标签: brass

Well, the excitement is escalating, let me tell you. I'm happy to say that both my Inamorata Prognostication Engine and my Ultra-Macho Prognostication Engine projects are currently racing "full steam ahead."   Having made the final selections on exactly which antique analog meters I intend to use for the Inamorata Prognostication Engine, I assembled all of the meters, buttons, switches, and knobs onto the brass panels and brass bezels as seen below. You may recall that the main enclosure for this engine is to be an antique wooden radio cabinet circa 1929. What we see here is a test jig that will hold everything in place while I create the wiring harness and make sure everything works as planned.   Inamorata Prognostication Engine control panels in their test jig   Note that the interestingly-shaped piece of wood in front of the lower brass panel is just hardboard that I cut out for this jig -- the equivalent piece on the real cabinet is dark cherry that looks much nicer and really complements the brass.   The two holes on either side of every momentary push button and toggle switch will each have a tri-colored LED behind it (I'm using the Flora NeoPixels from Adafruit for this purpose). Similarly, the sixteen holes surrounding each of the potentiometers will each have its own tri-colored LED (in this case I'm using NeoPixel Rings ).   In front of each of these LEDs will be a mother-of-pearl "dot." Actually, these are plastic facsimiles that were originally intended to be used in the frets for guitars, but they look like the real thing. When this all comes together, the combination of the dark wood, the brass, and the mother-of-pearl dots will look incredible, even when the beast is powered down.   I will be attaching the LEDs this coming weekend so that I can begin to wire everything up, but I will wait to insert the mother-of-pearl dots until after I've aged the brass panels.   One of the things that have been delaying this project is the problems I've been having with my antique analog meters. This started with the main meter for the Ultra-Macho Prognostication Engine (see this blog ), but then I discovered that some of my other meters were also sticking (sad face).   This left me in something of a quandary. Fortunately, a feedback on the aforementioned article led me to Instrument Meter Specialties (IMS) -- a company that specializes in anything and everything to do with both antique and modern meters, including repairing and restoring the little beauties (see this blog and this one too ).   Quite apart from anything else, these folks often create new faceplates for bold old and new meters. For the last week I've been bouncing ideas back and forth with Jason Dueck at IMS. This past weekend he emailed me a copy of the proposed graphics for a new front plate for my "Full Moon" meter as shown below.     You wouldn’t believe how much cogitation goes into this sort of thing -- it's not just a case of creating each meter in isolation -- you have to think about how all of them are going to look in relation to each other. I could write an entire column about the thought that went into creating the above layout, but we'll leave that for another day.   In the meantime, I do have a question for you with regard to the above image. Note the negative numbers on the left are (not surprisingly) prefixed by '-' signs. By comparison, the positive number on the right doesn't have a '+' sign. Jason informs me that, in this sort of situation -- mixing negative and positive quantities -- omitting '+’ signs was the old pre-WWII way of doing things. These days I think people do tend to use them (only if there’s a mix of negative and positive quantities; if everything is positive then we wouldn’t bother with '+' signs). So, in the case of the faceplate shown above, which do you prefer; should we add the '+' sign or should we leave everything as is?   As I mentioned in a previous blog, I was dreading having to open my meters up once again to replace the faceplates (every time you open one of these sealed units, you run the risk of messing something up). So I can’t tell you how happy I am that Jason and team have offered to take this task over. This evening I'm going to take the meters off the test jig and ship them to IMS where they will be cleaned and fine-tuned, have their faceplates swapped out, and be fully checked before being returned to your truly (happy face). But wait, there's more, because I've been performing further experiments with regard to giving my brass panels an aged look...   Yet more brass-aging experiments Do you remember my earlier trials using Cow Pool Horse Doo-Doo ? Well, suffice it to say that working with these substances is not as much fun as it sounds, so I decided to investigate more conventional techniques.   