Timasomo 2020 Thread #5: Final Update Thread
IMPORTANT INFORMATION
Deadlines
The creative portion for Timasomo ends at 11:59:59 PM on November 30, 2020, relative to wherever you are.
The showcase will be next Sunday, December 6th (probably posted around 18:00:00 GMT).
Next Steps
Finish up your project in the next two days. You have the following week to prepare your showcase. This means you can edit, add polish, find hosting, etc. It's your week to get your project ready for however you're wishing to present it! And if you have to cram in a little creativity in that time too, well, I won't say anything. :)
Showcase Logistics
Changes
You can see last year's Timasomo showcase here. It will look fairly similar, but there are going to be a few changes this year based on feedback from last year:
- The Showcase will be hosted in ~talk, not ~creative, to expose the projects to the wider Tildes audience.
- Participants will post their own projects in the comments rather than me posting them within the topic (this is so people don't have to ping creators, and to give participants better control of their showcase entries)
Preparing Your Showcase
- Give your project a title, and use the
#markdown to make it stand out in the showcase thread! - Link to your project in whatever way works best for your project.
- Give an "creator statement" that contextualizes what your project is.
Showcase FAQ
Do I have to share my whole project?
Nope! Only share what you're comfortable with! Snippets, excerpts, screenshots, or even just a summary from you are all fine. Tildes is a privacy-respecting site, and that extends to Timasomo! :)
What if I have more than one project to showcase?
Awesome! Make more than one entry in the showcase!
What if I didn't meet my goal?
It's up to you if you want to participate in the showcase. Even if you didn't meet your goal but still feel you want to share what you did accomplish, that's fine! If not, no worries!
What if I need hosting for files/images?
Please ask here! There are plenty of people here who can help with that.
What if I have a question not covered here?
Please ask here or by PM!
Timasomo FAQ
What is Timasomo?
Timasomo is "Tildes' Make Something Month": a creative community challenge that takes place in the month of November. It was inspired by NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month. The first ever Timasomo took place last year. You can see the threads for the previous Timasomo using the timasomo tag, and you can see the final showcase thread of creations here.
What are the rules?
Timasomo is self-driven and its goals are self-selected. On November 1st, participants will commit to a creative project (or projects) that they plan to complete within the month of November. There is no restriction on the methods/products of creativity: writing, painting, code, food, photos, crafts, songs -- if it's creative expression for you, it works for Timasomo!Though most will be participating individually, collaborations are welcome too!
What is the schedule?
Timasomo begins November 1st and ends November 30th. All creative output towards your goal(s) should be confined to this time. This week prior to the start of November is for planning, and there will be a few days at the beginning of December given to "finishing touches" before we have our final thread, which will be a showcase of all the completed works. Below are the dates that I will be posting weekly threads:
Sunday, October 18, 2020: Announcement Thread
Sunday, October 25, 2020: Planning Thread
Sunday, November 1, 2020: Roll Call Thread
Sunday, November 8, 2020: Update Thread #1
Sunday, November 15, 2020: Update Thread #2
Sunday, November 22, 2020: Update Thread #3
Sunday, November 29, 2020: Final Update Thread
Sunday, December 6, 2020: Timasomo Showcase Thread
This announcement will be posted in ~tildes. All Timasomo process threads will be hosted in ~creative. The final Timasomo Showcase thread will be posted in ~talk.
Can I participate?
Yes! Timasomo is open to anyone on Tildes! The greater Tildes community is also encouraged to participate in discussion threads even if you are not actively working towards a creative goal. This is meant to be an inclusive community event -- all are welcome! If you are interested in participating but do not have a Tildes login, please e-mail the invite request address here for an invite to the community.
Participants will formally announce their plans to enter into Timasomo on Sunday, November 1st, in the Roll Call thread. If you are planning to participate or just want to follow the event, please make sure you are subscribed to ~creative where all of the update threads will be posted.
What if I have ideas for how to run the event?
