[sdiy] Easy Magic! (Swirling Panels)

[Cynthia Webster]

Thanks Ian, John, Terry, Simon, Jim and Harry!

So... This technique is called "Damasking"

cool!

(prolly because the inventor was tired of all the damn people asking!)

LOL!

> Valve Grinding Paste

Hmm... 
Haven't heard of this before maybe this is an English um, thingie?

I suppose I could try Pearl Drops abrasive tooth polish if I had to!

LOL!

As far as random patterns it's all I can do without an XY mill table
for my drill press.  but, if I actually ~did~ get an XY table,
I could hook up some High-Power LFO driven servo motors to it
and make interesting patterns in the aluminum with different waveforms!

This would work much better than that Square Wave driven Toaster...
(Ok, I should've put an inverted output to keep the toast from burning!)

LOL!

Thanks guys!

Cynthia



> I don't know the name, but one method that is in my mind from some
> where is using a wooden dowel with an abrasive grit.  I imagine that
> little pieces of round emery cloth glued to the end of a dowel would
> also work.  I think the idea of the grit is that you can keep adding
> grit to keep the abrasion consistent.

>> Hi Gang!
>> 
>> I just thought it would be fun to share a
>> technique I just discovered.
>> 
>> In the process of making a little adapter box, I scribed lines onto
>> the soft thin aluminum panels of one of those Radio Shack plastic
>> and metal enclosures.
>> 
>> After drilling out the holes, I tried erasing the pencil lines
>> I'd scribed, only to find that micro abrasive bits in the eraser
>> made an awful indelible "smudge" on the panel!  Yikes!
>> (It looked awful, and I couldn't find a way to smooth it off)
>> 
>> I thought well, let's "make lemonade out of lemons" and chucked the
>> pencil in the drill press as if it was a drill bit, and then ran
>> the panel around under the drill press while spotting
>> the spinning eraser down momentarily onto the aluminum every
>> quarter-inch or so, (5 MM ?)
>> 
>> It made those really cool machined aluminum swirls that you see
>> on race car dashboards and fancy machine shop items! Wow!
>> 
>> A normal machine shop uses some special bit or tool for this,
>> and of course runs the panel precisely along the X Y table of
>> a milling machine for evenly spaced swirls...
>> But I just discovered that lots of ~randomly~ placed swirls
>> created by a spinning pencil eraser actually look really cool too!
>> 
>> (Who wouldda' thunk it?)  LOL!
>> 
>> Best Wishes!
>> 
>> Cynthia 
>> Slayer of Solder
>> 
>> http://www.cyndustries.com/
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Hi Gang!
>> 
>> I just thought it would be fun to share a
>> technique I just discovered.
>> 
>> In the process of making a little adapter box, I scribed lines onto
>> the soft thin aluminum panels of one of those Radio Shack plastic
>> and metal enclosures.
>> 
>> After drilling out the holes, I tried erasing the pencil lines
>> I'd scribed, only to find that micro abrasive bits in the eraser
>> made an awful indelible "smudge" on the panel!  Yikes!
>> (It looked awful, and I couldn't find a way to smooth it off)
>> 
>> I thought well, let's "make lemonade out of lemons" and chucked the
>> pencil in the drill press as if it was a drill bit, and then ran
>> the panel around under the drill press while spotting
>> the spinning eraser down momentarily onto the aluminum every
>> quarter-inch or so, (5 MM ?)
>> 
>> It made those really cool machined aluminum swirls that you see
>> on race car dashboards and fancy machine shop items! Wow!
>> 
>> A normal machine shop uses some special bit or tool for this,
>> and of course runs the panel precisely along the X Y table of
>> a milling machine for evenly spaced swirls...
>> But I just discovered that lots of ~randomly~ placed swirls
>> created by a spinning pencil eraser actually look really cool too!
>> 
>> (Who wouldda' thunk it?)  LOL!
>> 
>> Best Wishes!
>> 
>> Cynthia 
>> Slayer of Solder
>> 
>> http://www.cyndustries.com/
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 



on 12/6/03 9:39 AM, Ian Fritz at ijfritz at earthlink.net wrote:

> At 07:12 PM 12/5/2003, harrybissell wrote:
>> john mahoney wrote:
>> 
>> Ian,
>> 
>>> There are still hobby/shop magazines?!
>> 
>> ( H^) harry added )
>> and you admit READING them ???    :^P
>> 
>> <bfg>
>> 
>> H^) harry
> 
> 
> LOL!  Yeah, and cover-to-cover to boot.  :-)
> 
> I've even read big chunks of the Machinery's Handbook!
> 
> Ian
>