When you perform a Google search for "Aging Brass" on the Internet, the responses can be wide and varied, but several people mention using salt and/or vinegar. In the case of the vinegar, I decided to use the English malt variety. Why? Well, for one thing I like the taste of malt vinegar. With regard to salt, I opted for using large Himalayan pink rock salt because I happened to have a jar to hand and I thought the minerals in it might enhance the effect.     I obtained a load of cheap plastic containers and put a piece of brass in each. In one, I covered the brass with malt vinegar on its own. In another, I covered the brass with tap water and then I added some coarsely crushed rock salt on top. And in a third, I covered the brass with vinegar and then added crushed rock salt on top.     I did all of this about ten days ago. After seven days I took a look to see what was happening. The answer was "Not much" (I'll check again at the 14-day mark). Fortunately, a few weeks ago I laid my hands on a copy of Patina: 300+ coloration effects for Jewelers and Metalsmiths by Matthew Runfola, and I remembered him mentioning that some interesting effects could be obtained using sawdust.   The last time I visited my master carpenter chum, Bob, I asked him to give me some sawdust, and I returned home clutching two bags -- one containing fine sawdust of one type of wood and the other containing medium-coarse shavings of another type of wood.   Thus it was that, at the same time as I set up the experiments using the salt and vinegar solutions directly, I also set up a second batch of experiments using identical solutions (except I ground the salt up finer and made sure it was fully dissolved) poured into containers of sawdust.     Oh, I forgot to mention that I also added an experiment using ammonia and another experiment using a different substance. Take a look at the image below. The blue/green brass test piece in the upper left-hand corner was exposed to the gas emitted from household ammonia for three days. I actually used a small sheet of old fired clay to keep the brass out of direct contact with the ammonia liquid. What we see below is the upper face that was exposed to the vapor only.   Rear from left to right: "Face-up" sides of brass panels exposed to household ammonia (3 days), salt + vinegar with fine sawdust (1 week), salt + water with coarse sawdust (1 week), and vinegar with coarse sawdust (1 week). Front: don't ask!   To the right to the ammonia test we see the results of the brass that was left in a salt and vinegar mixture in fine sawdust for a week. To the right of this we see the results of salt water in coarse sawdust for a week. Finally, the right-most piece was exposed to malt vinegar in coarse sawdust for a week.   What? You desperately want to know about the substance that resulted in the blue piece of brass in the foreground. Well, let's just say that this predominantly consists of a heterocyclic compound of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen with the formula C 5 H 4 N 4 O 3 . In turn, this largely started out as a fermentation of malted barley, malted wheat, and hops (in the form of Boddingtons finest beer), which -- by a miracle of evolutionary biology -- underwent a process of transmogrification, followed by an exchange of electrolytic fluids, ending up in a container of fine sawdust.   But let's not wonder off into the weeds. Another interesting aspect to all of this is that the effects vary depending on which side of the test pieces we're talking about. The image below shows the bottom sides of the test pieces.   Rear from left to right: "Face-down" sides of brass panels exposed to household ammonia (3 days), salt + vinegar with fine sawdust (1 week), salt + water with coarse sawdust (1 week), and vinegar with coarse sawdust (1 week). Front: You really don't want to know!   I'm assuming that the more pronounced effects are caused by the weight of the brass pressing down on the moist sawdust (the sawdust should be heavily moistened, but not soaking). The two pieces I find most interesting in the context of the brass panels for my Inamorata and Ultra-Macho Prognostication Engines are the ones exposed only to salt or to vinegar as shown in the close-up images below.   Close up of "face-down" side of brass exposed to salt + water with coarse sawdust (1 week)   Close up of "face-down" side of brass exposed to vinegar with coarse sawdust (1 week)   I think it's safe to say that I'll be concentrating on the use of coarse sawdust/shavings. Unfortunately, I neglected to question Bob as to the types of wood these were. But that doesn’t matter, because now I intend to embark on a new round of salt and vinegar experiments using a variety of different wood types and exposure times.   In the meantime, what do you think about the effects I've achieved thus far? Do you think one (or both) of these could be of interest for my Prognostication Engines? Or do you thing they are a bit much and that I should continue on my quest?

