109

 Front Page

 I've been pretty busy the past few days keeping up with both Etsy and work and life in general. This past Sunday one of my rings made it to the front page of Etsy in this treasury. I was working all day down at the studio and when I got home my inbox was filled with messages from etsy. I sold 5 rings and had messages 6 from people wanting to place custom orders.

It was a pretty good day and I've been having steady increased traffic since. I also received a message from someone that is interested in buying my rings in bulk and selling them in their shop. We're still trying to hash out some sort of deal and I'll share about that if it works out. It would be nice to sell my rings in bulk to someone and have them go through the trouble of selling them, that would be ideal. Not that I don't like etsy, it just takes up a lot of my time to take pictures, then post the listing. It would be nice to just make something, and send it off to someone to put all the work into selling it. If I could just make things that would be great. That's one of my goals, just being able to create and not have to worry about the selling.

It's amazing how much traffic I received from that one treasury. It was on the front page from some time between 8-9pm and in that time the ring received 592 views. I've never really thought of my rings to be all that photogenic like most of the ones you see that make the front page. I generally try to make my photos more utilitarian and try to show what the ring looks like. Even this ring isn't one that I would consider to be all that special, it's just a good simple ring. It's good to see that even the most basic of my rings gets a lot of attention when presented to a lot of people.

 It's nice having increased traffic to my shop out of the blue. This month was starting to have a little bit of a slump and it was looking like I wasn't going to beat last months performance. After today though I have already beat last months sales and with almost another week to go it's looking like it will be a good month.

So far my ring a day project has beat my expectations. The work I put into my Etsy shop every day has been increasingly paying off every month. Every month has been much better then the last. I'm starting to see that if I was to put 100% of my effort into my shop that I could easily and comfortably live off of my own work. This is all done with my own two hands, that's the most satisfying part.

108

Tanner Goods

I could use a new belt.

An Exploration in Craft - Featuring: Tanner Goods from Ryan Bush on Vimeo.
*If you have the means, enjoy this video with headphones*

Tanner Goods is a small leather goods manufacturer located in Portland, Oregon. They work hard to manage multiple storefronts and offer a wide range of hand crafted leather accessories. They thrive on their attention to detail and appreciation for top quality products. In the future they plan to expand their product line to include non-leather goods such as eyewear and time pieces, while maintaining their strong roots in simplicity and utilitarian product design. You can purchase their products online at:

www.tannergoods.com

Or find them in person here:

1308 W. Burnside
Portland, Ore. 97209
__________________________________________

This video serves as a documentation of craft that I have long been interested in as a Graphic Designer, and someone who appreciates hand made goods. It is wonderful to see a company that thrives in the "small batch" business model, and I hope they continue to make good things for a long time coming. The process of making something as simple as a belt can remind us of the roots of what this country was founded on: Creativity, Entrepreneurship, and Craftsmanship. Hope you enjoy it!

Special Thanks to:

Tanner Goods - (Thanks for the interview Sam)
Alex Toyoshima - (The guy making the belt) - Without you, this wouldn't have happened, so thanks for being so patient and letting me poke around with my camera. || www.alextoyoshima.com
Alex R. Taylor - (Audio) || www.alexrtaylor.com
Aaron Rayburn - www.cargocollective.com/rayburn

www.fortport.com

/////////////////////////////////////
(shameless plug)
www.ryanjbush.com


---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Music By: Brian Eno - Thursday Afternoon

107

More Wawona

Here are a few more pictures of the Wawona sculpture progress.

The inside of the sculpture will be covered with tons of little craters. It first starts off as a flat plane then we drill through the flutes on the front side. The craters are carved up inside of those flutes. These holes will let light in and let people look through the sculpture, and maybe poke a finger, or whatever, through. This piece here has been carved on one side and just the holes so far have been drilled on the other. All the little bits of tape are covering up where there use to be metal in the wood. Eventually we will replace all the metal, but for now they sit empty.

After we pick out the raw blank planks and send them to the UW to be milled into shape we get them back in a very rough carved state. All that the UW is doing is giving us a true edge so the piece will fit together perfectly. The rest of what they do, if they have time, is to give us a rough sense of the shape of the board needs to be between the perfect edges they have milled. Most of the time we have to still carve large chunks of wood away when we get it back. You can see in this picture that they quickly and roughly carved this piece. This section is actually the spine of the sculpture and is made from three planks that were joined together.

Here is more of the spine that we have carved down into shape and have started placing flutes on.

Here is sort of a before and after look at the flutes.

We are almost done carving all the sections for the first layer, here you can see a bunch of them leaning up against the wall.

106

100 Rings

100 Rings being made. It took me roughly 35 hours over a few days to put these rings together. I did it in two long strait stretches, one 21 hours long and the other 14 hours. I had many high and low points through those stretches and a few times I actually fell asleep while carving, but only for a few seconds. I always had some coffee ready to keep we awake. My hands and arms never got really all that tired, I guess I do a lot of different motions for each step which helps. The sorest thing after all of this was my ass, even though I was sitting on a padded chair. I can't remember the last time I've sat for that long. I'd say that was the roughest part, there were many times I just wanted to stand and work but most of the work needed to be done on the bench pin. I'm not sure I will ever attempt to do this again. If I put a collection like this together again it will be over many days and shorter stretches. I'm not sure what I was really expecting to get out of this, it's just an idea that I had and followed through with it. It was a bit of a gamble of my time that I hope will eventually pay off when I sell these rings.

