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	[Parent Directory]	-	Sat May 23 11:18:18 2009
	Silicon Mold Initial Result	-	Mon Feb 15 12:04:53 2010
	Getting ready to create the initial silicone mold layer with a coin pressed into a thin wax layer. Given that I’ve never worked with the Smooth-On Oomo 25 silicon before, having something go wrong was sort of expected, so I didn’t spend too much effort on including sprue and vent channels in the first molding attempt. If it worked, I would have cut them later. I did, however, include the registration marks since those would be difficult to add later. Oh, and I should probably also point out here that the coin being molded here is real 1735 George II penny (or half penny, I’m not 100% sure) and not one of the copies I bought last year. The first layer separated from molding container. The initial mix and pour for the fist half of the mold went well and there were no problems demolding. The final product was soft and deformable under light finger pressure, though this was expected. I suspect this might eventually be an issue when it comes time to do an actual casting. The coin and first layer of the mold made ready for the second layer of silicone. The actual problem didn’t come until poring the second half of the mold. Not knowing if the second half would stick to the first. I brushed the first half with a light oil and decided to see what would happen. The result of the first silicone mold attempt - a solid block of silicone. Now, in case anyone was wondering, yes, I did have both petroleum jelly and talc on hand but I wanted to see if a brushing of oil would be sufficient to keep the two mold halves from sticking together. As it turns out, it was not. The second layer of the silicone stuck to itself so completely it could not be separated from the first. In fact, the layers were so well bonded, there was no real indication where one layer ended and another began. This is actually very useful information for later should I attempt to pour two part mold layers that are not completely flat, like an “L” shape layer for example. Unable to separate the layers of silicone, the only option left was to cut the coin out. So, the next step is to try the whole again with petroleum jelly to see what happens. Also, I will probably use about 1/2 of the amount of silicone in the next mold after seeing how deformable the larger blocks are. I had hoped to avoid having to create something like a plaster backing for the silicone, but it seems that even the larger blocks with probably still require some extra support to keep the mold cavity from deforming when the two halves are are clamped together for the casting. Filed under: Coin, Pewter Casting. No comments.
	January Posts	-	Thu Feb 04 20:36:05 2010
	In case anyone is bothering to read this I’m still in the process of cleaning up a few January unposted entries that may or may not appear in the near future. Rather than let this hold things up, I’ve decided to proceed with newer posts and fix the old ones later. It’s not like I’ve been doing anything interesting last month, so you are not missing much. Filed under: Online. No comments.
	Florence Griswold Museum	-	Sat Jan 30 02:47:04 2010
	Florence Griswold Museum main gallery. Cath and I went to the Florence Griswold Museum today after picking up two free passes at the New London public library. Since I’m not working right now, free is good. The picture gallery in the main building was OK - nice paintings, but nothing really outstanding. Perhaps it was just me, but the building seemed like it had more spaced devoted to non-accessible function rooms than actual gallery space. The Florence Griswold boarding house. For me, the best part was the actual Florence Griswold house where the artists lived while venturing out into the countryside to paint during the warmer months of the early 20th century. I’ve always been more interested in exhibits showing how people lived in the past (go figure), so I felt that this was far more interesting than the main building. An art installation at the Florence Griswold Museum made entirely of twigs. One of the more unusual exhibits that happened to be on the museum grounds was a structure built out of branches cut on site. I can’t recall the guy’s name that made the structure, but I’ve seen pictures other work that he has done on the web before. All in all, a good way to spend a few hours. Filed under: Uncategorized. No comments.
	Baking Bread	-	Thu Jan 28 01:31:38 2010
	Home made bread. I have to admit that while I can cook, quite well IMHO, the one thing I really had a problem with until recently was baking. Now that I found myself with a bit of time on my hands, I decided to take a crack at correcting that. It took about 6 days of making one or two loves of bread a day, but I finally managed to get to the point where I can consistently make a loaf of bread in about an hour and a half. That’s the total time it takes from starting to mix the ingredients to cutting the first slice. The loves themselves are not very big since I try to make at least one loaf of bread a day for practice. More importantly, I’m the only one eating them, so there’s not point in making them larger just yet. Now if I could just figure out how to make a good sour dough bread, I’d really be happy. Filed under: Uncategorized. No comments.
