urbanIron

Fish Tales and Pigtails

2012-02-13T21:02:00.000-08:00

One of the hazards of working in a freelance format is that periodically, actually more often than I want to admit, I get sucked into a situation that requires tremendous amounts of time, effort and resources and ends up yielding nothing. I willingly enter these productivity cul de sacs because I believe in dreams. The dream is not the problem. The problem always turns out to be the dreamer. So, as you might have guessed, I was recently taken in by a dreamer who traffics in fish tales. I haven’t developed the ability to recognize that I am standing on the tracks. I consider this a personal failing but I doubt I will ever change. As I said, I believe in dreams.

Among the many things that define producers of anything, is an overwhelming desire to produce. I know. Once again I sound like a crank, but I know that I don’t care as much about what I am making as that I am making. I am driven by the need to make. I am told that this is not universal but that’s just another thing I find hard to believe. Anyway, my problem with Mr. Fish Tale wasn’t that he spent all of his time vastly exaggerating everything. I can deal with that. I mean, really, all I do is automatically scale down his details during the listening process. So his fantasy audience of 10,000 becomes the actual audience of 700 or so. My problem with Sir Fish is that he doesn’t understand how to make. He clearly confuses manipulating with making.

Aaaahhh. What was I thinking?

The process of making anything is the same. Yeah, don’t argue with me. This is my theory and I’m sticking with it. Whether you are making a cake or a space ship or a movie or a country, the process is the same. Part A is the plan. Don’t confuse this with the dream. In cake world the dream is one of those seven tiered fondanty things with ears. Or whatever. The plan is the recipes and the schematic. So far we have dream…plan…okay I should have recognized the problem. I really need to work on paying better attention. Sir Fish had a dream. No plan.

Aaaaaahhhhh. What was I thinking?

Okay, back to the process. Dream…plan...this is where it gets a little foggy, but I will call it resources. But along with resources you need the will to complete. ……which is different than the will to compete. The resources in the seven tiered cake are the ingredients, the baker, the tools and the time. The baker brings expertise. This is huge. Sir Fish Tale? Let’s just say he lacked….resources….and will…did I mention expertise………….

Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh. What was I thinking?

Dream…plan…resources…will…then hard work and presto …….. you got something.

I snapped. Not pretty. Graceless actually and messy.

And then …cue harps…I got an order for ……..


Fishtails

and.............


Pigtails

So it was time to actually make some stuff. Hardware all the way to the end. Dream, plan, resources and it's time to have some fun. The order was for a house full of drapery hardware made from square tube. Poles, brackets, rings and wands. The fishtails are the decoration on the brackets. The pigtails are the handles for the wands.

bar in the forge

Fishtails are easy to make. Basic. Pigtails take a little more effort.

bar on the anvil

It takes a few steps to make the brackets.

several bends later


ready for the final blows


Cooling down

drawing the bar

For the pigtails the bar needs to be drawn first.

bent around mandrel

And then the project was finished.


Brown finish on rings and brackets.

Now back to work...........

Ring Cycle

2011-07-23T12:05:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while I get a call from a reporter or publication wanting to include me in an article about what they perceive to be what I do. -- Try to say that three times fast. – The last call was from a guy who was doing an article with a “green” angle. This brings me to two things that I believe deep down. The job of reporters is often to make news where there is none, and there is no such thing as “green” as defined by reporters.

Art, manufacturing, business, even humanity are inherently not green. It is impossible to produce or consume without destruction and waste. Always something must die to feed the life of some other thing. You may not be surprised to find out that I didn’t end up in the article, but it made me think about my approach to my work. I am pathologically averse to waste. This doesn’t make me “green”. It makes me …….well, probably crazy.

I make a lot of hardware. I make a lot of drapery hardware. I make a lot of curtain rings. Sometimes, as you can see, I line them up to make pretty patterns.


unfinished rings

Making curtain rings involves bending straight rod around a round arbor.


