Pachyderm: Tusk transmutators

I ordered a life-size man head several days ago so that I can build my gasmask on it, and properly place the copper ears. While waiting for that to arrive I finished the two tusks. Functionally they are bad air transmutators, which convert foul gases to something breathable. In other words, the working end of the gas mask. They just happen to bear an uncanny resemblance to elephantine tusks when juxtaposed with the pressure hose and sound amplifiers.

The picture shows my construction of various plastic and metal parts on the left, which I molded in silicone rubber, then cast in cold cast bronze (a mixture of urethane resin and atomized bronze and brass). The finished transmutator is on the right.

Life's Latest Lesson

Today I learned that if you take an elephant and make his ears round and move them to the top of his head he turns into a large rodent. A cartoon mouse even. Who knew! In the illustration the drawing on the left represents the original pachyderm gas mask concept. The drawing on the right is what the mask currently resembles. Clearly I need a model of a full-sized human head on which to make my patterns. Guessing—the technique I have been using up to this point—doesn't always work. OK, there is any easy enough workaround for this, and that is to take the strap that the ears are attached to and lengthen it so that the ears hang a bit lower. Hopefully, the elephant will then return!

Pachyderm: Making the Eardrums

I blogged about making the copper steampunk gasmask pachyderm ears here http://tombanwell.blogspot.com/2009/01/copper-pachyderm-ears.html , but I’m still missing the center piece which I’ll call the eardrum. I am just about done with them, and here is how I went about doing it.



My first thought was to make a resin piece that would just fit into the opening of the copper ear. My concerns were how to attach the ear and the eardrum to the strap which will fasten to the mask itself with snaps, and how to keep the weight down. A mask of this size can get heavy pretty fast, and be uncomfortable to wear. I was planning on bolting the eardrum through the ear and through the strap, but this presented the problem of hiding the bolt head on the front of the eardrum, and also on the bottom side of the leather strap where it could rub against the wearer’s skin.

After deciding that a resin piece would be too difficult to attach and too heavy, I considered a wire screen or other thin metal dome. Given that I don’t have many metalworking skills, I eventually opted for making the eardrum out of formed leather.

I knew I wanted the eardrum to be domed to give it a little class, so all I needed was a form over which I could shape the vegetable tanned leather. I looked around my shop for a suitable something—I was thinking of a bottle lid—to no avail. I thought perhaps a drawer pull would have the right shape to it if I could find one with the right diameter. Going to my local hardware store I quickly found just the knob I needed. The first picture shows the copper ear, the knob, and a piece of plywood ready for attaching the knob to.

I carefully measured the opening in the copper ear, and cut a hole the same size into a piece of ¼” acrylic plastic. I added a second piece of wood on top of the plywood to reduce the height of the knob, thus completing my forming jig, as shown in the third picture.

I then cut out a circular piece of oversized leather with the ventilation holes already cut, and soaked it in water to make it plastic. I laid the damp leather over the knob, and forced the acrylic piece down over the leather and knob, stretching the leather and conforming it smoothly to the knob. I held the forming jig together with two clamps as shown, and let the leather dry.

The fifth picture shows the before and after of the leather circle. After dying the eardrum black, I inserted it into the copper ear. Now I just have to attach them both to the leather strap.

Trying to be Cat Friendly

We've had Angie, our tabby cat, for 12 years now. She's about 14 (we don't know her actual age because we got her from the Humane Society), so she's a bit of a senior citizen.

One of our biggest concerns in getting Cabana was how Angie would do in sharing her territory. Angie has beat up pretty much every cat in a 1-mile radius of our house. After umpteen skirmishes, though, the neighborhood cats now know to keep their distance and remain on the borders of our yard.

Cabana is very curious about Angie and would love to be friends. But Angie isn't lowering herself to that level. She doesn't even want any cat friends, so at this point, a dog friend is definitely out of the question.

But they have had some close encounters with each other. Angie is allowed on furniture, while Cabana is not, which enables Angie to stay a little out of reach. Eventually, though, I hope to find them cuddled up together on a pillow. If that ever happens, I'll be sure to post a photo of it!!

