Norse Glauchaus…. now with 30% more squirrel.

By DirtyMary • March 9, 2011 • No Comments

Last May I ran a games tourney. I devised a gluttons tourney, were game played was the only criteria to win… ie: quantity over quality. The Winners of the three categories Glutton (most games of the most varied selection), Obsessed (most played of a single game), and Righteous indignation (biggest temper tantrum will receive a custom made game board to their specifications..

Well Ylas of Lions Gate one the obsessed contest buy playing carpet boules almost non-stop for the event. Her prize was a hand made game board to her specifications. Well she was specific… She wanted Gluckhaus, but based on  Norse… also with tree of life, and has to have a squirrel…

<head met desk> x repeat ad nauseam.

I am not an artist. I am a builder drone. I have the skills to do a decent replica of most things I attempt. What I am not skilled at is making unique art. Ackkk.

So in the countless hours I spent looking at Norse knot work junk and stuff I came across the illumination in the image above.  Dated to c. AD 750, this is a page from an illuminated copy of Augustine’s Questiones in Heptateuchon. It uses the cross as an illusion to the tree of life.  It has four deer like images in the outer wicket, and the eagle up in the tree. The only things it doesn’t have is the serpent/dragon and the squirrel.

I printed out the original image to the size I wanted, and carbon paper copied it onto an oak board. I left most of the fiddly stuff out so I could figure out were I wanted the numbers to sit.

While I was deciding where everything was going to go, I charred in the border bits with a pyrography pen. I did try to do some strictly poker work on it, but it was going to take way to long.

Having decided on where the numbers were going to be, I outlined them with more pyrography, and then filled them in with verdgris, and red oxide in an egg white binder. The green numbers are normal pay outs, and the red numbers are special condition payouts.

Now all the fiddly stuff was burned in. I had to make a zoomorphic squirrel as I could find no images of any online.

Finally finished the front of the board. The only thing not on it from the norse tree of life is the dragon/serpent that lives under the tree of life.

I fixed that problem by placing a more period game of talbut on the underside of the board. This time featuring serpents and dragons.

that’s it… now to move on to Mailes for the biggest wobbler of a temper tentrum (it was awesome).

Categories: Gamemaster, Uncategorized, Wood, burning
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Disked Bell Tent v1.1 In the Beginning

By DirtyMary • February 26, 2011 • No Comments

Got material and junk from fabric time solutions and a local fabric store (threads and such).

Proceeded to cut out 12 triangular gores with the use of a card stock template. This time I had triple checked the seam allowance around the template. Did not want a repeat of the cone of shame incident.

With the 12 panels cut out, I proceeded to make templates for the upper pattern pieces. The pattern templates were all made of card stock, and the designs cut out using a scalpel. The 8 point star pattern is in deference to the principality stars… I used this as I could not make out what the original pattern looked liked. Read more »

Categories: Dyes, Stains, & Paint, Pavillions
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Disked Bell Tent v1.0

By DirtyMary • February 22, 2011 • 2 Comments

Last summer I had intended to start on my 14th century Timurid Empire disked bell tent. I put it off so I could try my hand at making an Ouled Nail Bedouin Tent. That was a bit of a disappointment, but we must learn and move on. That brings us to present were I have been working on the tent for the last month or so…

There is very little evidence for these tents existence. What little we have is gleaned from Persian & Timurid illuminations from the period, and references in Peter Alford Andrews Felt Tents book. What can’t be gleaned from these two sources I have looked to Mughal era paintings from their sunscreens, and Ottoman Tent Complex tents that are still in existence.

This is probably the best image of the tent I want to make. They almost always appear to to 12 sided, short in height, and have very short walls. I have been unable to see any depictions to date that show how the opening is fastened shut.

A more common depiction is this style of tent used as a sun shade. The foot tall wall has remained on the roof.

Yet another depiction of the tent. The one in the foreground is a bright red version instead of the more typically depicted white tents.

I love the art work on the tent in the background of this picture. Due to its position being depicted as higher than the tent in the foreground it probably is closer in style to the later Ottoman tents that have much taller wall section and smaller wooden disks. I love the art, so it will go on to the tent.

Peter Alford Andrews talks about the style of tent I want to build in a section called `Pictorial Evidence: Guyed Tents`. It is far to long to quote so I`ll briefly cover the important bits I focused on.

1.The disk is evidently rigid and made of either wood or leather

2. The disk is perhaps 30cm across

3. White velum is cut into triangular gores is dodecagonal (12 sided) instead of round

4. the seams are drawn out on guyed ropes at an angle of roughly45-50`

5. eaves over hang the wall a little

6. the walls are 25-30cm high.

There is alot of variation between all of this style tent, but they generally fall into these guidelines.

So out came the graph paper and calculator. Trig is your friend and started to crunch numbers.

My tents specs will be 6ft tall, 8 ft in diameter, and feature a 11″ disk. I haven’t decided if the walls will be attached by toggles or permanently sewn on.