1/4" rod around 1-3/8" arbor

Because the rod needs to be clamped at one end and held at the other, there is waste involved.

Rod and arbor in clamp before bending.

Formed rings before separation.


Drapery rings mid process


Set to weld tab ring

Rings in tumbler

Finished rings on rack drying

The waste from forming ring

It is possible for me to carry these small cut off bits to the recycling plant. They would become the raw material for all new steel bars or sheets or whatever was necessary. Recycling is green, but smelting steel is not. It takes huge amounts of energy to bring steel to the melting point and huge amounts of energy to form it. And though it takes less energy to recycle steel than make it from ore it still isn’t easy on the environment.

It’s also a bit of a trek to the nearest scrap yard. I don’t think driving twenty miles each way with five hundred pounds of steel scrap in my tiny truck could be classified as entirely green either. So instead, I make things out of the cut off ends. This can only be classified as green in that it possibly takes less energy or is less wasteful than the other options. But I like to make things so that is what I do.

The process of making curtain rings is cold. At least these curtain rings. That is to say, I don’t use heat to do the bending and forming. There is also, for the snobs in the audience, electric welding involved. But the curtain rings are commissioned. Their size, shape color and finish are predetermined. Set by the designers and non negotiable. The things I make out of the end cuts are hot formed and have no welds. This is for the purists which I can sometimes be. They take shape as I work them and often I don’t know exactly what they will be until I finish.

Sometimes they become rings.

Forged steel ring

The process of transforming small bits of debris into objects is fairly simple. Heat and beat. The result can be surprisingly sweet, and the process surprisingly therapeutic.

Heat to begin work

Heat after straightening

Forming ball end

Ball end formed

Drawn rod

I know that one day rust will wash away everything I have made. There will be no evidence left of my work or life, but for now and for as long as I have remaining, I will enjoy my contribution to “green”.

Bottle opener made from ring ends

Now back to work……..

Joy

2011-05-17T15:54:00.000-07:00

I’m pretty sure that I leave a part of myself in everything I make, but some things get to keep more of me than others. Those are the things that leave me, as a buddy says, a shell of my former shell. They are the things that have a specific destiny before I even begin them.

I don’t remember how I started, but I make urns. I think I probably thought I was just making fancy boxes, but they became something more. And up until now I have never made one for a specific situation or person. I didn’t think it would be so difficult to do. This particular urn was commissioned by a relative of mine for her sister who after a lifetime of fighting was succumbing to pancreatic cancer. And here I am going to have to admit that human dynamics are a mystery to me. I just mostly don’t understand people. People have talked to me about custom urns and I have sold urns that weren’t made for a specific purpose, or should I say, person, but most people don’t seem to want to spend much on . . . ashes? And as I write this I am still waiting to hear if the children will approve of the urn I made or not.

Two sisters born over eighty years ago and the older one still wants to protect and care for, maybe even touch, her sibling one last time. But maybe she won’t be allowed to after all. So you can see how tricky this was for me.

First I had to find a way to design a vessel that would pay tribute to a woman who, among other things, had twice defeated breast cancer thirty years apart, had raised four successful and productive children, had been the city desk editor at the Corpus Christi Caller-Times for many years starting at a time when women weren’t supposed to work. This is a woman who deserves respect and admiration. Love is a given. The urn, though, was also to house her husband’s remains. He too had died of cancer. And all of this had to satisfy everyone.

I know what you are thinking. How hard could this be?

Yeah, cake. I made about thirty cardboard mock ups. All sorts of shapes, flowers, plants, all the things these people enjoyed. It wasn’t really coming to me. Sometimes it’s intuitive and you have to let go before you can find it. So finally I had an idea that I thought would work and I started to build the urn.