Please share them here! I am facilitating the event, but I am completely open to feedback and suggestions to make this the best event possible. I want this to be Tildes' event, not kfwyre's!
As the event's organizer, I'm outright embarrassed to post this, but I'm going to have to throw in the towel on my personal project. In short, this was not my month. High, sustained anxiety has taken the wind out of my sails and nearly capsized my boat outright -- I'm putting all my energy towards just staying afloat, and that leaves no room for creativity.
Despite me bowing out personally, Timasomo has been a bright spot in an otherwise awful month. Even though I haven't responded to all of them (I'm trying to save my comments for the showcase!), I have loved reading every single update participants have posted, and I am so thrilled to see everyone's final work in the showcase next week.
We have some amazing people here doing amazing things, and while I wasn't able to join that this time, know that I'm on the sidelines cheering each and every single one of you on!
I can only really echo what @tindall says here. I'm so glad you put this together. Not just because it made me get my shit together and actually make some of the stuff I've been not quite doing for ages, but also because I've got to see and hear about other people's amazing projects.
You need to look after your health above everything else, there's nothing to be embarrassed about by taking care of yourself. I hope you feel better soon.
I posted a draft of my design piece to my website: Pueblo, the archetypal community platform. I think it's mostly done, but I still feel like there's something missing, which is why I kept it as a draft. You, dear reader, can help: Is there anything I haven't addressed or that I'm missing? Let me know!
I'm going to echo @tindall -- this is exceptional! The level of thought and effort you put into it is amazing, and I love how principled each and every single part of it is.
I am frantically knitting as we speak! I'm avoiding weaving in ends as I go since that takes too much time, so that'll be my work for the week in terms of polish, as well as blocking. Weaving in ends is both peaceful and annoying and there'll be like 50+ strands for me to weave in aha. It's both a favorite and least favorite part.
I have no idea what this does (well, I gather that it's a synthesiser) but it looks great, I love it. I dig all the colourful cables as well!
I believe that I have taken all ten shots for my collection. Now comes the challenge of printing them in the darkroom, which is what I'll be doing all this week
I’ve got about 3250 words left to write to meet my goal, and I’ve had several days over 3000, so I think it’s doable! So far, I’ve only had two zero days, which is pretty wild considering I traveled twice and did a long distance bike ride one weekend.
This week has been a bit up and down. I started on a new knife, something a bit more in the traditional Western cook's knife vein.
After a bit of fiddling around I got a shape I was happy with and made it ready for heat-treating. Because I'm trying to get a differential hardening effect known as a hamon line that involves covering the spine and some of the blade in clay. It ends up looking pretty gnarly before going into the forge.
This is carbon steel not stainless, so it needs to be brought down from critical temperature relatively fast. Hence the big jar of oil. This is obviously a glass jar which is stupid but I didn't have anything more suitable and considering how incredibly unsuitable this is, that's quite an impressive degree of not being prepared on my part. It's just everyday rapeseed oil such as you might cook with, it's not quite as good as dedicated quenching oils but it's pretty close - on the other hand it's £1/litre and I can buy it from my local supermarket.
I did actually manage to get some video of the heat treat, which was a fairly perilous bit of camera work considering my attention was mostly elsewhere, but you can sort of see what's going on.
Right after heat treating it's onto cryo treatment, aka 'hide knife under a bag of peas and frozen prawns while having a cup of tea'. Cryo does help hardening, even if it is only a few degrees below zero. Pros like to use dry ice or LN2 but if I had liquid nitrogen around I wouldn't be messing about making knives, I'd be making ice-cream. Anyway, after the freezer it's into the oven where it soaks for two hours at 200C. This reduces the hardness - the amount depends on the temperature - but gives you increased toughness and reduces brittleness in exhange. Freshly out of heat treating, carbon steel is very very hard but so brittle you could snap it with your hands.