There are times when it seems that the fates are smiling upon me. Recently, for example, I blogged to describe my experiments to give brass an aged look .   Based on this, someone was kind enough to recommend an old book called Machinery's Shop Receipts from 1927 that contains "six hundred useful receipts, compositions and formulas," including ones to color and etch brass.   I ordered a secondhand copy of Machinery's Shop Receipts and I was as happy as could be. Surely nothing could occur to make me even happier? Well, amazingly enough, something could, because a reader shared this:   I just found a book in a local bookstore called: Patina: 300+ coloration effects for Jewelers and Metalsmiths by Matthew Runfola. It looks like it just came out in February of this year. I found it on the shelf at a Books-A-Million but it is available on Amazon. It is organized by metal (Brass, copper, silver, etc.) and contains page after page of pictures of metal samples and a description of the treatment that was used to get the effect you see. The pictures can't give you as accurate a look at the effects as having a physical sample, but you could find a few that you like and test them yourself.   Good grief! It appears as though I've gone from being a single voice in the wilderness -- wading through cow poop and horse doo-doo all on my little old ownsome -- to finding there are others like me out there (well, perhaps not quite like me LOL). I immediately bounced over to Amazon to visit the Patina: 300+ Coloration Effects for Jewelers Metalsmiths page.     I'm a great believer in real-reader reviews, and this book currently has a 4.5 star rating from 24 reviewers, which is more than enough for me. A typical review might say something like "This book has everything in it that an advanced metal artist might want to know about the process and use of patinas on steel, stainless steel, aluminum, copper, brass (230 and 260), bronze (220 and 655), and sterling silver."   As you can imagine, this is music to my ears. I currently have a copy of this little beauty winging its way to me as we speak. Meanwhile, I just started a new aging experiment that involves leaving a piece of brass exposed to the elements. Unfortunately, access to the roof of the building in which I have my office involves me performing a "human fly" act on a very dubious external ladder (I will be showing pictures in a future blog). Until then, please keep your comments and questions coming.

I never fail to be astounded by how others go out of their way to help another with sage advice.   For example, following my recent blog describing my experiments with aging brass, someone emailed me to say he had inherited a book from his grandfather that covered this sort of thing. Even better, he sent me a PDF of the "Coloring Brass" chapter, which he had gone out of his way to scan for me.   What I saw had me tap dancing with delight. This book covers much more than simply aging brass and other metals. It describes in fine detail the chemicals and procedures that can be used to realize a wide variety of colors and effects.   Of course, I couldn't be satisfied with a single chapter. I had a burning desire to feast my orbs on the whole enchilada, so I immediately bounced over to Amazon to check out the book, Machinery's Shop Receipts by the Industrial Press.   In this context, "Receipts" can be taken to mean "Recipes," which is what this book contains -- lots and lots of lovely recipes. As it says on the inside cover, Machinery's Shop Receipts contains "Six hundred useful receipts, compositions and formulas selected from Machinery's columns and republished in a classified, pocket-size edition, in response to repeated requests from friends throughout the mechanical field."   A number of paperback versions of this book are available on Amazon from different vendors, but if you read the small print, you'll see that these are simply scanned versions of the original, and they actually warn you: "This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process."   The reproductions also say "412 shop receipts and formulas," as opposed to the 600 noted in the hardcover version. I don't know about you, but this doesn't sound too good to me. Instead, I opted to purchase an original 1927 edition, the first printing copy of the book, from Bane's Books .     This little beauty arrived a couple of days ago, and I have been gloating over it ever since. One thing that did surprise me just a tad was the yellow sticky notes that were protruding from locations inside the book displaying the handwritten annotations "Coloring Brass" and "Etching Brass." I must admit to thinking, "Well, that's a bit of a coincidence."   On the one hand, the ways of the universe are wondrous, and who am I to question the grand scheme of things? (I pride myself on my humility.) On the other hand, it certainly seemed as though -- unlike my wife, Gina The Gorgeous -- the universe was taking an uncommon and unexpected interest in my hobby projects.   All was made clear when I received an email from Deborah Bane, the owner of Bane's Books, saying that the book should have arrived by now, and that she hoped I enjoyed it. Deborah mentioned that, on receiving my order, she'd Googled my name and been guided to my blogs about aging and etching brass, so she had included the sticky notes. She was also kind enough to offer some interesting suggestions about my Vetinari Clock project.   