The urn itself would be a combination of metals. Yeah, I know. Any couple is made up of two individuals and with luck the combination is transcendent. So I chose aluminum and steel. Two very different metals, one light weight and color, one dark and heavy. The canister would be aluminum and most of the framing and detail would be steel. This was incredibly generous of me because I don’t like to work with aluminum. I particularly don’t like to weld aluminum. Or grind it. Or breathing its fumes.(I wear a respirator) I made the canister aluminum anyway. A hexagon that had to be seam welded. Truly I must love somebody.

Aluminum is difficult. It’s unforgiving and it’s sneaky. There are a number of ways to weld aluminum. I use a TIG (Tungsten Inert Gas) welder, or heliarc. The name heliarc apparently comes from using a helium combination as the shielding gas. I use pure argon. So I don’t think I can call what I do heliarc. Anyway, aluminum is a heat dissipater. This means it gets hot all over and can suddenly decide to become liquid and because it’s aluminum it doesn’t change color with heat. It’s always the same color. Relentlessly. It’s really easy to burn yourself. Aluminum also needs to be really clean to weld and it’s not always easy to tell that it isn’t clean. So if you are going to try this at home, be sure to clean the aluminum surface before welding. That milky stuff is oxide. Aluminum rust. Sometimes you can see it. Sometimes you can’t see it. Either way it will mess up your weld. As I said, aluminum is not easy.

Aluminum seam weld

Because I wanted to fit the canister into the steel frame, I had to grind the welds. Aluminum is gummy and, as you can see by the video, there are no sparks. It just clogs up the grinding disc.

If you are wondering why I cut and welded rather than bent, there are two reasons. The first is I didn’t have a large sheet of aluminum. I had scraps from another project. The second reason is I probably can’t do the math. I haven’t tried but you only get one chance with aluminum so this way was safer. Also I don’t have sheet metal tools. No brakes or shears. See, bad math. That was three reasons.

I wanted the frame around the canister to be steel. And I guess the interesting thing about this, as I tell it, is that by comparison steel is easy. It’s forgiving and it’s straight forward. I also use a TIG welder when I weld aluminum but that’s just because I like it.

Fitting parts

Clamping for a snug fit

The frame was mostly about fitting though, and once I had the outside done, I moved on to the base and lid. As far as I know, you cannot weld aluminum to steel so in the places where they needed to be attached to each other I used bolts or screws. Then I did the coloring. I brushed the aluminum and blackened the steel with heat in the forge.

Fitting base

Fitting lid

Heating to color steel

I am happy with the juxtaposition of metals in this piece and I am happy with the other small comments and tributes that are hidden in the form. I hope that it will be well received. I hope that it gives comfort. And ultimately, I hope that it manages to be a visual reminder of a life beautifully and well lived. To Joy. Aptly named.

Joy

Now, back to work.

Pain, echoes and Ghosts

2011-05-08T22:01:00.000-07:00

I’m sort of fascinated by how easily I deceive myself. Normally I begin the New Year and end the old by prowling the desert alone. This gives me comfort and an inner calm that is hard for me to describe. And each year, for the last decade or so, has run into the next without much change or real personal or professional growth. At least it’s all been sort of imperceptible. This New Year was different and, because of that, I had high expectations for this year. It turns out that, so far, this has been a year filled with pain, echoes and ghosts. I’m trying not to take this personally.

When I first started out in business every job was painful on some level or another and, therefore, a learning experience of some sort. Either I would miscalculate the amount of time it took to do the job and end up working for very little, or I would not put some vital piece of information in the bid and it would cost me, or sometimes I would just take jobs that I didn’t have the tools or equipment or knowledge to do and that too would cause problems. I think this is a normal learning curve. After a couple of years I had moved past most of these situations and I had consistent customers and a fairly consistent product. I had an array of tools and equipment and I had developed much more knowledge and many more skills. So the challenges got farther apart and actually less interesting. Every once in a while one of my customers would ask for something out of the ordinary that required me to stretch and I enjoyed that.