Which is exactly what I did. Sigh. There was a tiny bit of bend in the tang, so I heated it up with a a torch and ever so gently bent it straight again. Except I went just a little bit too far (and I thought I was overdoing it while I did it) and this happened. I mean, it's metal, it happens. Such is the way of things. But it was my fault and I'm annoyed with myself.
I did feel like I should at least give the blade a quick and dirty polish so I can stick it in some etchant to see if the hamon had worked out. It had not. I didn't think it was going to, but it would have been nice to salvage something from this.
Ho hum. I've still got this nakiri knife I've been working on, the texturing for which was done using the modded hammer I made a couple of weeks back. I have monday free so I might be able to make some more progress on that but I doubt I'll have it finished by midnight.
That heat treatment video is 🔥, but that snap is heartbreaking. I can't imagine how that must feel!
Also, don't stress the deadline. Done or not I still hope you share your work in the showcase and link all of your update posts too! You have gone above and beyond in documenting your process and I have loved following it and hope many others get to see it. It has given me a genuine appreciation for the work and craftsmanship that goes into everyday objects that I normally take for granted.
I was using my kitchen knife the other day and I was thinking of your posts while doing so. Mine is undoubtedly mass produced and not handcrafted like your work, but even so I was imagining how the knife started out and all the steps it had to go through before it became the tool I was holding in my hand. I've always just kind of taken for granted that we have items like that, and your posts have shown me a side to things that I don't normally consider. I find myself looking at things like door handles and couch cushions differently -- imagining them not as the completed objects they are, but as the uncrafted items they once were until honed and shaped by deliberate expertise.
Thanks for sharing your expertise with us. :)
Aww, thanks. I appreciate that. "Expertise" might be a bit strong for the sort of fumbling around I've been doing but I'm glad you've been enjoying it.
Occasionally I get a bit freaked out when I remember that someone designed almost everything I see. Not just my computer or chair, but the screws holding them together, and the screwdrivers that put those screws in, and the machines that made the screwdrivers and the bolts that hold that together and and and.
Do you weld? Can the handle be welded back on? Not sure the metals you're using, but that's generally my approach when I break something.
Well, I have a welder. To say I can actually weld is probably a little optimistic. I might give it a shot though, it's not like the tang needs all that much strength, especially once it's been glued into a handle. I could always use silver solder to braze it, seeing as I have plenty of solder around for jewellery work. Solder should be strong enough to do the job.
Since it's on the handle it doesn't have to be pretty either, just penetrate and stick. After that grind away anything sticking up and you're good. Although if you're more skilled with solder that should work just fine.
So I recorded a song this weekend. I am happy I managed to make at least one, even though I think it's terrible, still I managed to do my goal, that was definitely set sky high. The song is very rough and diy (read as bad). Maybe I'll be able to make more tomorrow, we'll see!
Luckily one important deadline got delayed for a few more days, allowing me to spend yesterday procrastinating by recording more music! So yesterday I managed to finish one more track and a short intro track. I will use the remaining time before the showcase happens to upload the stuff somewhere (probably youtube) and to choose/create some cool photo/image as cover art for the songs.
This will be the first time sharing my music. I made some music for my Ludum Dare games, but that doesn't contain my terrible singing. I am actually kind of happy with one of the tracks, so I am debating if I even want to show you guys both of them or just the one I like. Like both of the tracks are cringy and bad, buuut... one of them is cringier and bader. I think I will post both of them in the end but god, I am not good at this!
Last update before the showcase, wanted to wait until December 1st to comment just in case I got more done, but I didn't so could have updated yesterday. Oh well...
Last week's update with subsequent links to all previous updates is here.
So the to do list after last weekend:
Only one and a half of those were done.
Valve covers didn't get painted because I found I didn't have the correct grit pads or steel wool to prep them and no hardware store near me has them in stock either. So I'm looking for a non-Bezos owned place to get them at a reasonable price.
