News from the Studio

Thursday December 27, 2006:

Okay, it's been forever since I've updated the website... Sorry it's taken so long, but we've had a lot of travel and have been pretty busy so the website has taken a back seat for some time now. We've been working on some new techniques (Evan's been making puffy glass hearts with embedded flowers and murinni, Dawn has been working on some new beaded creations. We are also adding our own line of large hole mandrels... these should be in the tool gallery soon.... I'm hoping to have the rest of our galleries updated in the next few days to show off some of what we've done.

We also traveled to Europe to teach some classes during the past year. We were at studio Glasdesign in Germany and were treated wonderfully by Evamarie Volkman and her husband Volker. I taught two , 2 day classes at their studio. One day primarily covering inserting silver cores in beads, the other day primarily focused on how to anodize niobium beadcaps to bright colors for incorporation in their own bracelets and necklaces. We also made drawer knobs, buttons, and hollow beads over the course of each of the 2 day classes. There are some photos from the classes below. Click on an individual photo to see it full size.

Sunday April 23, 2006:

Well it's been a while since I posted anything but we've been busy. We've been teaching classes, prepping for classes and more. I have some new tools coming - Large Mandrels! The first ones that will be available are 3/8" diameter and 1/4" inch diameter. They are in stock but I won't have them on the web page until we finish out the next set of classes so they should be up here after May 14th! The next tutorial has been filmed but it will also need to wait to be edited until after May 14th as well.

Tuesday February 7, 2006:

After posting some info on soldering jump rings on WetCanvas, I had several requests for more info on the resistance soldering tool that I constructed. Here are a few pictures of the unit that I constructed. These are not complete instructions and there are risks associated with modifying a piece of equipment that is connected to line level voltages! This is provided for informational purposes only!

Keep in mind if you don't understand the risks of working with electricity you should not attempt this.
Voltages present inside the unit are capable of delivering a lethal shock!

We take no responsibility for any accidents that may occur
and do not imply this device would be suitable for your end usage!

This unit was constructed from an old car battery charger that was unused. Cost to construct was about $25.00 (I used some odds and end that were around the shop) It provides similar functionality to a unit that is commercially sold that sells for over $400.00

I disassembled the original charger and added an additional small transformer that will supply ac power to a timer control board. The power switch on the front of the unit controls all the ac power to the assembly. A small 2 amp fuse was put in series with the new small transformer just in case. A full wave light dimmer was added in series with the primary (large) transformer that made up the original batter charger. This allows you to control the output power of the unit. The timer control board uses a 555 timer IC and controls a relay that turns power to the main transformer on and off. The 555 trigger input is connected to a connector on the back of the unit and goes to a cheap foot pedal on the floor. Pressing the foot pedal activates power to the transform for a variable duration from about 0.5 seconds to 5.0 seconds. The carbon electrode was scavenged from a 'D' size plain carbon battery. It is housed in screwdriver housing that I drilled out. A collet was added to hold the carbon rod. The other conductor was permanently soldered to a pair of chain nose pliers. In use the jump ring to be closed is held in the chain nose pliers and the junction to be solder is touched with the carbon electrode. (Usually silver wire that is solder filled is used, but conventional jump rings and a pallion of solder can be used as well) The ring should be fluxed with a special preparation made for resistance soldering units. Once everything is in position, touch the foot pedal and in about 3/4 of a second the ring is soldered closed. No fuss, no muss. It may take a few experimental cycles to get the voltage/time setup correctly but once it's done it works great!

Here are a couple of photo's:

Sunday January 29, 2006:

It's been a long afternoon. The galleries needed a little bit of cleanup. I've reorganized the tools and accessories gallery and removed the tutorial DVD from there. I've added a new gallery to house the tutorials, since they seem to be growing!

We've received a lot of nice email on the latest tutorial on making a $5.00 photo studio. Keep the comments and questions coming, that's what drives the next tutorial to completion!

I spent most of yesterday re-encoding the photo tutorial for DVD. This DVD also has all the gradients, as well as handful of still images of the completed photo studio on it to aid you in constructing one of these.

We are going to have our own line of large bore mandrels available soon. Starting with 3/8" diameter. The tops are out for milling right now as soon as they come in I'll 'weld' a bunch up and they will appear in the tools gallery.

We gathering our ideas for tutorials for 2006 as well. I've got a bunch of ideas, but if you have any you would like to see - drop us a note and we'll see what we can create!

- Evan

Sunday January 15 , 2006:

Happy new year to all! I know it's been a while since we've had any website updates... it dosen't mean we've been sleeping here. We have had a number of new projects in the works. The first of which is our new 'Dot Perfect!' tool. I've been playing with this little gizmo for several weeks now and it's time to show it off to the rest of the world. I believe that it can be a huge time saver and let you get more consistent results faster. Take a peek, look a the demo and let us know what you think. The next specialty tool is in the works too, but needs a little more testing before I'm ready to show it off so check back soon!

