Weekend project! I doubt it works any better than the cheap marking gauges you can get for $20 at Home Depot, but I didn't have one of those yet and this was way less infuriating than a trip to the orange hell. And hopefully it looks a little nicer. The pattern was made of dollar store clipboard MDF and bondo, with a few coats of shellac and some paste wax. Cast in brass that I had left over from the letter press chase project. This brass used to be Korean war era bullets that had been stored improperly somewhere (got wet) and were therefore disassembled and disposed of as scrap. It made loads of dross, even when remelting the ingots and gating from the chase pour. Now that I have this marking gauge for doing layouts, maybe the sides and corners of the next pattern will actually be more than just "mostly" square... Jeff
You guys have seen those buckles before, no? People were passing one around back in the day on alloyavenue, but that was mostly before I showed up there I think. Pretty sure I've posted pictures of mine here before. I ordered the original off the web a few years ago so of course I had to make a bronze copy, which I've been wearing for a while now. There are rectangular versions with the same shirtless foundry guy on it too out there fwiw. Anyhow, my kid wanted one like mine, so here we are. To mold it, I had to fill in the undercut on the back where the little hook is on the original with some sculpy, so there's a bit of grinding/sculpting to cut a hook back out of it once it's cast. Also thickened the whole back just a little with a bit more of the sculpy, the original is incredibly thin! A very small gate into one side of the belt loop this time instead of a wider gate into the length of the long part of the loop like I did before, and it filled fine with less cleanup. I might keep the brass one for myself and give the kid my bronze one. I've also made modified versions of this buckle before by casting a copy in aluminum, grinding the dude off the front, and adding a different detail to make a new pattern. Just before I got laid off from the blacksmithing school we were all making stuff to try and sell from the school's booth at Comicon, so I came up with this one. Comicon didn't happen for me, so I gave it to my neighbour who has The Punisher logos all over his bikes and cars... Jeff