Now, primarily because of the changing economy, I have been forced to expand my customer base and, with that, the types and styles of products I make. And I am back to making mistakes similar to those I made when I first started. I am enjoying these encounters with the ghost of my younger self. They show me how much more competent I am now than I was when I started. My craft has improved exponentially. My ability to do business is better as is the way I solve problems. It’s too bad that it has taken such a painful year to show me this and I could use some relief soon. Not that I'm not enjoying this level of pain.

I am choosing to continue to deceive myself about the way this year will ultimately go. I am choosing to look forward to making beautiful things and learning new ways of communicating. I am choosing to believe that the pain I am feeling will bring me positive growth. I am choosing to continue to push myself and I am choosing to try never to become complacent again. Finally, I am choosing to experience the pain, listen fully to the echoes and embrace the ghosts. I do hope this works out.

These are the final words of

Uncle Vanya

by Anton Checkov

SCENES FROM COUNTRY LIFE

IN FOUR ACTS

SONIA. What can we do? We must live our lives. Yes, we shall live, Uncle Vanya. We shall live through the long procession of days before us, and through the long evenings; we shall patiently bear the trials that fate imposes on us; we shall work for others without rest, both now and when we are old; and when our last hour comes we shall meet it humbly, and there, beyond the grave, we shall say that we have suffered and wept, that our life was bitter, and God will have pity on us. Ah, then dear, dear Uncle, we shall see that bright and beautiful life; we shall rejoice and look back upon our sorrow here; a tender smile--and--we shall rest. I have faith, Uncle, fervent, passionate faith. We shall rest. We shall rest. We shall hear the angels. We shall see heaven shining like a jewel. We shall see all evil and all our pain sink away in the great compassion that shall enfold the world. Our life will be as peaceful and tender and sweet as a caress. I have faith; I have faith. My poor, poor Uncle Vanya, you are crying! You have never known what happiness was, but wait, Uncle Vanya, wait! We shall rest. We shall rest. We shall rest.

I only saw it once but it made an impression.

I will get back to work.

I try to cope

2011-04-15T11:33:00.000-07:00

Years ago I was working with a very successful writer on a play he had written that was being workshopped in Westchester County somewhere. He had been one of the writers on All in the Family and . . . I don’t know what. I think, actually, he wrote for the Dick Van Dyke Show. And truly I would name drop here if I could remember his name. I can’t. Anyway, he had this amazing gigantic garden apartment in the West Village. I lived in Little Dominica, which may or may not be what it was or is actually called, in a roach and rat infested hovel somewhere between Harlem and some nice place farther north. On occasion, you know a clear day, I had a view of the guy across the alley getting out of the shower. It wasn’t really a selling point.

It was a nightmarish trek to get from the workshop space in Westchester to my apartment in the upper reaches of Manhattan. It took anywhere from two to three and a half hours depending on the trains, planes, buses and my feet. Oh and the time of day and perhaps even the time of year. Consequently one night when we had worked very late the playwright offered me a ride home. Successful sitcom writers do not ride public transportation. He drove a BMW. I naturally accepted his generous offer because turning my three hour commute, at that time of night, into a 20 minute car ride was a no brainer as they say. I discovered very quickly though that he didn’t take direction well. So naturally we got completely turned around in my neighborhood after getting off the highway and while I was trying to get him pointed in the right direction he ended up going the wrong way on a one way street. And again no surprise this happened in front of a policeman. I know that you somehow knew that was coming. Of course he got pulled over and the officer, as if following a sitcom script, said “sir, are you aware that this is a one way street?”. Remember this is a sitcom and he was a sitcom writer so his response was naturally “I'm only going one way”. Apparently someone forgot to point out to him along the way that NYC policemen carry guns. I guess you can get away with that if you are driving a BMW in a crappy neighborhood in upper Manhattan at 1:00 in the morning and you look terrified. So he didn’t get a ticket and I got home. He also made it home which I know because I saw him the next day.