Dawn has been perfecting some bracelets. Some really neat stich combinations. I'm hoping to have a little time to photograph these in the next week or two so they will be appearing on the website as well.

Teaching engagements and shows are now being scheduled. The 1st of these is coming up rapidly, we'll be teaching again at Stevenson High School in Buffalo Grove, Ill. This is the sixth time we'll be teaching for their Odyssey program. 2 days, 3 classes each of teaching anodized niobium rings, whew! Should be fun.

We will also have our own line of large bore mandrels coming out for making your own silver core beads. The 1st of these large bore mandrels will be a 3/8" diameter mandrel and they will be available in early March. These will be all stainless steel construction, made right here and priced very reasonably. Stop by and check in the tools gallery for availablity.

I've been working on the new tutorial for January and selected photography as the subject to tackle. The Photography tutorial is an attempt to show you how to construct a simple, very cost effective (less than $10.00) photo studio geared towards bead & jewelry photography. I hope you enjoy this tutorial. Drop us some feedback and let us know your thoughts.

Sunday November 27, 2005:

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! It's been a busy holiday with family in from out of town and visiting other relatives as well. Also playing catchup on orders. We've been very fortunate and had a number of orders for hollow bead mandrels, and for some of the tutorial DVD's. I spent the last few days putting together the compilation DVD that has all 3 of our first tutorials on it. Nearly 2 hours of content on 1 disk. If the tools to build the disk worked as smoothly as they are supposed to it would have been a breeze, however like all things 'computer' it had it's gliches. I had just finished the final layout when something happened to the project file and it got corrupted. I had to rebuild the project from scratch... nothing worse that having to do things twice! At least it's done, and I have to say it looks really good!

I finally got a chance to get back on the torch this past week. I did a bunch of 'face' beads for Dawn to incoporate into her pieces. If felt good to start melting some glass again. Check back soon to see some new braclets from Dawn that incorporate these beads - they are really fun!

I spent most of the day yesterday down in the shop welding up hollow bead mandrels. These are getting a really good response and from the feedback I've been receiving people are having fun with them. I welded up 60 pieces for orders and will be reordering more 1/8" stainless tubing this week. Here's a few photo's from the studio showing the 'birth' of the hollow bead mandrels. (Cutting, Welding the end closed, Drilling out the hole to inflate the hollow, Grinding the ends smooth)

Website updates - The Tools and Accessories gallery has desperately needed a shopping cart. I've been working on it tonight and would be testing it out, but we just had a HUGE thunderstorm roll through our area and now cable TV, internet and telephone are out of service... no idea when they'll be back up. At any rate look for the shoping cart to come to the Tools and Accessories page first and then spread to the other pages as time permits.

Saturday November 19, 2005:

Well between coming down with a cold and life in general there hasn't been a lot of time in the studio the past week or two. Today is being spent working on website updates. The new tutorial has been edited and is ready to post, so I'm taking the one on Making and Anodizing Bead caps offline today. I'm also working on getting a shopping cart running on our website - really looking forward to getting that project underway.

I had two polls running, one on wetcanvas and one on lampwork etc. on mandrel size. I have an idea for a new tool and it looks like the 1st implementation will be for 1/16" mandrels. Manufacturing is in the planning stages so stay tuned.. probably about 4 weeks away from having a prototype to show here.

With any luck tomorrow will be a quiet day and I can spend some time melting glass.....

Sunday November 6, 2005:

A little Website Maintenance:

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Newsletter

Cleanup!

Ever notice how things never seem to get put away in the heat of the moment? The studio seemed to be bursting at the seams this weekend with 'stuff' everywhere. So it was cleanup and reorganize time. I didn't accomplish anything in the way of new glass or jewelry, but did make a big dent in the mess. The new anodizer setup is nearly completed. I've got the power supply and anodizer tank mounted to a sheet of Corian. It will take another hour of work to complete the whole setup.

During construction of this arraingment the light on my drill press decided to give up the ghost...(It's been failing for a couple of weeks). I scrounged up two clip on lamps that I had bought from target a while ago and mounted them on both sides of the drill press table. The clips on these were pretty cheesy so I just drilled right though them and mounted the lights right to the table. I also got tired of looking for all my pliers all over the studio so I made two new pliers racks from an aluminum bar (1/8" x 2" x 48") and mounted that 2" off the shelves over the workbench. This works out really great (see below) I have virtually every pair of pliers in one place now.

New pliers rack!

I also spent some time making up a special pair of pliers for Dawn so she can quickly form the bends she needs to make up some bracelets from silver sheet.

