to tell: how someone prepared and assembled these (often quite disparate) elements. And how these parts combined and joined towards a purpose; all brought together by some amount of will and dedication.
I never overcame this magic of things made. To cut a long story short, I kept fumbling with tools and materials, taking time to discover how things are made, attaching to 'old stuff' and refusing to trash anything that wasn't entirely beyond re-use. Kept a hand on the ground, of sorts.
If this blog, then, has to be "about" something, it would be the celebration of the hand.
In these times of virtuality and globalization, values tend to be confused. We often fail to distinguish between ownership and legitimacy, nobility and descendance, credit and faith, creativity and fabrication. Artifacts witness and remind that human work (part of which is craftsmanship) is and shall always be testimony and mark of our potential, our natural source of rightfulness. And bliss. And what, more than the work of hands, epitomizes this quality?
So here I stand, another acolyte of the crafts. Within the scores of comrades-in-tools that make small and larger things just "because". Grateful I can share their gifts and spirit. Stepping back into the original meaning of 'digital'. Admiring the miracles of human hands - the mysterious interplay between haptic perception and manual creativity.
And here are memoirs of my excursions in those magical grounds where play, attention and necessity meet. Over and again.