But I learned from this experience that the one way to do something depends on your situation and perspective. And yes there is usually a best way but sometimes that is just not possible. I also learned that terror is not always useful. Panic can definitely get you turned around. So the other day I got an order for some brackets that are probably a variation on a design from some major European drapery hardware manufacturer. Only there is no way for me to confirm or refute this because, as with most of the orders I get, it came in the form of a napkin drawing. And don’t pretend that you don’t know what that is. Every designer and workroom I have ever worked with does it. It’s usually a crude pencil sketch of a complex part with some dimensions. They are actually a remarkably efficient way of communicating in my opinion. They just look rediculous.

How could I have questions?

The thing about purchase orders from designers is that they are a little bit like sheet music if you aren't a musician. They make no sense and somehow they can be translated into something beautiful by people who have spent years alone working on their craft and therefore can understand them. This napkins sketch was of a bracket that looked to be entirely machined. How can I tell? Trust me. Ahhh, I love saying that. Anyway, this would be tricky because, although I do have a lathe and grinders and a drill press, I do not have a milling machine which would have been the best way to do this. Not the only way, however. The brackets consisted of a ¾” round solid bar about 11” long with a 1 1/8” dia. cope cut out of one end for a rod to sit in. They mounted on a hidden stem that was attached to a covered back plate. Very slick. I'm sure you can see all of this in the napkin sketch.

After looking at the sketch for about a week I concluded that getting the cope was the trick without a milling machine. The rest of it was cake. I finally decided that my best choice was to use a drum sander in a die grinder. My only question was how ugly would this be. Okay, not my only question. I did wonder if it would work at all.

Turns out it was noisy and it was dirty and it was probably a little slower than a mill would have been but in the end the brackets came out looking just the way the designer wanted them to look. So, although I went the wrong way down the one way street, I still managed to get to my destination.

Coped round bar

There is probably no lesson here, there almost never is, but feel free to take what you want from it. I enjoyed making the tools I had do the work that needed to be done.

The unfinished completed brackets

Now back to work.

Billkram

2011-04-09T11:28:00.000-07:00

I don’t know how many of you have tried Bikram yoga. I haven’t. Bikram, as I understand it, is a yoga practice where you go into a room where the temperature is set at 105 degrees and you do difficult yoga poses for an hour. I’m not exactly sure why it needs to be 105 but I’m pretty sure I would be a limp noodle after that. I don’t really need to spend any more time in that sort of heat. The only thing that would make Bikram more like my work experience for six out of the twelve months of the year would be if it lasted many more hours and you had to wear a leather apron, a respirator and a hood. Oh and you would need to stand in front of a 2000 degree forge and the room would actually need to be more like 125 degrees. As you can imagine Bikram has very little appeal to me. So you might be surprised to find out that this past week I reacquainted myself with what I like to call Billkram. There is no yoga involved. I generally have a love/hate relationship with working in live theater. There is something compelling about the collaboration and the drive to curtain, but mostly it‘s painful. My buddy Bill is a “tech something” at a theater in LA. He’s in charge of getting the shows up. And I will say he is amazingly good at it. I haven’t actually ever met anybody that I think is better. If you have a theatrical vision, Bill is the guy to make it happen, and every once in a while he hires me to help on a project. The projects I’m brought in for are always challenging and thus we arrive at Billkram.

Billkram can best be described as a fitness program for the completely insane. In this case it involved climbing two flights of stairs followed by an open frame staircase followed by a 55’ of uncaged ladder to the grid in a theater built in 1918 to do some rigging. The platform at the base of the ladder was made of an open weave steel frame. That way if you lost your grip on the worn smooth rungs you would be julienned before you hit the stage floor another thirty feet below that. The grid itself was made up of 2” I-beams with 6” gaps. One of which was loose. My foot easily fits in a 6" gap. There was one moment while I was up there that I couldn’t decide if it was better to be there or on the stage when the big quake hit. There was almost a hundred years worth of junk just lying around. Old fly pulleys and turnbuckles and bolts. If it shook hard enough a lot of stuff would fall. Of course, so might I.

