Again, "Adventure" may be over-stating things a bit but who cares. All of life should be an adventure.
To the left, the final, aluminum pattern for a new knuckle-duster.
It's of the type that I call the screaming monkey. I got the term from an old (1981) article on knuck collecting. The article used to be on Dave Grant's site but I can't make the link work.
Anyway, it looks like a screaming monkey.
I wrote about this way back when, and posted this next photo.
Thought to be the oldest in its owner's collection, Chinese, late 18th - early 19th century.
Seemingly the ancestor to the monkey.
The monkey is a design that always says "19th century hoodlum" to me.
But I digress. I promised adventure.
What I did: I tortured a photo into the proper size and printed it out.
Said image was then glued onto a double thickness of 1/8" Masonite.
Simply a matter of cutting away everything that didn't look like a knuckleduster and, Hey Presto! A horrible, chunky thing that is, at least finished enough to cast an aluminum one from.
That one, pictured to the right then had enough rigidity to handle more aggressive grinding and filing. To make the palm pad I set him upright in a blob of Bondo which was then shaped.
Note that the Chinese original had rather wicked little spikes. Over time these evolved into the round "spigots" you see in the top photo. Far more practical and they provide perfect spots for the metal to enter the mold.
I made them by gluing short sections of 3/8" dowel to each finger loop. As you can see, one didn't survive the process but no matter. It served exactly long enough.And so, the maiden voyage of this pattern produced two out of three pours. Woo Hoo!
The gods of casting have been nice to me lately.
In closing, this little fella is the newest member of our happy, knuckle-duster family.
The new page isn't up yet but here's the family photo.
4 comments:
Dammnit Dan, wish you'd quit bragging on stuff I want to buy while I still have two paid for projects on your to-do shelf! Sheesh!
They're on a different shelf now.
The "mostly done" shelf.
In your little hands in a week or so.
Big baby.
Lovely work, I have just found your blog and am gradually going through all the posts,
I also make weapons and i think you would like my blog too, i make very similar items to yours, but in a totally different way, i use drill and files as opposed to melting and pouring the metal.
Mike.
Thank you.
I checked out your place and you do nice work as well. The drilling and filing seems like too much work to me.
Anyway, I'll read more later.
I'll post a link to you.
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