I've made a virtue of necessity this weekend, as I'm off up to that there London for two days this week to help my lovely, newly qualified teacher daughter pack up her possessions and prepare for her 10th house move in 10 years.
So, due to being 'hors de combat' during the working week I've been working like a good 'un all weekend.
For me, one of the delights of moving from being a miniature dollmaker, to a miniature toymaker, means that I now get to work with a huge variety of different materials, which gives me the opportunity to use POWER TOOLS.
YAAAAYYY!
Miniature power tools I grant you, but power tools nonetheless. So over the course of the weekend I've been drilling, cutting and jigsawing with my three favourite tools.
For fellow power tool enthusiasts, here are my top 3.
For drilling, I use a Minicraft Drill, clamped vertically in a drill stand. I mostly use extremely fine drill bits, marginally thicker than a human hair. I also have a variable speed transformer which makes light work of drilling through any thickness of wood I use.
For cutting quantities of wood (straight cuts) I have a Proxxon table saw, with a scary circular saw blade, thankfully sheathed under a guard. It makes short work of cutting through jelutong or mahogany stripwood, and I can be sure that all the lengths are exactly the same.
For some arcane reason, there is an exhortation on the front of the machine which indicates that UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES should I allow a bull to push the wood through the machine.
This puts me in something of a quandary, as I'm a Taurean. I'm marginally mollified that thus far nothing bad has happened to me. Nevertheless, I remain on my guard.
For free-hand cutting, I have a lovely little Minitool Jigsaw, which is just perfect for cutting very small, intricate shapes.
I'm a bit of a mini power tool geek, so I do have several other miniature marvels, all designed to take the hard work out of cutting/sawing/sanding/shaping, but these are my top 3.
As to exactly WHAT I've been cutting/sawing/shaping etc you will have to wait till 1 July for the release of our next Kit of the Month, which, I have to say, is my favourite to date and is designed to evoke the epitome of the quintessential British summer.
No.
It's NOT an umbrella.
Can you guess what it is yet?
Sometimes the simplest tools are the most useful. There are few tools I use EVERY day, and this pair of tweezers is one of them....
So far, so simple.
But there are features about these precision tweezers which make them indispensable.....
Firstly they have lovely angled points which are very fine. In addition, the inside edges of the points are finely ridged, which help provide a firm grip to any tiny item.
They are nicely weighted and balanced, and easy to use. The 'springing' is very light and consequently they aren't tiring to use for prolonged periods.
I've had this particular pair for nigh on 20 years and have only been able to find only one other identical pair languishing in the Hastings Sewing Centre several years ago. It was from old stock and despite extensive internet searching I have never found another, so I guard my two pairs very closely.
Over the years I've tried many other tweezers, including the dreadfully counter-intuitive 'reverse tweezers' which have a default closed position, and have to be squeezed to open them, but always return to my old favourites.
They have a multitude of uses, including turning tiny sleeves, placing individual silk bows and roses, and of course creating miniature wigs.
I have many favourite tools, but the one which is completely indispensable, and without which I simply couldn't carry on the business, is my electric kiln. In simple terms, a kiln is a furnace, or oven for burning, baking or drying something, or more commonly for firing pottery.
This is the biggest top-loading kiln I could find which would operate via a 13 amp standard UK electric plug and still reach a top temperature of 1260 degrees Celsius, the temperature required to vitrify porcelain.
Inside you can see the thick, insulating kiln bricks, which help keep all the heat inside, and running in channels around the inside edge, the spiral, metal kiln elements, which glow white hot at their top temperature. Within this firing chamber I can place up to four shelves, one on top of the other, separated by shelf props, in order to maximise the firing capacity.
This is only my second kiln in 25 years. The first, which I had for 15 years, was a Cromartie Hobbytech 40, slightly smaller and a manual kiln. When I decided that I wanted to upgrade to a computer controlled kiln, I was able to sell my old for the same price as I bought it.
Cromartie kilns are THAT good.
Sadly, Cromartie, a UK firm based in the heart of the potteries district of Stoke-on-Trent are no longer making kilns, but due to their excellent build quality, existing Cromartie kilns will continue in use for many years to come.
My firing schedules consists of three different stages - soft firing, bisque firing and china paint firing, each of which has different ramp times, temperatures, soak times etc, which I have programmed into the computer controller. Once it's set to fire, the computer takes over and regulates the whole process, which takes the guesswork out of things.
However, skill and experience are required in order to get perfect firing results and I have worked out my own set of firing programmes, gleaned from hundreds of firings over the past quarter of a century. These programmes have to be adjusted according to the type of porcelain slip I'm using, the size of the castings and age of the kiln elements, among several other factors.