The door opening will be closed by toggles at the seam of one of the triangular gore openings. The pattern to be painted on the tent will determine how far down the roof seam will lie before the door opening starts. An overlaped section will be also toggled to prevent rain from getting in.

The ropes will be attached to binding that will be sewn on the seam lines like in the following photo.

There are no good images of the wooden disk on the Timurid bell tents. There are a few good under side images of 18th century ottoman tents in the “Ottoman Tent Complex” book. These are far smaller then the ones depicted for my choice of tent. Better based on out of period tents than rampant speculation on my part.

Thats about it at this point.

Categories: Pavillions
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glass stuff for sale

By DirtyMary • February 20, 2011 • No Comments

I am selling off my stained glass stuff.

45 partial plates

22 full plates

5 oversize plates (longer than ~12″)

2 Large containers of scrap glass (clear, pale in color, different textures)

1 tub of white/pale scrap glass

1 tub of misc colored glass

1 tub of cream/brown  glass

1 tub of grey glass

1 tub of green glass

1 tub of red/orange glass

1 tub of light blue glass

1 tub of bright blue glass

1 tub of purple glass

1 tub of amber glass

1 tub of misc blue glass

1 tub of misc black, and mirror glass

1 tub of  glass marbles, and drops

box of misc lead free/leaded solder, flux, swabs, copper foil, came stretcher, came rollers, soldering iron…etc

4 metal lantern metal frames

Lamp base

beveled glass pieces, and beveled mirror pieces

Lots of books and back issue magazines.

Wooden cabinet, and record (glass) holder

glassstar glass grinder

Gryphon Diamond bandsaw.

Asking  $550 with everything.

42vince@gmail.com

Categories: Glass, Uncategorized
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Turkish Carpet Project v1.9 Yellow

By DirtyMary • January 18, 2011 • 1 Comment

So First Dye job up to bat is the yellow wool. It is the smallest individual color on the carpet, and since I am not that familiar with dyeing, I figured it would be a quick tutorial on how to dye. That and if I totally munk it up, its not going to cost me a fortune to redo.

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Categories: Dyes, Stains, & Paint, Turkish Rug, textile
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Turkish Carpet Project v1.8 Mordanting the Wool

By DirtyMary • January 18, 2011 • No Comments

I have finally bought most of the wool I need for my project. I still have a bunch more to buy, but I want to spread the cost of the wool out over a few pay checks. I will be dying the wool four colors, and the fifth color i will be leaving the wool natural so no dyeing there. The colors will be dyed with Weld (yellow), Madder (red), Indigo (Blue), and the Black will be a tannin/iron process. I will have to do a second mordanting process for the black as I have yet to buy more wool, plus the pot I have is only so large.

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Categories: Dyes, Stains, & Paint, Turkish Rug, textile
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EB’s Swift

By DirtyMary • January 17, 2011 • No Comments

I have had a commission for building a swift I had completely forgot about. I had started it months ago, and then quickly forgot about it. Well the most excellent Mistress EB finally inquired about her swift, and asked if she could pick it up next apprenti meeting. That lite a big old fire under my procrastinating butt.

The plans were from Clayton Boyer’s Clock website, and I had previously made a yarn winder for EB. I made a few minor adjustments to the plans to accommodate the lack of the same metal fittings Clayton asked for in the plans.

The frame and arms are made of red oak, the yarn pins are made of rose wood, and the handle (which spins and is not fixed as in the plans as per EBs request, also has several holes for customization) is made out of a bit of my dwindling supply of mystery bright red wood. All it needs now is a quick coat of Poly-urethane.

I tried it out one my yellow dyied wool (balling the slightly felt mess was a breeze, and making large skeins of 100%cotton 2/16 thread was super fast, and way less taxing than using the niddy noddy. I must put this on the list of things I need to build for myself.

I also am feeling guilty as I have yet to build the spinning wheel from the plans Clayton gave me for free. Nor have I started building my calendar clock/oreray.

Categories: Not Medieval related, Wood
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PVC NEY

By DirtyMary • January 6, 2011 • No Comments

A while back I asked someone what a good Turkish instrument I should play, taking into account I have difficulties trying to reestablish a set finger position once I have moved my hands. I took guitar for years, and always seemed to have huge issues with getting lost on the fretboard. I was told I should look into the NEY flute. I was even pointed to a web page where a guy tells you how to may a PVC  Ney. After reading Kees van den Doels webpage I have been meaning to try my hand at making one, and I finally got around to it. Bonus Points for Mr. Van den Doel living in Vancouver.

I had a massive amount of white pvc pipe from the bender tent experiment kicking around. Its not the same as the pipe that the instructions call for, but its close. Why buy when you can recycle.

I cut the pipe down to size with the band saw. Used a piece of paper wrapped around the pipe to keep the end  line straight.

