Tony Smith's Blasted Blog!

Well, we're a month into the New Year and I had already forgotten about the list that I made a month ago (below). ooops!

25% of the semester is already done and I'm really looking forward to finishing the semester and the Master's degree. Just need to get focused on the project work.

I started to exercise again, which was followed my spasms in the middle of my back. So I stopped exercising again... I can't win.

The economy still sucks - nothing has recovered yet. And it's been miserably cold this year. Come on summer!!! (or global warming... something's got to warm me up)

This week I'm focused on work and my project. We'll see how long that lasts.

More later...

Here we are at the start of another year (again, where DID the time go???), and I find myself reviewing 2008.

Let's look at some of the pros first:

+ Francie, Jackie, Lori, and I were all able to stay healthy this year
+ I took a body casting class with my friend Gina in New York City with a hope of learning the mold-making process and applying it to my glass work
+ I finished the third semester of my two-year graduate program in Engineering Management from Tufts
+ I took a few days of vacation, although the Tufts program filled in all of the resulting "free" time
+ I was invited to participate in a leadership offsite at work... probably the greatest professional experience of the year

For some of the cons from 2008:

- The fall of the US economy took close to 40% of my retirement savings (I need to understand why I always believe the financial advisers when they say to "sit tight")
- I immersed myself in a new position at work, so as a result, I didn't spend enough time with my family or take a vacation with them (I need to remember what's really important)
- I had great intentions of doing more glass work in the studio this year, but could never seem to find the time or the motivation
- I never did finish the body casting mold for glass
- I tried getting myself into an exercise routine, first by joining the gym at work, then by starting to exercise at home... I failed miserably at both

Looking ahead to 2009:

~ I will spend more time with my family
~ I will finish the master's program at Tufts in May
~ I will attend the GAS conference at Corning in June and try to reconnect with glass artist friends
~ I will find a way to exercise and maintain some degree of physical fitness
~ I will find a way to boost my retirement savings and isolate it from the economic turmoil we've been in

I intend to refer to this list as the year develops. Stay tuned.

For all of my friends, have a safe, healthy and creative New Year.

Tony

Contributing to my blog is harder than I thought it would be. BUT, here I am, so what's new???

I'm halfway through the fall semester... and that means just a semester and a half left to finish up at Tufts. WooHoo!!!

The big 5-0 is coming a a couple of weeks. I'll be glad when that's over, although it's likely to be just another day at work.

Haven't done much glass lately. The studio has been cluttered with body molds and castings, so yesterday, I added some project shelves to the studio and was able to clear off the work table. A large triptych collaboration to be sandblasted and some commission pieces are backing up into the mud-room.

The one nice thing about cleaning up the work table is that as soon as the commission and collaboration pieces are done (next weekend), I'll have my studio back and be able to do what I want to do. Now I just need time.

What else is new??? Canon just came out with the 50D digital SLR. Arrrggghhh!!! Of course I bought the 40D just a year ago. And now the 50D is out for the same price, except with 15 MP instead of 10MP and an ISO to 12800 instead of 1600. Who knew???

The new Dell Mini-9 looks fun. I think I'll wait until the next generation comes out, but I can see myself with a mini-laptop. What's interesting is that about 10 years ago, HP came out with the Jornada 820 which never took off. It had 16MB of RAM and software that was preloaded. At the time, I had the smaller Jornada 540. My Blackberry does almost everything the 540 would do, except the 540 had Word and Excel built in. The BB is a great communications device though with email, cell and it works awesome as a tethered modem. The Dell Mini-9 has 1GB of RAM and a 16GB flash hard drive. Hmmmm.... maybe for Christmas.

Anyway, back to the grind. Today is Columbus day here in MA, so I have the day off which means masking plate mirror and applying stencils.

More later-

I can't believe that I haven't posted in months!!!

Since I posted last, I survived the second semester of grad school at Tufts. Woo Hoo!!! Now I'm in the middle of a summer practicum with an awesome team from school.

In January, I took a bodycasting class in NYC with my friend Gina. About a month ago, I worked with a fabulous local model and made four different molds from her body. I was successful in making plasters from each and am now in the process of learning how to make casting molds for my glass work. There are naked plasters all over the studio... not sure how my wife feels about that, but I'm really enjoying learning the various plasters and mold-making materials. Now that I've worked with the plasters that I made, I understand the requirements better and will make four more molds in a couple of weeks. The first molds really came out great, but now the ideas are really flowing. I'll let you know what comes of the ideas.