Having only recently replaced the kiln elements, I've been able to knock several hours off a full bisque firing, as the new elements can reach the required top temperature much more quickly. However this means that I have to reduce the soak times and adjust the top temperature to suit the tiny pieces I'm firing, otherwise I risk a catastrophic overfire.
Information on the various firing schedules will be found in the 'How It's Made' category on the right.
I've just had a very exciting delivery.
The polystyrene box looks uncannily similar to those seen in medical documentaries, urgently transporting donor organs via police escorted couriers.
Fleetingly I considered that it might contain a new brain, to replace my dysfunctional, sclerosis raddled one, but no.
The contents were much more exciting than that.....
Can you guess what it is yet?
After carefully opening the lid, the vaguely medical theme continued with layers of air-filled plastic bubbles laid over two boxes as if to keep the contents temperature controlled and hermetically sealed.
Ta dah...!!!!
I can probably guess what you're thinking.
How can I get so excited about a bag of mud?
Well you're probably right. I don't get out much. However, regular readers will remember the sturm and drang earlier this year when I couldn't find a source of porcelain casting slip the same as the one I'd been using for over two decades, and which has been discontinued. At the time there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth as I tried an alternative slip which was absolutely dreadful for very tiny castings.
Then my supplier sent me a sample box of a brand new slip, apparently made to the original formulation which I had so loved.
The rest, as they say, is fairly recent history. For the past few days I've been using slip from the sample box, which is practically perfect in every way. I used the last few spoonfuls yesterday so the timely arrival of two 3 litre boxes this morning is very welcome.
I have only one minor gripe. Presumably in order to facilitate shipping, the company (New York Doll Products) have abandoned the use of plastic tubs and now package the slip in a heavy duty plastic bag, packed within a cardboard box. Obviously, once opened the slip must be decanted into an airtight container so it's just as well that I still have two old Seeley's tubs, otherwise I would be, to use a technical term, buggered.
There is one advantage to the polybag packaging though. During storage, slip gradually settles, resulting in a very thick sludge at the bottom and very watery sludge at the top. Before use the slip must be thoroughly mixed. If it's in a plastic tub, this necessitates the use of a long handled slotted spoon, and lots of elbow grease. However in the bag it's possible to pummel the slip, breaking up any lumps and facilitating the mixing process, so that when it's subsequently poured into a tub the mixing is soooooo much easier.
Well that's the theory anyway. I'll let you know later how it works in practice.....
In almost 25 years of miniature dollmaking, and having lately moved down a notch to micro dollmaking, I've often been asked by my students about the best tools.
Every artist, working in whatever media, will have their own favourite tools. Most will have one or two tools, without which they simply couldn't do what they do.
I am no exception, and over the years I have collected a jealously guarded set of tools which I have found to be perfect for my use, and I will reveal them gradually over time, neatly saved and catalogued in the sensibly named Useful Stuff archive.
But where to begin..... there are so many? Some I use almost every day, some only occasionally and a few for just one specific task....
I'll start with the humble scissors. This is one tool which EVERYONE will have in their craft toolbox, and usually more than one pair for different purposes.... paper, fabric, metallics, leather. Using fabric scissors to cut paper, or paper scissors to cut metallics will very quickly end in tears. I have found, over the years, that even very expensive scissors are totally unforgiving when used indiscriminately. I keep my different use scissors separately from one another to avoid these incidents.
However, the one pair of scissors I can't do without, for tiny, micro work is my detail scissors.
They are small and short, just 4" (10cm) long and have fiendishly sharp blades with pin-point sharp points. Definitely NOT scissors for running with. They can be fiddly to use at first, especially if you're used to dressmaking scissors, but it's well worth persevering with them as they are an absolute boon to the micro dressmaker.
Mine have soft, rubbery inserts inside the handles to help with their handling, and carbon coating on the blades which makes them non-stick. I know this works because even glue won't stick to them, another point in their favour.
There is nothing more annoying, when trying to snip off a length of fine silk ribbon close up against a tiny doll, than finding that the very tips of the scissors blades are blunt, and rather than a lovely clean, crisp cut there are messy, fraying 'chewed edges' as the blades mash through the silk.
Equally, the tips of normal scissors are usually much too big to get into the tiny space between neck and shoulders, or under minute arms.
I usually have two pairs in use at any one time.... one for silk ribbons only, the other for fine lace, wigging viscose, thin leather etc when I need to cut on the doll. For 'rough' cuts I use normal (but still smallish) embroidery scissors. Despite this segregation I still find that I need to replace them usually twice a year, and the difference when I first use a new pair is definitely noticeable, despite the care I lavish on them at all times.
So if your micro dollmaking toolbox doesn't include at least two pairs of these then you're just making life more difficult for than it needs to be.
Don't even get me started on left-handed scissors though......
