I love your outlook, Ted, in Dorset, about the the nirvana of making
what you want. I’ll add the Zenlike satisfaction of making what you
need to, whatever it’s made out of, or however it’s made. You just
invented how it’s made, as you made it ; it being your new invention.
Zen, and the wisdom of paying an expert to do your car maintenance,
and the art doing just about everything else under the sun yourself.
Not being limited by material or medium seems as obvious as sunshine
; you use whatever needs to be used or whatever you have on hand that
will work.
A lot of times I get the feeling that things design themselves ; at
least with things that are mostly functional, it can be as much
about avoiding things that aren’t right, as it is about you actually
figuring out what is. It’s a bit of an odd feeling, like it’s not
just me involved.
It’s not not like I’m nutty or anything (^; ; I do plenty of talking
to inanimate objects but they never talk back. That would be weird ;
useful, but weird… no, they just sort of rearrange themselves in
different configurations in my head until they settle on the correct
one, one step at a time. Of course I’m over-dramatizing the process,
but creativity does have many indirect, non-linear ways of operating,
and definitely doesn’t need to be constrained by limitations of
material or method. The way I’ve always looked at it, the materials
and methods are the means of achieving the vision, though they should
also be allowed to contribute their qualities to the process. This,
as opposed to the outlook of telling yourself something like "I’m a
metalsmith; therefore I can only work in metal ". That isn’t even an
accurate way of looking at ‘just being a metalsmith’ anyway , given
the multitude of various ways that metals behave.
Dar
the smallest weighs in a little over a metric tonne,
Any idea on how much shipping would be? (I kid)
Chris
Charles,
Your father probably lived through hard financial times at some
point. This caused him to think of potential uses for something that
he had paid for and looking to get his ‘full money’s worth’ from the
product. Lots of worthy things came from salvaging. I would be
interesting to know if he ever found a use for them or is still
waiting for the right ah-ha moment to come on. My grandparents and
folks always looked to reutilize something in trying not to have to
spend. I am not a bad, but still at times I put things to the side
just in case and can accumulate and now only one of my children do
that. I wonder if it has to do with being more financially secure
earlier in life? Each generation seems to start their life out with
more that the previous generation and it seems easy to ‘toss’ things
away.
Peace,
Carole
Hi Carole,
Well is a way he did live through hard times, he was born in 1925 so
he’s seen a lot.
He has a form of vascular dementia, so his memory is absolutely
shot.
What I do intend to do with the items is to give them away to people
with the ability to take large machines.
For the components… and there are many. If I can’t find someone
that wants them, they will become sculpture, and sold.
Regards Charles A.
Yes, go for it! I just had my 87th birthday and completed a small
project of converting some earrings with clips to earrings with
posts. Had to take out the stones, do the soldering (conversion)
reassemble, and polish! The y look damn good!. Mariana
I think phillips and straight blade screwdrivers mate on opposing
cycles, cause whenever I need one type all I can find in the rack
are of the other persuasion.
Kay who finds it enervating to be 80+ - and today I’m out in the yard
trimming hedges, clipping big bushes, digging some up. Who said you
had to be sedentary at this age
You go girl! I hope that I’m in as good a shape as you are in the
future!
Take care and have fun,
Vicki K in SoCal