I've moved! - www.steampunkateer.wordpress.com

I know we've not been together long but blogspot, you've not treated me right. I'm leaving you. You see I've met someone else, they're called Wordpress and we just get on so well. I know it's shallow but they're just so popular, they know so many more people than you, and it's not that you're frigid, but they're pretty easy and I like that.

Anyway, if you need to get hold of me I'll be staying at Wordpress's for the foreseeable future. You can contact me at:

www.steampunkateer.wordpress.com

Blunderbuss part 2

Not much advancement but the head of a blow lamp shoved into the bell of the horn. I have however devised a plan to attach an old mini telescope with some bits and bobs to act as a sight. 

Blunderbuss part 1

The next project is to construct a blunderbuss, which Wikipedia assures me is a muzzle loading firearm with a short, large caliber barrel which is flared at the muzzle. I've been collecting bits for a while for this and have enough now to get the basis of it put together. 

My aim is to get it quite intricate, I guess we'll see how that works out. For now it's all about cutting up a copper hunting horn from the car boot, sticking it to a £3.99 wooden stock from eBay, and screwing/gluing on the trigger from a 'vintage' cap gun.... Probably from the 1920s. Finally, a 36p cross was stuck onto the stock to make a start on the embellishments.

1920s default

Last weekends visit to the car boot sale prompted probably my most interesting purchase of an item, a film projector from the 1920s. I am quickly learning that according the sellers at these sales, anything that looks old and vintage is from the 1920s. 

My original plan was to take it to bits and get the cogs, handles and bulb dismantled for re-mantling elsewhere. However I've kind of fallen for it as it is and it makes a good piece on its own. I guess we'll see how desperate I get for the bits.

I'd love to get it working but not only is the power connections 2pin and ancient, but it's American too, which evidently means something along the line would blow up if I did manage to connect it to the mains.

Ray gun

I was pretty excited about the concept of making a gun, perhaps due to the fact I was never allowed toy guns as a child.

I'd picked up 2 grease gun, and a broken hydraulic gun for a grand total of £3 at a car boot, and after many failed attempts at sticking together different types of metal that were all covered in grease, it finally became the body of the gun. 

The nature of the objects gave it quite an industrial feel so with it looking a bit plain I decorated it in a similar fashion with some cogs, tube valves, and wire wrapped up in the aforementioned garden sack. I gave it another handle by sticking on an arm of vintage record player and bunging an air gauge in the end of it, and finished off with the from half of some 1900s field glasses.

Jewellery

In between working on bigger stuff, I've cobbled together some jewellery. There's one or two necklaces and a ring.... It's not particularly robust and some of its broken already.

Bird

With the left over bits of brass piping, an old sack from the garden, an alarm clock and a 1920s atomiser that the guy at the car boot seemed to think was priceless, and a few other bits, a bird was born.