Watch them being made.

100 Rings from Ian Gill on Vimeo.
These 100 rings were made to mark the 100th day of 2012, and the 100th day in a row I've made a ring.

I started the evening of April 8th and finished mid-day April 11th. Taking a few breaks here and there it took me roughly 35 hours to make these rings.

The rings are made from Guayacan, Tulipwood, Tamboti, Osage Orange, Mopani, Redheart, and Ebony. Varing in a wide range of sizes

These rings, along with many others, are available for sale in my Etsy shop: Etsy.com/shop/IanGill

Song is Back Home In Derry (Instrumental) by Three Day Threshold

105

100 Rings

Here are some photos of the 100 Rings completed. I'm finishing up the video as i write this so it will be online soon, along with the posting on etsy. The rings came out really well, when I finished I was thinking that a lot of them might not be as great as my regular rings but going through them later I found that they were just as good as the rings I make every day. I had a few rejects and a few that broke in the making process but here is the completed 100 Rings.

104

Sneak Peek

Here is a quick sneak peek at part of the opening to my 100 Rings video. I hope to have the rings and video posted by the end of the weekend.

103

Wawona Progress

Here is a great post by the UW showing lots of information about the Wawona sculpture. There are lots of great pictures showing the final design of the sculpture and just how the planks are picked, milled, then carved. I'm planning of doing a video where I follow one board through the whole process. It will show us picking out the raw planks, laminating them together, then taking them over to the UW to be milled on the CNC machine, then back to us to be finished with adding the flutes and carved down. It will be interesting to see the whole transformation to help get a better sense of just what goes into turning a raw plank into the final form.

102

100 Rings

I finished making 100 rings today. In all it took me around 35 hours to make the 100 rings. I was averaging 3-5 rings an hour. It was pretty hard work. At the end I was pretty wasted. Throughout the process I was documenting myself making the rings with a time lapse. I'm going to put that video together in the next few days. I also still need to go through all my rings give them once last look over. In all I made around 110 rings because I had a few break on me and others that just didn't look quite right. I also need to go through all the rings and document them all, then take pictures. Hopefully I will have everything all put together by the end of this week.

Here is a picture of the 100 rings completed.

101

Caine's Arcade

I'm taking a quick break from ring making to post this great video.

Caine's Arcade from Nirvan Mullick on Vimeo.
A 9 year old boy - who built an elaborate cardboard arcade inside his dad's used auto part store - is about to have the best day of his life.



Help Caine's Scholarship Fund:

http://cainesarcade.com



Caine's Arcade Online:

http://facebook.com/cainesarcade

http://twitter.com/cainesarcade



Credits:

Directed by Nirvan

http://twitter.com/nirvan




Ok, back to ring making.

100

Today is the 100th day of the year. It's also the 100th day that I've made at least one ring each day this year. To mark this point I decided to make a group of 100 rings. I started on the evening of day 99 and worked all through today making rings, I worked for 21 hours strait making rings, so far I've made 72 of the 100 rings, and will finish the rest tomorrow. It's been pretty hard, there were many times I thought that there was not way I was going to be able to keep going. I kept a steady pace of 3-4 rings an hour, depending on the wood. I've also been documenting this process and will be putting together a video once I finish. I'm going to be posting the rings altogether in one lump post. I've been making a wide range of sizes in simple bands then a few designed rings in each wood. The wood I'm using for the rings is Guayacan, Tulipwood, Tamboti, Osage Orange, Mopani, Redheart, and Ebony.

Here are a few sneak peeks of what I'm working on.

Here are all my 100 ring blanks set out

A little more then mid way through.

99

Day 99

Today is the 99th day of the year. I'm spending this day preparing for the 100th day. I had an idea of what I wanted to do for my 100th day. Hopefully tomorrow I can share what I've completed. For now I'm just going to give you a sneak peek and a little hint at what I will be doing starting later today and hopefully finishing sometime late tomorrow.

98

Wood Origin

Working with all the woods I do it's easy to forget just where that piece of wood came from. I work with many exotic woods that come from all over the world. When I start working with a new type of wood I will look up just what that woods properties are, but mostly just glance over where it came from and what kind of tree it came from. I thought it would be nice to do a little more in depth research on just where my wood comes from, and just what the tree it comes from looks like.

Guayacan

Location: West Indes, Central America, northern South America

Ebony

Location: Western Africa

Redheart

Location: Southern Mexico to southern Brazil and Paraguay

 Cant seem to find a picture of this tree. 

