The below video shows yours truly filing and polishing one of the brass key shells. I took the liberty of times-eighting the somewhat repetitive parts. Also, enjoy my fumbling with the angles (didn't remember to invert my webcam display).
edit: Updated the video with a different song about 3:47 in length -_- (Creative Commons this time, thank you Trent Reznor!)
Not much commentary to add, actually.
The prior production step was to saw the shells from a piece of brass tubing (no idea what its original use might have been, bought it from a specialized metal mum and pop shop). They didn't want to cut the tubing for me (too dangerous, the small pieces could go flying), so I did it by hand. Took me some three hours over a couple of days.
The filing consists of some steps.
First, flatten the end and get rid of sharp splinters and leftovers. Also, the color will be a more uniform golden with no black grooves. Then file around the rim at an angle of about 45°, breaking the sharp edge. I did another round at a very flat angle, because it still felt kind of sharp to the touch in some places, and you'll actually touch these places while typing.
Rinse and repeat for the other end of the key (not strictly necessary, but it reduces the risk of cutting yourself in the further steps, it makes inserting the cores easier and it's plain and simple better workmanship in my opinion). I filed down the inner edges of the key with a round diamond file (from my stone tool kit). Any other round file will do.
Some of the key shells broke in this part of the process. They already had lenght-wise cracks, some had already splintered while sawing. I guess these cracks come from a combination of the material being of not too high a quality, the production process, and the back and forth strains introduced by manual sawing.
Finally, I rub the shells down with some steel wool. Reduces the length-wise lines and gives a nice brushed but shiny surface with a rather uniform gold tone. If I have time left over in the end, I'll give them another go with metal polish.
Usually, I don't do all steps one one shell at once and rather do batches of one step on 10-20 shells. I'm a bit faster that way, but not by much.
My next sub-project is the wooden parts and the leather for the case. Also need to carefully destroy the original casing so that all needed parts stay intact. We'll see how that goes...
Of COURSE they would *beep* immediately block it, even though you can find other videos with the same music just fine on youtube. Of COURSE it wouldn't work AGAIN (finally resolved to use *beep* youtube despite google's data collection *beep* after I tried uploading to three other video sites that just failed AFTER uploading was complete without *beep* telling me why). Of COURSE this blog now is up the whole *beep* day while I'm off working (*beep* unable to fix it) and no one can see a *beep* thing.
Man, I'm getting kinda frustrated by this whole process ^^
Re-encoding and re-uploading the video with creative commons music right now. Hope you guys at least enjoyed your incresed post count ^^
watched it, you should work on trying to not have it windowboxed (somehow you rendered it into the wrong aspect ratio i guess), and saidly the resolution is a little low to actually see the progress on the little piece. maybe it becomes more visible once you start assembling pieces, but consider if you could find a better camera somewhere, would certainly help.
On May 12 2012 02:56 DanielHetberg wrote: Ok, should have been obvious.
Of COURSE they would *beep* immediately block it, even though you can find other videos with the same music just fine on youtube. Of COURSE it wouldn't work AGAIN (finally resolved to use *beep* youtube despite google's data collection *beep* after I tried uploading to three other video sites that just failed AFTER uploading was complete without *beep* telling me why). Of COURSE this blog now is up the whole *beep* day while I'm off working (*beep* unable to fix it) and no one can see a *beep* thing.
Man, I'm getting kinda frustrated by this whole process ^^
Re-encoding and re-uploading the video with creative commons music right now. Hope you guys at least enjoyed your incresed post count ^^
Did you seriously just use "beep" in a text post? r u for rela?
EPT
