Like towels, a hard-cover sketchbook is a most wholly useful object to have-  they're good for killing obnoxious mosquitoes, trapping bits of paper and tickets in a single place (and not in the laundry), keeping track of who has offered you a couch and a hot meal, impromptu tables...the list goes on. Plus, you can draw in them.

Selecting a sketchbook/journal is a sensitive thing. I can spend many hours in an art store pouring over the book minutia. This time, I got out in about 2 hours after selecting a plain, black-leather bound sketchbook.However, the sketchbook industry hasn't quite caught up with my tastes in book dressings (do I want them to, really?).

..and we can't have the co-senior sub-editor of SteampunkWorkshop.com running around with a new looking book, now can we?

No, we can not.

More photos and construction info after the jump.

The plan, or at least, what I had been calling a plan, pretty much had ended here: the three metal parts had been designed and cut, with great thanks to the water-jet friend.  They fit together, but really weren't a machine, yet- rough and already rusty, it was time to figure out how to make this thing go.

Under the jump is the full story. I generally don't like jumps, but I figure it would be best not to completely bump my boss off the front page of his own site.

 

 

 

 

  

(image: Espie eyes up the cam follower)

I'll say right now where my machine expertise lies: old, beated down, barely working things that I can fix or at least mutate into some other whirling, spinning thing. Bicycles, covered in grease, hacked apart and put back together. Old Volkswagens. Unidentifiable hunks of wires and gears. Ethereal computer magic-box art making? Not so much.

When it comes to 2D art, I seldom work in the computer. If at all, I work only in photoshop, which i am rather good at. But never illustrator.

So when I had this idea of using rapid prototyping machines to make MY machine, I was simultaneously excited and dreading the point where i would have to be working on the computer. Im a ink flinger, a grease monkey, a wrench head- not a mouse jockey. Or a tablet jockey, in this case.

 

(image: the completed cam follower, with the cam. They rust like this about 5 seconds out of the waterjet)

 

More behind the jump- go on, read it. Everyone is doing it.

I was commissioned this year by the Burning Man project to create a very special project: a beating, kinetic, heart for none other than The Man. Being on the build team for Mr. Splinters (El Hombre del Fuego, Dude Man, The Great False Idol) I was honored and wanted to create something very, very special. I'll be chronicling the build of the heart over the next few days.

After much debate, I settled on a design from KMODDL, a wonderful, smooth, cam-and-follower mecanism that reminded me of the beating heart of some giant.  Since KMODDL provides CAD drawings, I could easily take some of the parts into Adobe Illustrator to elaborate on and, you know, make purdy. If you can figure out which model I used, you get a prize.

Above is the first part I made- the cam.With the help from a friend with a schmancy super-secret shop, the part was cut of 1/2 inch steel plate (side note: scrounging around in the scrap section of Alco Metals is about as much fun as a gearhead like me can have. I got filthy!) using that most excelent of machines: an Omax water jet  cutter. It came out..dare i say it? Pretty dang sweet. I made two, because, well, why make one when you can make two at twice the price?

Tomorow: The cam follower, electronics,  troubleshooting

 [Mark Melchior wrote me some time ago with some pictures of his wonderful cigar box guitars - apologies to Mark for the delay in publication! - Jake]

Mark writes:

Mark “Doc-o-rock” Melchior has been building guitars for some 20 odd years and decided on a return trip to Wisconsin to continue a history of Cigar Box Guitar building. After spending years building and repairing instruments in Hollywood California, he made the move to Hot Springs Arkansas where he still builds instruments of all kinds.

Lots of progress!  She's on the road, registered, inspected, and passed, including emissions which is pretty cool considering that she's basically a 1972 VW Beetle that was re-titled in Ohio as a 1985 "assembled vehicle."  A close read of the Massachusetts auto emissions law would seem to indicate that a kit car of this type should be tested under the make, model, and year that the chassis was manufactured.  However, the test station can only test to the make, model, and year the vehicle is registered. 

Since this vehicle was titled as a 1985 in Ohio that's the only thing that our RMV would let me register it as.  They told me I'd have to go to Ohio's DMV to get it changed - but under Ohio's rules, it's correct!  Classic Catch-22.  Read on to see what I did.

Oh yes! and I got Mass plates STMPNK no less!

It makes me happy when people write me about things they've made, and when they've been inspired or have adopted techniques they've learned from the Steampunk Workshop it makes me very happy indeed!

Peter wrote me a while back with some pictures of his latest project, a Jules Verne inspired analog synthesizer with etched brass control panels.  Now, I cut my teeth on a vinyl copy of Switched-On Bach and I've been a fan of analog synth heroes Tangerine Dream since High School.  So I was very excited to see this.

. . .

You'll recall I posted a picture of my recumbent bike last week and that one of things I wondered aloud was how one would go about steampunkifying a bike?  Well Eric and Alan - a.k.a. Steuben's Wheelmen - sent me a whole passel of new photos that show exactly how one would go about this process!

Don't miss the video!

. . .

Every now and again, here at the Steampunk Workshop, we get email that totally makes our day.  Sometimes its simply a note from someone who has discovered Steampunk for the first time - or more precisely discovered that there was, in fact, a name for this thing that has already been passion for most of their life.

But sometimes the notes we receive really get to us because they are about real people, romance, passion and of course making things and that is our Raison d'être.  This was in deed the case this morning when I opened my mail and found a note that began:

The inexorable march of technology has rendered my 4:3 aspect ratio 19" LCD mod and my pump-less water cooled PC obsolete, so when I saw a 24" wide screen monitor on sale for $299.00 I grabbed it with the intent on making a Steampunk All-in-One PC.