Anyway, you don’t really need heat to work up a sweat when you are experiencing terror, but fortunately it’s really hot eight and a half stories up. And in case you are wondering even if only one other person can see you, crawling is undignified. So once the trembling subsides a bit, you just need to walk over and around the fly system. Periodically you might trip and, of course, the crew on stage is flying things in and out so that the cables keep moving. Fortunately the "head light" that was lent to me failed to last more than a couple of minutes so I spent most of my time in the dark. Except when one of the other two people up there looked at me. Then I was blinded by their "head lights", which seemed to work just fine. In some ways it's probably better that I couldn't see anything but the gaps. That way if a bat or some rodent scurried by I wouldn't know it. This, in fact, only happened while I was in the alley.

The goal of this particular Billkram session was to climb to the heated grid and hoist up a few thousand pounds of black drapes and a large wall that was scenery. I might be exaggerating the weight, but I have no idea. For the wall we got to use manual chain hoists. This involved kneeling on the I-beams and pulling on a chain until entirely drenched with my own sweat and then pulling much more. I got a blister. As a side note, the people onstage wanted to know what we were dropping. I told them to get an umbrella. Not that we could hear each other at that distance. Anyway, that might have been the easy part. We didn’t use hoists for the drapes. Forty feet of black velvet pulled thirty feet into the air. Better get two umbrellas. After about seven hours it was time to climb down. The Billkram session was almost over. And, of course, by then you don’t care anymore if you drop the eight and a half stories. It would be a relief.

Obviously, though, I made it down and back up the next day for more. But once again I was reminded of why I always return to my cave to make things. Even the summers in front of the forge are easier than Billkram.

Now back to work.

My finial is filial

2011-03-12T15:54:00.000-08:00

When I first opened my door for business, occasionally someone would walk in off the street to ask me to make something for them. Often this was a bizarre experience because I speak the language of my profession and it‘s foreign to the casual customer. Undaunted, I would end up drawing things in the shop dust with a scrap of steel or crawling all over the racks and under the tables for examples of what I was talking about. This makes me sound a lot more graceful than I am. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. And yes, I am even less graceful than that. Anyway, as part of my pig-headed determination to educate the world and, of course, enlighten them all at once, I would use my vocabulary like a club. What good is it if you can’t beat someone with it? I would blather on about gauge this and alloy that and ….pa pa patina, and on and on. Truly, age does have gigantic advantages when it comes to some things. Reason being primary with ego shrinking running a close second. Mostly these casual customers would humor me or earnestly try to communicate in my language, but there was one that sticks out in my mind for her dogged determination to ignore my attempt to correct her. I’m pretty sure that this is because she was using the entirely incorrect word.

And I mean that in the nicest possible way.

She came in to get a drapery rod for her living room. If you can believe it, I actually advertised in the Yellow Pages. Now that I think about it, that’s probably how they all found me. What she wanted was a rod, some brackets, the appropriate number of rings (I’m told by designers that the number is one for every seven inches of fabric) and, as she put it, a nice pair of filials. Yep, even spell check knows that’s not right. . . . . “Okay, so you need a 120” rod (The appropriate diameter to span the distance, of course. ) two brackets, 34 rings and a pair of finials.” . . . She said, “Yes and I want the filials to look like leaves.” . . . . . . . . This went on for a while and finally she won. I gave up and sold her two lovely leaf filials.

But, as you have probably guessed by now, this got me thinking about the word finial and not to be forgotten filial. I have begun to wonder if it is possible to have leaf filials or if in fact they would be leaves filials.

So finial is pretty straight forward. The Oxford Pocket Dictionary of Current English (I know, it is hard to believe that there are this many dictionaries out there, and that I can find them. ) defines finial as a distinctive ornament at the apex of a roof, pinnacle, canopy, or similar structure in a building or as an ornament at the top, end, or corner of an object as in ornate curtain poles with decorative finials. Pole, rod, I always mess that up. The Online Etymology Dictionary says it originated in the mid fifteenth century and was a variant of final.