Bracelet forming pliers (1/4" and 1/2" brass pipe)

These are made up from an old pair of brass lined flat nose pliers where the brass liner had worn out. I purchased a couple of different size pieces of brass pipe from the local hardware store. I cut these to length, brazed them onto the pliers and then cleaned them up and polished them. These should save a lot of time and are easeir to use than a mandrel and a seperate hammer, a holder, etc...

As you see what's happening here in our studio, I hope it sparks your imagination too. Drop us a note and let us know if you like this feature of the website. Tell us what you'd like to see and I'll see if we can make it happen!

- Evan

Email contacts:

Tuesday November 1, 2005:

New toys:

We received our new mini anodizer from Reactive Metals in today's mail! This is a sweet little package considering it replaces the power supply, meter, and isolation transformer with 1 unit. It's a small fraction of the size of the separate components that I built up and a lot more portable too. Looking forward to taking this with when I do the next set of classes! Just barely had time to power it up and test it but I'm looking forward to experimenting with it on Wednesday.

Frustration in the shop...

Designing and testing new tools isn't always fun... I've been working to create some punches for myself to speed up production on some items and trying to drill tool steel is no fun! I think I've used every single small drill bit that I had in the shop in the last two days. The only ones that successfully drill tool steel are solid carbide, but these are so brittle, that if the bit just bounces on what your trying to drill it breaks. I must have used up 15 drill bits in the last two days.

Photography tidbits:

As I was going through some of today's post's on Wet Canvas I saw the subject of photography bubble back up to the top again. A number of people were talking about using gradient backgrounds. I use some occasionally that I created using Photoshop. Here they are for anyone that would like a copy. These files are all 8 1/2" x 11" so yo can print them on your home inkjet. Don't forget to set high quality to avoid 'banding' when you print them out. Right click on the one your interested in and select "Save Target", give it a name and you will save the full size file on your machine. If you want to download the whole collection click here to select the zip file and save that instead.

Black to White	Black to Gray	Black to White (angled)	Black & White (faux fabric)	Blue to White	Blue Skies	Magenta to White

Sunday October 30, 2005:

Well this is a new feature we've decided to add to our web page to keep everyone informed on what is happening in our studio! Expect to see this page updated every few days with the latest happenings and information. First off Dawn and I would like to thank everyone that has been sending in comments on the tutorials. We've had lot's of positive comments from all over the world. It's absolutely amazing how small the world has gotten. Looking at the statistics from the web page the tutorials have been viewed in more than 10 countries. The positive feedback received on these is all the encouragement we need to keep on making them!

Today was spent in the studio working primarily on designs for some new tools. 3 of these made it into the tools and accessories gallery tonight. I've refined the triangle mandrel and like the new retainers used to hold the legs of the triangle in place. These are much easier to use that the previous revisions that were 'crimp' fitted. Also new to the tools gallery is the drawer and cabinet knob mandrels. These were designed to fit a need for custom knobs on a cabinet I was refinishing. I've explored various means of attaching the knobs to a drawer and did not want through holes in these. The design of these mandrels lets you create a knob that has internal threads and is easy to make. See the sample knob that I made earlier today directly below:

To top it off the 'threaded insert' costs about twelve cents to make! The most difficult part about constructing these is getting the weld from the handle to the screw centered and stable. I've made a fixture to hold the two items in the correct orientation, but I think it still needs some refinements. The last item added into the tools and accessories gallery was the adjustable button mandrels. These now allow you to remove the handle so you can attack a hard to remove leg from a stubborn bead hole, or heaven forbid, if the end of the mandrel becomes damaged, you can replace the 'tines' yourself with just a screwdriver. I've had quite a few requests for this feature from people so now it's available!

Also new on the site today is Dawn's "Whirlwind Bracelet". Constructed from oxidized sterling silver these carefully constructed beads look as though they were assembled by a whirlwind. Take a look in the bracelet gallery for a close look.

There are also some more new tools in the works. I don't want to reveal too much just yet... but I think they're pretty neat... probably a couple of weeks before we are ready to lift the curtain on these and reveal them.

Coming soon will be a 'managed' email list signup tool. As soon as I have some time to tailor how this web gizmo works, I will be adding some links to the web site for it. This will be really nice because you will be able to signup for email news alerts and specials. This list will not be shared with anyone, it's strictly for our use and you can opt in or out at any time.

If you've had a chance to take a look at our News from the Studio page and you like it (or not), drop us a note and tell us what you think. If there is something specific you would like to see let us know and we'll try to accommodate as best as possible. I'll post some photos from the studio from time to time and let you see what's happening behind the scenes.

Email contacts:

Well that's about it for this edition of "News from the Studio" stay tuned and we'll see what develops!

Thanks for stopping by -

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