I moved on to blasting the head and boy was that an ordeal. Last week I sent at least three cans of brake cleaner through the head in an attempt to get all the coagulated oil out of it, after spending a considerable amount of time in the blasting cabinet it was apparent that it wasn't enough. The soda in the cabinet had also given up the ghost and was now contaminated with so much crud that it needed to be emptied, the gun was clogging on a regular basis and impeding work. As you're blasting it's difficult to notice when the soda has done all it can; the amount of soda in the cabinet was reduced (evidence that the dust separator system is working) significantly, but still looked okay. That is until you empty it, pour in new media, and realize the stuff you drained out was a dull gray compared to originally being a bright white. Out of the blast cabinet the residual powder makes the head look cleaner than it is and it's difficult to see what foul beasts lurk in the hidden chunky oil...
For example, I had completely forgotten about the head bolt washers as it had been a long time since I'd removed the head from the longblock and they were hidden under the oil bog. Lo and behold I am reminded when one goes flying out during the air gun blowing sessions and I subsequently go fishing for the rest of them with a magnet (all accounted for thankfully). The valve stem seals disintegrate as I remove them and the valve spring seats aren't found until the third degreasing session. In total the head alone (not counting cams, valve covers, or individual head components like springs and valves) was cleaned four times to get to an "eh, good enough for reassembly" point.1
But prior to reassembly there is a need to clean up the springs, retainers, and valves.2 The latter of which had an insane amount of hardened deposits on them that just were not coming off with conventional (brush, pliers, picks, screwdrivers) means, so into the blast cabinet they went as well. Those done, new valve seals installed, and a dremel with a brass bristle brush on the ports means it's time to reassemble! All goes well with the valve keeper removal and install tool until I get to the very last valve... Here I find that I'm missing a valve keeper/lock. I remember accounting for all of them when I removed them, so no idea where it could have gone, but it derails the reassembly entirely (not that I was going to completely finish anyway). I bought the entire stock that RockAuto had in this size (14 of them) as an old gearhead with old cars knows that if you can only find a part for your old car in one place, buy all of them because you'll probably never find them again, but they won't be here until the end of the week.
So that's where it stops, progress made, but unfinished within the time allotted.
1
There is little to no old oil left and it's mostly just staining accumulated over the years. I could continue blasting it, but we're past the point of diminishing returns and I'll be changing the oil frequently for the first 1,000 miles anyway.
2
Shamelessly pilfered my wife's silicone bakeware that she was about to donate because she doesn't use or like it. I also have some in heart shapes now!
My comment to @mat applies to you as well: don't worry about your final status! You also have gone above and beyond with this (so many pictures!), and I've LOVED following your posts. They've given me an incredible appreciation for what you're doing. I hope you choose to showcase everything that you've accomplished next week!
I have a mostly working site locally. There have been some deviations from the original, but in general things are working, and I'm relatively happy.
I will be working on launching the site, and I have a list of To-Dos that I want to figure out over the course of the next week that's relevant both for my personal site and for my business' site, which I used the same technology to revamp.
I didn't get all the icons I want turned into SVGs, but the barebones of the site that I wanted is here, and working on it is relatively delightful.
For my "main project" (ha ha, if nobody was following updates, I've also done a boatload of home renovation this month unexpectedly) things are almost entirely finished. I might put on another coat of primer - there are a few places that I missed, and fresh drywall drinks up primer like that's its job. I guess that is its job. Most everywhere is looking good, and it's nice to have a second functional washroom in the house again, especially five people.
Edit: Also - I just realized that the home page needs a bit of polish, so I'll be working on that.
Edit 2: The site and the repo.
Posting late today because I spent a lot of time to be able to say that I am done writing! I will try to edit tomorrow, then spend the rest of cleanup week on Advent of Code and getting my static site generator to generate a map of my site so that search engines and bots can find it, though it looks like searches for the site name do return my site first, so that's promising. This might be the reason I've had an email address up there for most of a year now and no one has emailed it :(