Cane Slicing
My orders have been slowly trickling in, and some of the moulds have arrived! Along with the canes, flatback gems, felting tools and mobile cords! First of all I hooked up the completed charms onto the mobile cords, and are now slowly decorating them with gems and the canes and what not. I decided to use more of the varnish to stick them onto to the charms as I found out that super glue, or craft glue, when it dries, it tends to shrink and the paint and varnish that it is sticking to cracks, ugh, so the gloss is pretty good for sticking things on, and if I coat it over with the gloss, I'm hoping it will keep them on and protect it - so far it seems to be doing a pretty good job :D
I had some trouble slicing the canes, since (I'm not sure if I have mentioned it before) I have unsteady hands sometimes, so when I first tried to cut the canes by hand, I made uneven slices, or half slices, and that peeved me off, since I needed relatively thin and even slices, else it would stick out from the clay charm like a sore thumb. So online I went again! And I found some techniques, they suggested on using two hands, rolling the cane while cutting, but knowing that wouldn't work for me - and it was time consuming - I searched for a cane slicing tool. They do have a few online, but the contraption was a bit costly, and usually used for the much larger canes, and not the little ones.
At a loss, I faced the prospect of cutting them by hand (the horrors!) but then looking around my desk, I wondered if I can make my own cane slicing contraption - and I did! I figured out that I needed a straight edge, as a guideline for my blade to cut the cane, so some sort of guillotine-esque contraption needed to be made. I tried out a few things, and what I made is pretty simple. All it needed was a bull clip or a fold back clip and a cutting mat, and of course the cane and the blade.
Basically what you do is clip the cane in between the teeth of the fold back clip, and on one end, make it peek out about a millimeter or so or whatever thickness you want.
This picture came out quite nicely, huh, my camera is usually really bad at taking pictures of tiny things.
And then placing it flat on the mat, and making sure the cane and the bottom of the clip is also flat, you use the edge of the clip as a guide, and angle the blade towards the clip itself and slice. It's a bit hard to take a picture with one hand T-T
By keeping the blade as close to the clip's edge, it's possible to cut the cane evenly! And ta-dah! An even slice
I'll try to show how thin it actually came out:
It's a bit thinner than a piece of paper I think. And if I place it on the blade, it looks about to be as thin as the blade itself!
You have to make sure that the blade is as close to the edge of the clip as possible, else it'll go off on it's own tangent and cut unevenly or even cut things in half, since the slice I want is quite thin. But if you do it right - voila! A thin even slice, without the stress of unsteady hands and having to practice heaps to do perfect slices!
Here's a link to a youtube video I made, if the pictures were a bit hard to understand - although the video quality ain't good, my camera is pretty standard, geh - but the video should be clear enough to be understandable.
I can't believe no-one has figure that out yet - or at least I think not. Hopefully someone who does have trouble slicing canes will read this and it'll help them out ^_^
The only problem I had, was with canes that aren't round, the clip I was using was 25mm, and it's fine for holding the round-ish cylindrical canes, but it's bad at holding triangular shapes, the cane would slip and won't hold still. Perhaps if I pad the teeth on the inside it would create a better grip and it won't slip, and the pad can fill in the cane and make it 'cylindrical' enough for the clip to hold on. And when I cut the cane down to a smaller size, it should be able to hold it for longer. But that problem was solved by using an even smaller fold-back clip, a 15mm sized one. It grips onto the cane a lot more firmly than the 25mm, and since it's smaller (actually the smallest I could find) I can slice more of the cane, and when it can't be used anymore when the cane becomes too short to be held by the clip, I'll either cut the rest by hand or just, um, ignore it, lol.
EDIT: Actually I could shove another cane behind it, kind of like putting in more staples in a stapler, it'll just have to be the same shape as the short cane, and i should be able to slice the whole thing ^_^
Currently I'm trying out the moulding kits I've gotten, but I have yet to make my own moulds, I would need to make a perfect clay charm of each thing I have and bake it and use it for the mould, the ones I have have some imperfections or are already painted. And as for the needle felting, I may do that when I've researched more and figured out what I want to make :D
I had some trouble slicing the canes, since (I'm not sure if I have mentioned it before) I have unsteady hands sometimes, so when I first tried to cut the canes by hand, I made uneven slices, or half slices, and that peeved me off, since I needed relatively thin and even slices, else it would stick out from the clay charm like a sore thumb. So online I went again! And I found some techniques, they suggested on using two hands, rolling the cane while cutting, but knowing that wouldn't work for me - and it was time consuming - I searched for a cane slicing tool. They do have a few online, but the contraption was a bit costly, and usually used for the much larger canes, and not the little ones.
At a loss, I faced the prospect of cutting them by hand (the horrors!) but then looking around my desk, I wondered if I can make my own cane slicing contraption - and I did! I figured out that I needed a straight edge, as a guideline for my blade to cut the cane, so some sort of guillotine-esque contraption needed to be made. I tried out a few things, and what I made is pretty simple. All it needed was a bull clip or a fold back clip and a cutting mat, and of course the cane and the blade.
Basically what you do is clip the cane in between the teeth of the fold back clip, and on one end, make it peek out about a millimeter or so or whatever thickness you want.
This picture came out quite nicely, huh, my camera is usually really bad at taking pictures of tiny things.
And then placing it flat on the mat, and making sure the cane and the bottom of the clip is also flat, you use the edge of the clip as a guide, and angle the blade towards the clip itself and slice. It's a bit hard to take a picture with one hand T-T
By keeping the blade as close to the clip's edge, it's possible to cut the cane evenly! And ta-dah! An even slice
I'll try to show how thin it actually came out:
It's a bit thinner than a piece of paper I think. And if I place it on the blade, it looks about to be as thin as the blade itself!
You have to make sure that the blade is as close to the edge of the clip as possible, else it'll go off on it's own tangent and cut unevenly or even cut things in half, since the slice I want is quite thin. But if you do it right - voila! A thin even slice, without the stress of unsteady hands and having to practice heaps to do perfect slices!
Here's a link to a youtube video I made, if the pictures were a bit hard to understand - although the video quality ain't good, my camera is pretty standard, geh - but the video should be clear enough to be understandable.
Click to viewI can't believe no-one has figure that out yet - or at least I think not. Hopefully someone who does have trouble slicing canes will read this and it'll help them out ^_^
The only problem I had, was with canes that aren't round, the clip I was using was 25mm, and it's fine for holding the round-ish cylindrical canes, but it's bad at holding triangular shapes, the cane would slip and won't hold still. Perhaps if I pad the teeth on the inside it would create a better grip and it won't slip, and the pad can fill in the cane and make it 'cylindrical' enough for the clip to hold on. And when I cut the cane down to a smaller size, it should be able to hold it for longer. But that problem was solved by using an even smaller fold-back clip, a 15mm sized one. It grips onto the cane a lot more firmly than the 25mm, and since it's smaller (actually the smallest I could find) I can slice more of the cane, and when it can't be used anymore when the cane becomes too short to be held by the clip, I'll either cut the rest by hand or just, um, ignore it, lol.
EDIT: Actually I could shove another cane behind it, kind of like putting in more staples in a stapler, it'll just have to be the same shape as the short cane, and i should be able to slice the whole thing ^_^
Currently I'm trying out the moulding kits I've gotten, but I have yet to make my own moulds, I would need to make a perfect clay charm of each thing I have and bake it and use it for the mould, the ones I have have some imperfections or are already painted. And as for the needle felting, I may do that when I've researched more and figured out what I want to make :D