What can I say? Over the years, I have purchased numerous books -- new ones directly from Amazon and secondhand ones from a wide variety of vendors -- and I can safely say that I have never received the same high level of personal service from any other vendor. To be honest, the fact that Deborah knew this book to this degree and had taken the time to add the sticky notes to guide me to the areas of particular interest to me completely blew me away. It's a rare occasion indeed that you receive service like this these days.   What do you think? Would you be interested in seeing a copy of this little beauty? And are you as amazed as I am by the level of service provided by Bane's Books? As always, any comments or questions are more than welcome.

As you may remember, one of the things I want to do with the brass panels I'm using in my Inamorata Prognostication Engine is to make them look really old. Since everything is being mounted in a beautiful wooden radio cabinet circa 1929, and since I'm using antique knobs and switches and dials and meters, I want my brass panels to fit in with this overall look-and-feel.     If you Google the topic of "Aging Brass" you will discover myriad suggestions, including the use of salt, vinegar, ammonia, temperature, and a mixture thereof. I'm still planning on evaluating all of these techniques as soon as a get a spare moment (I had the offcuts left over from my brass panels sliced-and-diced into small strips -- approximately 4" x 1.5" -- for just this purpose).   One thing someone mentioned to me was that the Imagineers at Disney use cow manure to age their brass. This sort of makes sense, because cow manure contains all sorts of things, including salts, acids, and ammonia, to name but a few.   I mentioned this to my inventor friend, Brian LaGrave, who lives in the country about 40 miles away from me. Brian has two young sons, Sam and Daniel, who were duly dispatched to fill one large plastic coffee container with cow poop and a second container with horse doo-doo. The next time they came into town, they presented these gifts to me at the Pleasure Dome.   That evening, I transported these containers home and surreptitiously hid them in a corner of our garage. At the weekend, while Gina was at work (she's a realtor and thus works at the weekends), I pressed a piece of brass into the heart of each amorphous deposit (yes, of course I was wearing latex gloves).   Originally, I was planning on pulling the brass pieces out once a week to see how they were progressing, but plunging your hand into cow and horse manure is not as much fun as it sounds, so I ended up leaving them for six weeks or so.   During this time, Gina occasionally mentioned "interesting smells in the garage," but I suggested that these may be emanating from the bags of organic compost she had purchased for her potted plants.   The image above and the images below show the two pieces of brass side-by-side. Each image shows one face of the brass or the other under different lighting conditions (the colors and effects are far more interesting when viewed by the naked eye). In all cases, the brass that was buried in cow poop is shown on the left, while the brass that sojourned in horse doo-doo is presented on the right.                   I have to admit that I was surprised by the difference in effects caused by the two types of manure. Of course, these results are only from one cow and one horse, so more experimentation needs to be performed. Also, as I mentioned, I left my brass test pieces buried in the manure for six full weeks. It would be interesting to compare the results day-by-day -- maybe create a video using a sort of time-lapse photography effect.   One more consideration is that I used "raw manure" that contained lots of chunks of indescribable stuff. It may well be that one would obtain more consistent results if the larger pieces were filtered out and the rest was watered down into a sort of slurry (I'm thinking Sam and Daniel may be in for an unpleasant surprise in the not-so-distant future LOL).   Now, I should note that the effects I've achieved thus far are a trifle on the bold side and not what I'm looking for. Unfortunately, I'm not sure exactly what I am looking for, but I'll know it when I see it. All I know is that I want something that looks old and interesting and has a patina that makes you want to say "Ooh, tasty!"   On the bright side, I'm happy to be learning something new. I'm also happy to be discovering stuff that doesn't seem to be documented anywhere. On the other hand (no pun intended), you can only have so much fun rooting around in containers containing "goop" that is dark, sticky, and noxiously smelly. I have to admit that the thought of simply purchasing a container of commercial brass-ageing solution does have its attractions (doubly so for Sam and Daniel LOL).   How about you? Have you had any experience in aging brass? If so, any advice would be very much appreciated -- especially if it doesn’t involve any more hands-on experiments with nauseating substances.