He askes for a taper to be filed away on the inside. My normal taper reamer that fits the drill press was just a little to narrow for the job. I used this monster instead to slowly cut the inside taper. Never had the chance to use this bad boy before. It has a ratcheting mechanism in it. Did a fairly decent job, but could not get right to the outside edge as it started to bow outerwards from the weight and pressure.

The next step was to burn finger holes into the pipe using a 9mm drill bit end. Well I tried it, heating the bit with a lighter, then an alcohol fuel lamp and then a torch. They either didn’t work (not hot enough) or worked too well (torched bit  over melted the scrap piece of PVC pipe I tried it on)…. so….

Thank you Drill Press. Fast, Clean, and relatively quiet. You are my second favorite tool.

The holes were drilled as acording to instructions. I believe the hole on the back side is a slight bit off dead center, but I don’t think it really matters. I put a dowel plug in the back hole to prevent it from rolling of the table saw.

Next was making the pvc pipe look like a reed by adding narrow waisted points to simulate where the leaves on the reed were. Alcohol Lamp and some twine did the job. Roll the pipe near the end of the flame to heat it up. Then while its still flexible twist the rope around the heated section and keep the rope turning around it intil the pipe gets ridgid again. If you dont keep turning the pipe the narrowing will be lopsided. Strangley the soot deposit works to make it look a bit more non PVC pipish.

I seem to have missed taking a photo of the mouth piece part. I cut up a clear bottle of pop and wound it around the mouthpiece sectionand fastened it with a bit of scoth tape. This is to help get the reed to index between your front teeth. I have very little gap between my teeth so this was a must for me.

 The final thing I did was add some whip lashing around all the narrowed sections, and the mouthpiece was also lashed to hide as much to the shiny pop bottle material as I could.

So thats my attempt at a PVC Ney Pipe. I have since spent about 5 hours trying to make it work. I have got one squeak out of it, but thats it. I did take it out to the shop and try the air compressor line on it to see if there is sound. Yep there is a nice sound out of the thing… but its hard to hear over the air lines hissing.

Next up a KABAK KEMANE or a Coconut rebab (inspired by Shareefs rebab)

Categories: Misc. Madness, Music
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niddy noddy v2.0

By DirtyMary • January 4, 2011 • No Comments

 I finally decided to just buy the wool for the carpet. I have been waffling on the exact wool for ever, and if I don’t start soon, this might turn into a 4 year project. I calculated how much of each color of wool I needed, and had to wind them to the right size for the dye pot. To do this I made myself a niddy noddy (6ft) out of some rosewood billet cuts I had picked up recently.

I turned the handle and put on two beads so my hand wouldn’t slip while winding. Rosewood finishes so well it was easy to make the handle kind of slippery.

I have one side pined in place, and the other side is free to twist around.

I wish I had curved the arms a bit more. When starting the skein its easy for it to slip out from the ends.

The yellow is wound (yellow ties), and so is the Blue (green ties), and the red has 6/10 wound (red ties). I still have 12 skeins of black to wind, and the white wool will need to be cleaned too.

Categories: Dyes, Stains, & Paint, Turkish Rug, Turning, Wood, textile
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Ouled Nail Bedouin Tent v2.3 Final thoughts.

By DirtyMary • January 3, 2011 • No Comments

OK… For every success we have, we have to experience disappointments to make our triumphs that much sweeter.

The Ouled Nail tent is a disappointment for me. It was an interesting experiment, but in the end it didn’t work out as nice as I had hoped. I think the main problem I have is the size of the tent. Its too small for the structure to really work. It is a serviceable tent, but to keep the profile looking right you have to use a lot of poles, and they obstruct the usable space to the point you have to dodge poles to get in and out of the tent. If the whole canvas was substantially bigger (especially the width) I believe it would be an awesome design.

Picture in the back yard. The mid wall poles not yet installed, and the ridge poles are a little to far forward. A friend referred to the profile at an event it was set up at as a rhino beetle. I can kind of see what they meant.

My plain Bedouin tent had a total of 10 poles plus a ridge, this design has 14 plus a ridge and allows for a lot less usable room. he plus side was the rain didn’t even thing of pooling on any of the surfaces. My original design didn’t pool rain either, but I was always a bit more concerned about a “What If” scenario.

The tent assembled at Lions Gate SYGC this summer. Wish I had a side profile shot of the tent, as you could see the Rhino Beetle when all the poles were in the right place, and the tension was good.

The roof ridge was much harder to get into place compared to the basic Bedouin design. Since both poles had to be in place when you entered the tent, you had to work at getting the whole twisty unit to twist in from the side. The original could have one pole put in at a time, and minor adjustment at the end, when they were already mostly in place.

I now have to decide whether to hawk the tent relatively cheap, or take apart a lot of it to convert it to an more common design.  Either way, I am now contemplating doing either the Alchigha (boobhaus) or a Turkish design (after I pour over Mistress Safiye’s book on the Ottoman Tent Complex).

Categories: Pavillions
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