I'm hoping to get a couple of weeks off to unwind in August... no vacations this year. All of those funds are going into a new septic system hookup and oil to heat the house this winter.

I'll try to give you an update in a couple of weeks

Tony

It's just a few days before Thanksgiving, and the semester is almost over. And that's awesome.

I haven't done much glass in the past three months, but finished three projects in the past week that have been hanging over my head... one more to go and I can start on Christmas presents.

Looking forward to the holidays and taking some time off.

Have a great Thanksgiving.

Well, school starts today. I'm still nervous and apprehensive. I think it's unrealistic to expect that I'll have seen this material before, which makes it all new, which makes me even more nervous.

I guess we'll see what the day brings.

While the data sheets claim that Silicon Carbide (SiC) lasts longer and is more aggressive than Aluminum Oxide (Al2O3), in practice, it's unlikely that you will notice the difference. There was some discussion a few years back about SiC creating a haze in certain types of work where two sandblasted surfaces were fused to each other or a sandblasted surface was capped with transparent glass which trapped microbubbles that caused the haze. I believe this was a unique case where one material worked and the other did not. Others argued that they had successfully used SiC for the same process... so the jury's still out and the debate has been quiet for a long time.

I prefer Silicon Carbide because it doesn't create a static charge during blasting like Aluminum Oxide does. At the least, the static charge can make the abrasive and glass dust stick to your work and the walls of your cabinet (not a big problem). At the worst, it can create static shocks to your body. The static problem is more prevalent in dry environments and can be mitigated by standing on a grounding mat and grounding all of the components of the cabinet.

120 grit is a good, all-around grit size balancing speed of material removal with the smoothness of the finished surface. If you want a smoother finish, use a higher grit number (smaller particle size), if you want more aggressive material removal, use a lower grit number (larger particle size). The smaller particle sizes are more likely to get sucked into your dust collector with glass dust, so it is likely that it will need to be replenished more often.

I've been fighting bubbles for over a year now... it's really taking a toll on me. My glass sucks because of it. It's only the black glass, but I use a lot of it.

Maybe the Genesis kiln in the garage is the answer... I don't know what else it could be...

Pressure pots are incredibly simple devices that can be equally frustrating when things go wrong. They consist of a pressure vessel with a hole in the top to let air in and a hole out the bottom to let abrasive out. There also needs to be a way to pour more abrasive in and different manufacturers have found different ways of varying complexity to do that.

The Harbor Freight pressure pot is very simple and works well. But the old adage: "you get what you pay for" applies here. It is a bare bones device that can use a few more features to make it a real performer. Consider adding a water separator and ball valve at the air inlet. Also an air regulator attached tot he pressure pot with inlet and outlet pressure gauges will give you better pressure control if your compressor is more than a few steps away. The mixing tee at the bottom is a bit funky. It can be replaced with a standard steel pipe tee. Add a plug at the bottom of the tee that can be removed to give you access to the bottom of the pot. This will be necessary if you ignore the above advice and don't add a water separator at the pressure pot. You could add another ball valve in the air line between the top and the bottom of the tank to act as a choke valve, but that can wait until you have problems with the abrasive flow surging.

Harbor freight is notorious for using non-standard nozzles in their blasters. But if you're using a ball valve at the end of the hose to control the flow, you should be able to get a nozzle fitting from glastar, rayzist or photobrasive that uses standard #2 tapered nozzles and adapt it to the valve at the end of the hose.

On the other hand, this pot will sip air and works well at 20 psi with a small nozzle. But then, just about any pressure pot will. I demonstrated a Glastar Pressure Pot at a distributor a couple of years ago and all that was available for a compressor was a 50 year old, 110 volt, 20 gallon compressor. I did demo's all afternoon without a problem.

I hope this helps

Tony

The return to school is only three weeks away. It's been years since I've sat in a classroom on a regular basis... needless to say, I'm nervous and apprehensive. Not sure how to get past the first day.

It's a master's program for engineering management... hopefully, just a review of what I've been doing for the past three years. not sure... nervous... apprehensive... nervous...

It's been so hard to go into the studio recently. Poor results from my last few projects have me questioning my materials and processes. I still have a large Genesis kiln sitting in the garage waiting to be set up... it's been there for almost two years... I guess this problem isn't new. Work has my brain overloaded... perhaps I'm just drained of creative juices, or maybe I'm just making excuses. Even my contract work has been taking longer than usual to get done... it's too much like work.