Good heavens! In Max's World (where the colors are brighter, the butterflies are bigger, the birds sing sweeter, and the beer is plentiful and cold), things are positively racing along. In my previous post on the Bodacious Acoustic Diagnostic Astoundingly Superior Spectromatic (BADASS) display, I described how I was starting out by creating a paper and cardboard prototype.     Well, I'm happy to report that the front panel is coming along in leaps and bounds. I've routed out the plywood (which will be stained to look like old wood) to accommodate the hardboard display and control panels (which will be painted to look like antique brass). In fact, I've been beavering away doing a whole bunch of things, all of which will be revealed in future columns. For the moment, however, I have a bit of a poser to ponder.   In order to give the whole thing more visual interest, the inner hardboard panels will be attached to the main plywood panel using brass acorn nuts. Also, each of the 256 tri-color NeoPixel LEDs in the main display area are going to have an associated brass surround.   Originally, I'd simply planned to use regular, flat brass washers, but then I started to think that these might be a tad boring and let the rest of the presentation down. Then, much to my surprise, I ran across some gorgeous countersunk brass washers as illustrated below:     Oooh! These look so tasty. I couldn’t resist them. But now I have a problem -- how am I going to attach them to the front panel? In order to understand the issues involved, let's first consider the cross-section shown below:     This is just a quick sketch I threw together in Visio, so it's not to scale. I've shown things as having sharp corners and suchlike. In reality, everything is sumptuously smooth and curvy. However, there are two problems (sad face). First, I have some thin sheets of translucent white plastic -- about the same thickness as a piece of paper -- which were kindly donated by my chum, Rick Curl. The image below shows a piece of white paper at the top overlaid by a sheet of this translucent white plastic film at the bottom.     Although it looks like you can see right through these sheets in the above image, they appear to be opaque when whatever is behind them is dark. My plan is to cut discs out of these sheets and stick them behind the central holes in the washers. The thing is, I don’t want to see any glue from the outside of the assembly as illustrated below:     The next problem will present itself when I attempt to glue the washer-film combo to the hardboard panel. Once again, I don’t want any glue to be visible from the outside of the assembly as illustrated below:     My concern is that -- although the wall of the brass washer is reasonably substantial with regard to its structural strength -- it's really rather thin when it comes to sticking it onto a flat surface. When we are talking about having 256 of these little rascals, we obviously want to have really solid bonds. The last thing I need is for them to be dropping off all of the time.   So, the bottom line is that I need some method for attaching disks of the translucent film to the inside of the washers, and for attaching the washers themselves to the main panel, all without seeing any glue, which would totally ruin the effect.   It probably won’t surprise you to hear that I already have a cunning plan. Indeed, it's a plan of such awe-inspiring cunning that we could pin a tail on it and call it a weasel (as the Black Adder would say in the UK television sitcom). However, it may well be that you have a plan that is even more cunning. If so, now would be an excellent opportunity for you to share it with the rest of us.