Pachyderm: Covering the Trunk Hose

To Elizabethan costumers, trunk hose means something totally different. Here it refers to the part of the steampunk gas mask which resembles an elephant's trunk, and consists of a vacuum cleaner hose covered with leather. The top picture shows the before and after. I chose lambskin for the leather as it is very fine, and conforms readily to what it's wrapped around. I put the suede side showing, as it seemed more 19th century to me. The leather was stitched onto the hose, then wrapped along its length with waxed thread. One end of the hose will attach to the leather mask, and the other to a pressure gauge.

Faerie Magazine Mask Article

Two of my leather masks featured in Faerie Magazine's Winter 2009 edition.

Contest! You could win!

What is this?

Guess what is pictured here. It is out of leather and I made it, but why? If you are the first person to answer correctly what the heck this is you will win a leather mask, pictured below. This mask sells for $39 plus shipping on my Etsy shop

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=19914645

Enter your answer (or best guess) as a comment. Winner will be announced here at the end of the contest. C'mon, what have you got to lose? Vote early, vote often.

The prize: A leather black bird mask

Slow News Day

Today was a dreary, rainy day--good for napping and being cozy indoors. And that's just what Cabana did all day. I have a little space heater, and her favorite place is laying about 1/4" from it. Who can blame her.


But when it's sunny, Cabana likes to follow the sun across the carpet. She starts on one side of the room, and as the day and the sun make their journey, she does as well.

Another day of walking with the head collar this morning. I don't think I have it as tight as I should because it wants to slide around a bit. Tomorrow, I'll try it tighter and see if we have better results. Today, I tried clipping one end of the leash to her flat collar and the other end to her head collar. I felt this gave me more control/options.

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Steampunk Doodling

Some steampunk mask and helmet ideas from the old sketchbook.

Muzzle or Collar?

Last night, we had a puppy training meeting. We haven't had many since getting Cabana, due to the holidays. About a dozen of us gathered outside Costco with our Guide Dog puppies, to catch up and to practice walking through the aisles. Cabana was extremely excited to see all the other dogs, as well as the numerous humans. Even on our walks, she will pull and strain to get over to a passing person, with or without a dog walking alongside--she just loves people and wants to get everyone's attention.

Well, our puppy group leader found Cabana's excitement a bit overboard, as she pulled on her leash, tried to jump on everyone, and barked loudly. We pulled Cabana away from the group so that she could get calmed down, and our puppy group leader said that we should try a head collar on Cabana, to help keep her under control.

A head collar is a collar that goes over the dog's muzzle. It isn't an actual muzzle, which keeps the dog from being able to open its mouth. The head collar just goes around the "nose" and up over the head, with a ring at the bottom to clip on the leash.

Although the head collar is a handy tool and does give the human more control, it's got to be the most pathetic piece of equipment you can put on a dog. It's almost embarrassing!

Poor little Cabana. At the meeting, other raisers called her "feisty", "strong willed", "overly active", "headstrong", and other such adjectives. They don't see this peace-loving, obedient little creature when she's in our house--how sweetly she licks Olive's face (the boxer at my office), how she almost never has an accident, how she ignores our shoes and other off-limit items.

But on our walk today, the head collar did do the trick. Cabana pulled a lot less on her leash, wasn't as excited about passersby (although it was a little rainy so there weren't many passersby), and actually wasn't as excited about anything at all. It's hard to be excited with that weird thing on your face. She sat down a lot and needed to be coaxed to continue walking, maybe her way of rebelling. But I gave her some treats and praised her when she walked well, and there's always room for improvement tomorrow.

Bulldog Leather Mask & Pattern

This is one of the first leather masks I made, and I'm quite pleased with how it came out. I made it as part of a leather project exchange on the Leatherworker.net forum. Feel free to make your own from the pattern.

Leather Pachyderm Trunk pattern

The leather trunk shown in the previous post looks like it is made up of four pieces of leather. In fact it is a single piece that has been folded back upon itself. Drafting the pattern turned out to be more difficult than I expected (as was hand-stitching it together). Here it is, with the green lines folding one way, the violet lines folding the other way, and the red lines being my cut lines.

The Leather Upper Trunk

Here is what the upper leather trunk looks like. The eye openings will have lenses and steampunk surrounds. Notice the worn appearance of the leather finish, and the ventilation holes for breathing. The leather folded back over itself was inspired by Chinese paper masks.

At 15 Weeks

Here's a pic from when Cabana was about 10 weeks old. Can you see her "beauty mark" below her left eye? I love that mark because it will help us identify her, even in a sea of similar yellow labs.

