Been too busy to post, really, and my urge to babble has been assuaged by Twitter (@EdwinWiseOne) and Facebook (Edwin Wise).
Recently, though, I've been working up techniques and skills for making vampire teeth out of dental acrylic. I tried the build-up-from-blob-of-acrylic-then-grind-down method a few times and decided it's not for me.
What I am doing instead is doing a sculpt on a duplicate of my teeth, making a mold from that, then casting the acrylic. It has taken several iterations to get the acrylic casting to work, but I'm very very close now! It's all over but the subtleties... like, notes on how to sculpt for optimal strength and shape, and so forth.
I've also been playing with pneuamtics -- of a sort. Got me a nice little air amplifier that takes pressurized air and amplifies it in volume 20 times (says the literature).
Then I built one in PVC pipe (more or less), as well as several other air amplification and vacuum-generating configuration using various air-flow principles.
The result being a mechanism driven (currently) by a leaf blower (but later perhaps by a carpet drying fan) that sucks ping-pong balls up into the airstream and then amplifies that stream some more to shoot the balls in a swarm.
Of course, I'm still dancing, and taking Tai Chi, and going to my day job.
The next few weekends will see a bunch of work for some improved (but not really new) fire displays for Flipside, plus a beacon (not fire) for the top of our bamboo tower.
And, because I have no sense, I'll be doing promotional makeup at Scare for a Cure's cupcake stand at Eeyore's Birthday this coming Saturday! I have third shift out of four... it should be fun!
Finally, I turn 45 in a couple of weeks. Wish me luck.
Posted by Edwin at April 21, 2009 08:54 PM