Two straight days of prepping plans for laser cutting. Steel plate cutting templates, lens mounts and film holder mounts for the B&J 8×10 and some experimental 35mm plate holders made out of 1/32 ABS. Not quite done, but should be good to go when Pagoda Arts reopens after vacation time. A great leap forward.

Spent my time on the holiday break finishing a conversion of my equipment to take 35 mm plates. I decided that smaller is better for now – it let’s me work using much less expensive plates, and use a better lens than I have in my large format camera. I made enough keepers to justify getting a scanner which I set up tonight. Only time to scan one, but I will post more soon.

Nutcrackers (Plate 1006)

Not much to say about today that isn’t already in the Lab Notes. I didn’t quite make my eight hour committment. Oh well, “stuff” happens. In addition it was very overcast today, so I’m not sure how well a Becquerel daguerreotype would have developed. Nevertheless progess was made – and never mind perfection.

Well, in the course of making a backup of TheDaguerreotypist this morning I wiped out some crucial WordPress files and brought down the whole site. Thank goodness for ISP’s that make periodic backups without being asked! After the restore I had everything except the most recent post about making a pair of buffing paddles. The pictures of the process are here.

The goal was to make a simple paddle that could be easily replicated in larger sizes, and had a system for holding on the covering cloth in a way that kept tension on the covering and also allowed the cover to be easily changed. The base material is a 1/2″ softwood board with a layer of felt glued to it. It is covered with Ultrasuede. The Ultrasuede has sewn in pockets to hold some pieces of 1/8″ steel rod that in turn are the anchors for a set of four steel springs. I also tried a string and spring version and a rubber band version, neither one of which worked very well.

The dimensions are not critical, you only need to make sure there is enough distance between the two steel rods so that the springs are under some tension. The free ends just tuck under the springs. The whole shebang just sits on the workbench and a plate held with a suction tool is rubbed back and forth along the top. It doesn’t move around much when polishing sixth plates. It might need some kind of hold-down in bigger sizes.

We will see how well it holds up in use. Now off to make a new ground glass for my camera to replace the one that fell out on my foot.  This was not my best day ever.

Shorter days. less light – cold and gloom. The holidays are not always conducive to creativity. In fact I find it hard to fight off a sort of lethargy at this time of year. That is why I look for opportunities to motivate myself when I can and today I found two of them. Read more »