Filial, on the other hand, does not have anything to do with an apex of any sort. You know what though, I have no idea what the dictionary means on this one. It looks like it’s from Latin and also that . . . yeah, I have no idea. But there is a bit about affiliation. I like that. Anyway, filial has to do with sons and daughters in Latin. My daughters are not Latin so it probably doesn’t apply to them. I could put the entire Bookrags.com definition of filial here with the bit about breast feeding and whence but I figure I’m just going to put the link.

Good luck with that and enjoy. http://www.bookrags.com/tandf/filial-tf/

I never did find out if it was leaf or leaves filials. Oh well.

Now back to work……

Hardware the hard way.

2011-03-09T20:55:00.000-08:00

Recently I accompanied my parents on a trip to a Financial Planner. They seem to find this sort of outing entertaining or perhaps enlightening. I find it painful. I can think of a whole list of better ways to spend my time, but there I was. The enforcer or protector or whatever my role was supposed to be. I perform this role when asked. The problem, though, is that somehow I always get dragged into the game. So, as I was sitting there reading the pamphlet and listening to the pitch, I was sucked in. The Planner, innocently enough, asked what I do for a living or something to that effect. This is a simple question with a complex answer. I punted. I said I make hardware. I figure most people know what that is so it’s a safe answer. Nope. So I got to watch the look of admiration turn to disgust when I disabused Mr. Planner of the idea that I make computers and instead make door knobs and drapery rods. The session got weirder when he asked if I did beige. Beige what? Hardware of course. Are we still talking about computers? Nope. Believe it or not we were talking about cabinet hardware. Hmmmm…….okay most people address function or form before color but…….Mr. Planner only buys beige. . . . . . . . The whole episode was disturbing.

Anyway it got me thinking about the word hardware. So off I went to do some research. I decided to pull out my dictionary this time mostly because I couldn’t find much satisfactory information online. It was all that hard + ware stuff. Yeah, you think it’s the information age but some information is still in books. On page 523 of my Webster’s Dictionary there is a very nice drawing of a Harlequin and four definitions for hardware. The first is . . . fittings, cutlery, tools, utensils, or parts of machines made of metal. Nothing there about beige, but not exactly what I was thinking. The second wasn’t exactly what I thought either . . . major items of military or police equipment or their components. Okay so far nothing about door knobs or drapery rods. That sounded more like tanks and other scary stuff. On to the third definition from Webster’s which is the physical components of a vehicle or an apparatus such as a computer. Dang. Just plain disappointing. The fourth definition doesn’t even matter. It’s more of the same.

It’s too late for me. My world is crumbling.

A lesser person than me would probably either admit defeat at this point or proceed with a cover-up. I, however, am undaunted. I will ferret out the truth. Hardware is doorknobs and drapery rods.

Back to Oxford online where hardware is defined first as tool, machinery and other durable equipment. Here we go with the tanks again. Second as the physical components of a computer. Aaaaaaaaaaah. And third as tools, implements and other items used in home life and activities such as gardening. Whaaaa? I think that might be it though. Door knobs and drapery are used in home life and they are items. I’m pretty sure of that.

I feel better but I have a need to be first. A third place item just won’t do.

Ahhhh Google books. I was led to something called Cognitive Exploration of Language and Linguistics by Rene Driven. Who else? And on page 13 Rene says “The compound sign hardware consists of two simple words, hard and ware, which are both arbitrary.” Tell me you don’t love that. It is so intensely academic. Sounds like it means something but doesn’t actually mean anything. To continue . . . “But the compound is no longer arbitrary because the combination of the two parts leads to a more or less transparent meaning.” Again, I say, huh? I’m thinking that the meaning is not so transparent. As a matter of the moment, I’d say it’s totally opaque. There’s more . . . “The original meaning of hardware is ‘equipment and tools for the home and garden’.” Ah hah! There it is. The ORIGINAL meaning was door knobs and drapery rods. I need look no further but there is more. . . . “This meaning was extended to refer to the machinery and equipment of a computer, and by analogy, the programs running on the computer were called software.” And there you have it. Did I mention this passage was about software? Eh.

