hivemind

I ain't gonna lie: my workspace is a frigging mess. I regularly just brush scrap and hole pills off the bench onto the floor, spill stuff, work with hot wax, and never clean up. I also use a belt sander and a bench mounted scroll saw without ever sweeping up. I clean about twice a year. I cannot imagine having my shop upstairs where the mess would matter...

This is a solid tutorial. Can we get this pinned?

Negative. Gonna digress a little here to explain how Marine bands work. There's two bands in Washington DC at 8th and I: The President's Own Marine Band and The Commandant's Own Drum and Bugle Corps. Those guys are special, in different ways. The President's Own aren't really Marines, for the most part. With a few exceptions of guys who auditioned from the fleet bands, those guys are people with advanced music performance degrees who would otherwise be playing in symphony orchestras, studio bands, and the like. If they pass the audition, they come in as Staff Sergeants (E6) and enlist "for duty with The President's Own Marine Band only". They don't go to boot camp, they don't deploy, hell they even have different rank insignia. Real Marines have crossed rifles in their chevrons, those guys have a music lyre. The Commandant's Own are Marines, they do go to boot camp, and start off as privates, but that's the only duty station they serve at. The Commandant's Own is a drum and bugle corps, which means that their instruments (other than drums) are different from a normal band, so they're of no use to the fleet bands. The rest of the bands are called "fleet bands", meaning they serve in the Fleet Marine Force like any other regular duty Marines. There are twelve of these bands: Marine Corps Base Band, MCB Quantico, Virginia 2d Marine Air Wing Band, MCAS Cherry Point, North Carolina 2d Marine Division Band, MCB Camp Lejeune, North Carolina Marine Corps Recruit Depot Band, MCRD Parris Island, South Carolina Marine Corps Logistics Base Band, MCLB Albany, Georgia USMC Forces Reserve Band (4th Marine Division), New Orleans, Louisiana Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Band, MCAGCC Twentynine Palms, California Marine Corps Recruit Depot Band, MCRD San Diego, California 3rd Marine Air Wing Band, MCAS Miramar, California 1st Marine Division Band, MCB Camp Pendleton, California Marine Forces Pacific Band, MCB Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii III Marine Expeditionary Force Band, MCB Camp Foster, Okinawa, Japan Each one has an official strength of 50 enlisted and one officer, but in reality generally hover between 40 and 45 Marines. Some of these duty stations are pretty cushy (Hawaii, New Orleans and 29 Palms come to mind) and some are definitely not (the two division bands and the two MCRD bands, for example). I was stationed at Camp Lejeune, where we not only played 600+ gigs a year, but also were in the field about a month a year, and deployed to Desert Storm and Haiti while I was there (1991-1995). We had a secondary job as a security platoon for the commanding general, so when the division deployed, so did we. While I was there, I went on helocasts in the Atlantic, fired about fifteen different weapons, from pistols to MK19 automatic grenade launchers (spent a lot of time on one of those), and did riot control training for our deployment to Haiti. Lots of different stuff, and at times it got pretty high-speed. The band is an oversize platoon, so it's used for a lot of "weird" jobs, where a standard platoon of 30 guys is too small, but a company of 120 Marines is massive overkill. Sometimes we were "just right" for the mission, and we got sent. 29 Palms, on the other hand, is a training base, and when I was there the band there has life pretty easy. You don't go to the field, or really do much in the way of "Marine type stuff". Your job was to look good and play music. We'd go down to Palm Springs to party every weekend, go snowboarding at Big Bear all the time in the winter (I could see the mountain from the barracks), and roll out to Lake Havasu, Arizona or Laughlin, Nevada when we really wanted to cut loose. Hell of a good time being stationed there, once you got past the desert heat and environment. Anyways, I was in from 1991 to 1998, and had a hell of a good time, and wouldn't trade it for anything.I played for Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton, the Queen of England, and visited every state in America except North Dakota. We went to England, Trinidad & Tobago, Mexico, Russia, Finland, Canada, Bermuda... hell, I can't even remember all of it. When we were traveling, you're in a different city every weekend, staying in hotels and doing concerts and parades, and hitting the bars and clubs every night. Hell of a life for a kid right out of high school - lemme tell you, the women sure do like the dress blues.

You've reminded me that I have a double boiler full of beeswax in my shop now. Time to give these a try!