Cabana is 15 weeks old today. Only one more week until she gets her final shots--yippee! After that, she will be eligible to go anywhere. We haven't been allowed to take her to places where a lot of unknown dogs frequent. Parvo is a highly contagious disease, and if other dogs are not up to date on their vaccinations, Cabana could become infected. With the winter warm-up these past few weeks, I'm hoping it will last for another week or two after her shots. I'd love to take her walking in some regional parks and hiking trails. For now, I've been confined to a few blocks around our house, which gets a little boring day after day.

A recent breakthrough with Cabana is that she is not waking us up in the morning with her pre-dawn barks. She has always been pretty good about sleeping through the night--but she is definitely an EARLY riser. I have wished that she would make it until after 6am--but she seemed to be stuck at about 5:50am. She didn't bark a lot--just a few intermittent barks until she could hear one of us getting out of bed. The past few mornings, she's been making it until 6:20am. Very nice!!

Winter time with a puppy can be tough. Not only did I spend a great deal of time in the cold, wind, and rain during those first few days, waiting for her to do her business, but these cold winter mornings are no fun. I know that we in California don't have much to complain about, though. 40 degrees would seem like a heat wave to people in Chicago right about now. But there's definitely a frost on our lawns and rooftops around here.

Cabana is learning sit, stay, come, wait, and down. With everything, the command is to be given once. If she doesn't obey it, we have to physically help her to do it. No command should be repeated--which is difficult for me, given that I like to say most things 3 times. Cabana's reliability on these commands is: sit 80%, stay 80%, come 80%, wait 100% (she's good at this one), and down 0% (she's not really getting down yet). Our older daughter has been teaching her "paw" and my husband is trying to teach her "where's your tummy" and "kunda kunda kunda" (this is a whole other story).

Beginning the Journey

Cabana was born on October 5, 2008. We brought her home on December 10, at 8 weeks of age. I went to get her at the Westin St. Francis, at a fundraiser for Guide Dogs for the Blind. All I knew was that we were getting a female yellow lab, name starting with a C. I walked out on the runway stage, and they brought Cabana to me. She was a sweet warm bundle in my arms.

But don't confuse me with those who gush and rush for every dog in sight. No one would call me a "dog lover", but Cabana had me at first lick. I do LIKE dogs--but LOVE? That just wasn't my way. I thought that this was a good thing, though, because it would make giving her up after a year much easier. But even after the first few minutes, Cabana started pulling at my heartstrings. I felt like she trusted me from the first instant, as she sat calmly on my lap while throngs of people came to pet her. Although I worried she might "relieve" herself on stage, my worries were unfounded.

My husband and daughters were unable to accompany me to the fundraiser, which turned out to be a little tough. Guide Dogs gives puppy raisers a bag of dog food, numerous leashes and collars, medications, and paperwork. After the luncheon and all the petting from strangers, I put the leash on Cabana and prepared to walk the 3 city blocks to the parking garage. But Cabana, who had only just had a collar put on her 5 minutes before the luncheon, didn't know what to make of the leash, and gave me a look that said, "What IS this you're putting on my neck? I can't possibly move with this thing on!" So, I not only had to carry my purse, the dog food, the other bag of accoutrements, but also this 15-pound puppy! To make matters worse, I couldn't find the parking garage where my car was parked. I had worked up quite the sweat by the time I finally found it.

But things got easier after we finally made it home. Cabana learned to "do her business" outside in about 4 days--such a smart dog! Although I confess that I made it my mission in life during those 4 days to get her housebroken. I knew that was the only way I'd finally be able to relax.

Cabana cried in her crate for the first week or two, sometimes carrying on for 45 minutes, barking and howling and yelping. We worried about our poor neighbors, who were probably also being kept awake by the noise. But now, after a month, she totally gets it. Not a peep from her when we put her in her crate.

Since I've got a lot of catching up to do, tomorrow I'll talk about walking and other commands we are working on.

Pachyderm gas mask plans

Here is my concept of the pachyderm gas mask. I have most of the leather parts handstitched together. I'm still working on the copper ears and the eyes. And I'm waiting for my pressure gauges to arrive. I've dyed the leather dark brown, antiqued to look like an old bomber jacket.

American Dragoon helmet tutorial

Here is a tutorial on my website on making this American dragoon leather helmet.

http://www.tombanwell.com/how_to_dragoon_helmet.html

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