Also, the very first definition at Dictionary.com is . . . metalware, as tools, locks, hinges, or cutlery. Last . . . computers.

Now I definitely need to get back to work . . .

Flapjack

2011-03-08T20:54:00.000-08:00

Last weekend my daughter was making chocolate chip pancakes for herself for breakfast. I know what you’re thinking and I have tried to tell her, but she is convinced that gruel is inedible at any time of day. And apparently it doesn’t matter if eating chocolate chip pancakes first thing in the morning means that you start the day at the pinnacle so the rest is all downhill. Plus there is the issue of size. Her pancakes are as big as your head. Mine are dollar size. She makes merciless fun of the size of my pancakes. I figure with small ones you can eat more. As you can see none of the wisdom of my years is taken very seriously by my child. By now, I’m pretty sure, you are wondering what any of this has to do with metal. Nothing except that I love and use cast iron pans which has nothing to do with anything.

This is about the word flapjack. Flapjack is a mystery. Unlike the origin of other terms, I can't find anything on flapjack. This distresses me. The Oxford online dictionary defines it as a pancake. Okay, I get that. But, why? For its origin it gives this

from flap ( in the dialect sense 'toss a pancake') + jack

It has some nice links there but that means nothing and it's the best I can find . . . . sad . . . . .

Next time I will go back to making things and metal.

Back to work. . . .

The Phillips Head Screw

2011-03-08T18:30:00.000-08:00

So a couple of weeks ago I was opening a DVD player for a friend to retrieve a disc that had lodged itself inside. It was put together with Phillips head screws. A lot of things are. Anyway, since I wasn’t anywhere near any of my tools I had to use hers. When she handed me the two screw drivers she had borrowed for the occasion she said “here’s the flat one and here’s the Phyllis head.” . . . . . . . . . hmmm. It was a Phyllis head in name only. Rats had apparently found it appetizing and gnawed most of the drive end off. I managed to make it work but the situation made me think about the name and shape of the Phillips head screw and driver so I did a little research. This is what I found.

The Phillips head screw was named after its inventor. I know . Came as a shock to me too. Anyway, the part that was surprising to me was that there are entire websites dedicated to the history of screws and screw drivers. I will list some of them below.

Back to the Phillips head screw. It was invented by Henry F. Phillips (1890–1958) in 1937. All of the sites agree on this. Most agree that it became popular because it was self aligning which was an asset on an assembly line. Unlike previous screw types, driver placement didn’t need to be exact so it sped up the process of assembly. This makes sense, but for me it also explains why most Phillips head screw drivers look like rats have eaten them. If the pressure exerted on the driver when driving isn’t correct it bounces around on the screw and gets chewed up, and then if you go too far it jumps around too. Eh, there is never a perfect solution for every situation. Anyway, Cadillac was the first company to use the Phillips head screw and then other automobile manufacturers followed. While the Phillips head screw took over the world Mr. Phillips did not. He was apparently stripped of his patent and died in obscurity. Well, at least as obscure as you can die with your name all over almost every screw made.

Did I mention he was from Portland, Oregon? I don’t know why that matters but it’s in every description of his invention. Must have come as a shock to some.

Here are some links

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_F._Phillips Wikipedia of course.

http://www.marfas.com/phillips.shtml A fastener company. This is pretty thorough.

http://www.phillips-screw.com/history_about_phillips.htm And not to be outdone, the Phillips screw company. This has it all. Way more than the average person wants to know about screws.

Back to work…