My experiences from seven years as a USMC musician largely jive with the above. One thing that wasn't mentioned was that the most recent version of the US GI black combat boot (the one with the padded collar and the speed lace eyelets) is made from leather impregnated with some kinda softening agent. We always said is was silicone, but I don't really know. These boots never polished worth a shit, and we all bought Georgia brand boots for drill and ceremonies. We saved the speed laces for PT and field exercises. We would also occasionally, when we were doing 4-6 ceremonies a day and crazy busy, resort to a good buff shine with a boot brush and then wipe on a thin coat of Mop & Glo. It'd carry you through a few days, but you had to remove it afterward, which sometimes could suck. Most of us had two sets of Georgia boots, so that we could always be polishing one while wearing the other. As a musician, we were expected to look better than anyone else in the Corps, so we had all kinds of tricks we'd use. Our utilities had so much starch in them they could literally stand on their own. We even went to lengths like snipping the prongs off our ribbon stars, filing the backs smooth, and super gluing them onto the ribbons so that they never moved.

Nice work! Are those bone rings or horn rings?

No shit, I just used a buncha FROG tape when I painted the nursery last month. I think I have a good bit left over, too. Big thanks Bree, this is awesome...

Hell Mark, that's beautiful. I'm happy to have inspired such fine work as that. It's different when you get to make it for yourself, isn't it? You should put it up in the Show Off forum man. Gunter: sadly, armor like that is 100% inappropriate for any kind of historical Viking persona. Vikings wore maille, maille, or maille, as far as I know. Lotsa choices there.

Remember, you're better off selling one item for $300 than you are selling five for $50.

Hey FB, good to see you here. Too bad you weren't at Rag last week. I may experiment with this oven drying method some...

I'd get it cut to roughly the shape you want, soak it in hot water, and form it right on your body.

You know what I'd do? I'd call around and see what local musicians are charging for hourly lessons, and base it on that.

I gotta tell you, any business plan that depends solely on Dagorhirrim to spend money is probably doomed to failure - 99% of them are ungodly cheap. I mean, it's a game where you can get away with playing barefoot and shirtless in scrub pants and no one will really bat an eye. But, once in a while you will find some people willing to pay for quality. I just sold a Dag guy a pair of tooled bracers and a pouch for $150, so they are out there. You build up a rapport with the local group and they'll open doors for you. If anyone asks about you on the national forums, I'll gladly pitch your name. In fact, I just scared a guy off by asking for a ridiculous amount of money for a helmet, because I don't want to make them - but you might be just what he's looking for. I'll send him your email.

The padding on the knuckles is 6mm closed-cell foam, over the thumb it's the same stuff in 2mm thickness. Commonly sold at craft stores as "fun foam" in sheets. The rivets are all speedy rivets, in three different sizes. And yeah, it took a few hours, but not terrible. Mostly because the pattern I had was rubbish in spots, and needed to be reworked: http://www.bladeturner.com/pattern/clamgaunt/clamgaunt.html The wrist cuff (piece J) is probably twice as long as it should be on the ends, the thumb cover pieces (K & L) make zero sense, and the section on the back of the hand (I) wasn't quite right, and needed more space in the thumb webbing area. Basically, once it was together, there wasn't any space to hold something in my hand, and my thumb stuck out. I reworked that whole area to get it so that I can actually grip a hilt and fight with it on. But, I needed something fast, lest I end up like this: so I grabbed the first workable pattern I saw and ran with it.

Man I'd love to meet you at a faire, but I'm on New York and don't get out that way much. I'll be in western PA for Ragnarok in a couple weeks, you should consider vending there. Going to be probably 2000 people there for a week: http://www.einherjarsvalhalla.com/ragnarok/ragnarok.html

Clamshell-style gauntlet I banged out last Saturday to protect my sword hand, after one of the guys in my unit got a broken thumb the previous Sunday.

Yep, he's definitely mine. He scowls and yells when any of the in-laws touch him.

I do not agree, but I'm happy that there was thought and reasoning behind your first statement. Thanks for replying. I'll stop derailing Daggrim's fine work now.

Hey man, I hate to be "that guy", but you're hitting a topic near and dear to my heart. Can you provide some scholarly, historical evidence for your claim that there was a lot more leather armor than metal? Because the historical record shows a vanishingly small amount of leather armor. If it was a prevalent as some people like to claim, why isn't there ever any of it found at archaeological dig sites? They find plenty of belts, shoes, pouches, harness, and other things made of leather, but next to nothing in the way of armor. Not taking away anything from Daggrim's work (it's great) but the historical facts indicate that the vast overwhelming majority of armor was made of metal. Clothing was made of leather.