Tulipwood

Location: Northeastern Brazil

 

Pink Ivory

Location: Southern Africa

Mopani

Location: Southern Africa

Tamboti

Location: South African Lowveld and Swaziland

Osage Orange

Location: Tropical America (West Indies, Central and South America)

Well that's about all I think I will do for now. I would like to map out where all my woods com from. Maybe in a later post I'll create a map showing just where all my woods come from. 

97

How To Order A Custom Ring

I though I would share with you just how simple and easy it is to order a custom ring from me. First I thought I would address one of the biggest hurdles in ordering a custom ring, knowing your ring size. Most people don't know what their ring size is. The best way to figure out your ring size would be to use a finger gauge. This simply uses metal bands that are measured and numbered so you just keep trying until one fits then read off the number. Most jewelry shops will let you test your ring size for free, as they hope you are looking to buy a ring from them. Just play it cool and keep up that act until you've figured out your ring size. If you have too much of a guilty conscience to pull this off then there are other ways to measure your ring size. You can either take a strip of paper or some non-stretch string and wrap it around the finger you want to measure. Mark where two points meet on the paper or string then remove and lay out flat. Measure between those two points and you've just figured out what the inside circumference of your ring should be. Using a conversion chart you can then determine what your ring size is.

Once you've determined your ring size it's then really simple to order a custom wood ring. 

Once you find yourself in my Etsy Shop look for a ring you like, if you don't have a favorite one already. 

Once you see a ring you like, click on it to enter into its page.

Once on the page you can determine if this ring will fit you. If it's the right size for you the GREAT, you can follow through with check out. If it's not the correct size then you can easily order a custom one. 

Bellow the description there is a link where you can contact me.

Once you click on the link below the description it will automatically copy the page into the message. This is very helpful to let me know exactly which ring you want me to make in your size.

You don't need to write anything more then just what size you would like to order. 

After I get your message I can determine if I have any of that wood in stock and I will then send you back a message telling you if I can make that ring for you in your size, and just how long it will take me. 

As soon as I have your ring made I will post it in a custom listing reserved in your name. This gives you a chance to look it over and decided if it is what you are looking for. I don't force you into making any commitment to buying the ring. I will even try a second time if the first ring I make doesn't meet your expectations. 

Ordering a custom ring from me really is that simple. So why haven't you ordered one already. Head over to my shop and start ordering.

96

Possible Studio Space

I've had a possible studio space on my radar for over a year now. It's a space that is in the same building as John's studio. The building managers seem pretty content to just let it sit empty at the moment. But hopefully John can work his magic and persuade them to rent it out to me and a few other people who work for John. his space would be really convenient for me seeing how it's right next to John. It would also be great having a separate space from my apartment and having a more defined work space and living space. Also I wouldn't cover my apartment in sawdust all the time. I hope it works out.

95

An Old Friend

I've had the same bench pin since I began making Jewelry back in 2005. A bench pin is what you use to saw on with your jewelry saw. It's basically a piece of wood used to support your work. In my metals studio class we were told you can buy one at a jewelry supply shop for around $15, but seeing how at that time I had no money I just cut off a board from a pallet I found in the alley. I've been using that piece of wood for all these years now. Pretty much every thing I have ever made, using my saw at least, has been cut on this bench pin. There is a lot of history there, but it's starting to wear out.

It first started out looking like a regular bench pin with two fingers coming out where you could have your saw in the middle. About a year ago one of the fingers broke off so I was left with just one, which still worked great. Over the years I have sawed, drilled, and sanded a  lot of the wood away. The edges of this wood use to be strait. I have a feeling that pretty soon the whole thing is just going to fall apart. I have some big plans coming up in a few days and I hope that it last until then, but I'm pretty sure that it will be it's last job that I ask of it. After next Monday I'm going to be retiring this bench pin. Here are some photos of this old friend.

Here is a photo of how it looked a little over a year ago when it still had both it's fingers.

And how it looks today

Hang in there little guy, just a few more days to go.

94

In The Studio

I've had a bunch of small timelases I took last year of work being done in the studio. I recently got around to putting them together. Here they are in a quick rough edit.

93

Rear Window Timelapse

This video is amazing. It consists of all the footage in Rear Window compiled and edited together to make a timelaspe video. Rear Window is one of my favorite Hitchcock movies, this timelaspe does it great justice. I recommend you watch on a full screen.

Rear Window Timelapse from Jeff Desom on Vimeo.
All footage taken from the original Rear Window (1954) directed by Alfred Hitchcock.



The order of events is pretty much as seen in the movie.



more info: http://www.jeffdesom.com/hitch/



Hungarian Dance No. 5

composed by Johannes Brahms

arranged for easy listening by Hugo Winterhalter

92

Imaginary Ring

My ring for the day. The fist ring of April.

This is a beautiful imaginary wood ring. Made from the toughest and strongest imaginary wood in the world this ring is sure to last a life time. A perfect gift for your imaginary friend, or the girlfriend you made up to keep your mom off your back. Great for planning your imaginary wedding. Would also make a perfect accessory to the finger you lost in that clown school accident. Whoever it will be for, they are sure to love and cherish this special gift.

Still available in my shop, snag it before someone else does.