glockbox

An odd little experiment in metal and (scrap)wood: I’ve had a glockenspiel among my possessed oddities for a number of years, and, as the sound offends me, I never touched it after having to play it in high school. But, since I’ve stumbled into metalwork, I lusted after a purpose for the keys beyond a harbinger of bleeding eardrums. Enter: angle grinder, cut-off wheel, and decades of pent-up instrumental loathing to separate the keys from the frame – pieces of which found new life as part of Snippy and the weird tentacle creature – which culminated in… the keys being unwilling to weld together to form anything.

But I had, over the past month since my failure to create anything from them, been moving the keys about in a sort of hypotonic glitch-art way, attempting to find something to build from them. Yesterday, I figured it out: instead of making one piece, make a way to continue fiddling about in hypnotic glitchy fashion. And lo, from piles of other failed wood projects was birthed Glockbox. Can still remove the keys and reorder them as I please, but I’ve been fiddling with the pattern in the video above for most of the morning. Rather proud of this experimental little oddity, the best solution I’ve come up with so far to a deeply annoying vexation. Having far more fun with the glockenspiel in this form than I ever had with that instrumental monstrosity in my previous life.

record cabinet

After a colossal failure a few weeks ago in vinyl storage / record cabinet construction, I used the remnants of that monstrosity to make one that I'm rather proud of today. Had the idea this morning, spent the day building and painting, listened to great music at the end (Nik Bartsch's Ronin's SPIRAL). Along the way, figured out Lon's final evolution which, should weather cooperate, I'll shepherd him tomorrow. Yep, I’m proud of this one (as, it seems, is John Mastodon).

botanical scrap shelving, corner glitch edition

The past weekend’s efforts at scrapwood Lego Botanical shelving were a rousing success, so much so that K asked me to make more, with an upgraded challenge: corner shelving. So I did my usual method (build first, measure later, hammer in pieces that don’t fit) and scrabbled together this effort. K was thrilled and excited to build more Legos, and I was rather pleased with the glitchy effect my total disregard for measurement lent it.

botanical scrap shelving

K mentioned that she wanted a shelf for her Lego Botanicals (aka: winter gardening replacement) collection but after toying around with the notion of well-made floating shelves, I got bored with directions and measurements and went with this little thing, Frankensteined out of pieces of scrap and failed drill press / jigsaw experiments during interior Shed construction and/or wordplay boredom.

A case study in why I prefer metalwork and welding to woodworking: I'm very much a "build first, measure later" type and the creative assembly (read: winging it) of something useful (or at least interesting) from otherwise useless and damaged castoffs was my little way of bringing my metalwork love to the extent of my woodwork tolerance. Fun little experiment – that K dug the end result (You can make more, right? she asked) made it all the more so.

I've become mildly obsessed with figuring out how to use a hand plane and what, if anything, among my wooden dalliances might make use of it. If nothing else, a useful way to think through the roadblocks in the (narrative) WIP(s) for which I’ve a notion of how to move forward that I want to explore this week. Not sure how it'll work out, but it might give me room to breathe on both – and leave open room for seeding two potential other things.