10-5-2009

so lately I've been a little bit unhappy with the task of etching scales. every day, I have to move my chair into the bathroom, set up the little copper twig on a board on the chair over a piece of cardboard to catch the asphaltum drips. I have to put the fan on and open windows (if it's not too cold out) and then, after dipping, I have to wait bloody 3 hours for them to dry before I can do the relatively quick step of actually scratching away the design. the acid takes another hour and a half per batch, and it takes forever to get all those scales onto strips of tape. but enough about that, I did my thirty for the day.

I balanced the camera on the ladder leading up to my lofted bed for a much cleaner shot tonight. this is the left shoulder seam. it fought me very hard while I tried to put 3 rings into each scale and took well over two hours for just 28 connections. afterwards, i found a better way to do the shoulder seams, but I won't think about that right now.

I wanted to show as little of the stainless steel split rings as possible, so it was unfortunate that these seams show so much stainless. however, I found that if I tried hard enough, I could add yet another scale to those poor rings to form a single row of scales that cover the rings nicely (though they have a tendency to move around a bit). these are the four rings at the bottom of the seam there. however, why am I worrying about this at all? the shoulders will be completely hidden by the bronze plate armour anyway.