	Unemployment +22 Days	-	Thu Jan 14 02:10:22 2010
	Connecticut unemployment web site hous of operation. Trying to get unemployment in Connecticut sucks. All of the unemployment offices were closed some time ago, so if you want to file for unemployment benefits you have only two choices: phone or web page. The web page seems like the obvious choice, but is so overloaded that it didn’t work for until recently. This wasn’t an IE or Firefox optimized website issue, the back end web server were just completely overloaded by the traffic. To top it off, parts of the web page are only “open” at certain hours, so this forces people to hit the web site during a specific time range instead of spreading the server load across the entire day. Calling is not much better, but at least that I can understand since staffing phones 24 hours a day would get expensive. Call wait times run about two hours before you can talk to someone and the hold music occasionally stops completely making you wonder if the call dropped or not. To make matters worse, there are times that you can’t even get through to the number, so the best time to call is in the early morning just after the phone lines open. Given the two choices you might think that the web page might be the better option, but this is where you get to discover the real fun part of the process - you have to do both. Yep, first you need to file an initial claim on the website, then you need to actually call someone so that they can read back everything you entered on the web page, then OK the claim. Very irritating, but thankfully you only need to do this once. Filed under: Unemployment. No comments.
	Unemployment in One Week	-	Wed Dec 16 23:38:02 2009
	One week left at Big Pharma. All through today keep thinking of that 80’s song “Final Countdown” by Europe and it makes me smile each time. Most of the loose ends are taken care of and all that remains is to finish documenting my job for the the outsource guy that will be replacing me on the team next year (good luck with the project dude). Soon all that will be left to do is wait for the the time I turn in my badge and laptop. Filed under: Unemployment. No comments.
	Unemployment in Two Weeks	-	Wed Dec 09 23:02:20 2009
	Well, it doesn’t look as though I’ll be working at Big Pharma much longer, and my end date is about two weeks away - Xmas eve. What will happen is that I will leave for the Xmas break, just like years past except that I don’t come back in January like I normally do. I could probably be doing more to get a slot at Big Pharma next year, but the truth is that I’m happy to just let events run their course. After over 12 years at Big Pharma I’m looking forward to a change of scenery and a bit of downtime. After a short break (and a bit of skill development), I plan on taking a few short duration assignments involving some trendy technologies and then look for another long term assignment or an FTE slot somewhere. Until then I have have an enormous amount of accumulated crap that I need to start bringing home. Filed under: Unemployment. No comments.
	2009 Dragoon Annual Dinner	-	Sat Dec 05 22:41:45 2009
	Cath and I (with Rich in the background) at the 2009 annual dragoon dinner. Placeholder for the 2009 Dragoon Annual Dinner. Not much to say about the dinner, really, other than the food was great as always. Filed under: Rev War. No comments.
	Last Dragoon Event for 2009	-	Mon Nov 16 21:13:36 2009
	Me presenting at Putnam Cottage November, 2009 The 15th was finally the last Dragoon event of the season, wrapping up a hectic schedule for 2009. The year closed out at one of my more favorite venues, Putnam Cottage and the weather couldn’t have been more perfect. Since this event was more of a school show format rather than the usual cavalry demo, I dragged out the currency exhibit again along with a few new props that I acquired (coins!) since I did the first demonstration at the beginning of the year. All in all, things went much smoother this time, though I suspect that the reason was the quality of the crowd rather than the quality of my presentation (those Greenwich folks are much more polite than school kids). Filed under: Rev War. No comments.
	Making a New Pick and Whisk	-	Sun Nov 08 21:37:30 2009
	Making a new pick and whisk chain. Note that the links are about 1 and 3/4 inches long before bending. After bending into a figure eight the final links are just over 3/4 on an inch. At some point of riding around in the tall grass at Old Store Fort I broke my pick and whisk chain and managed to lost most of the chain and the whisk. Given that the chain was made of small gauge brass wire this was inevitable. Given that you really need to have one of these when you do battles, I decided to make a replacement, but with much heaver gauge wire - and not just any wire, gold plated wire! I figured that if it was gold, it would be one less item that I would need to polish before each event. It turns out that all you need to make a pick and whisk chain are wire, wire cutters, pliers with duct tape on the jaws to make a soft grip, a fork, and some spare time. I’ll write out the instructions for the process of making the chain and whisk another time. Suffice to say, the whole project turned out better than expected, though the tips of my fingers hurt for about a day afterward from all the wire bending. Final result of all that link bending. Later on I might solder the links closed to further reduce the risk of the chain breaking, but for now I’ll leave it as it is until I make sure the length is where it should be. Filed under: Rev War. No comments.
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