Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater
Fri, 06 Oct 2006
For my Halloween costume this year, I wanted to have a katana (Japanese samurai sword). I thought about it, and did a bit of research. Eventually decided that although I would really appreciate getting a real sword, a fake one was probably a far better idea from a legality standpoint.
So, I did yet more research, and found myself tempted to pay upwards of $70 for what amounted to a slightly curved stick. In this case, a boken, or wooden practice katana. Fortunately, I paid a visit to the local martial arts supply store, where they had one and only one kind of boken, and it was $14.06 after tax. Good enough. I came away with a relatively inexpensive practice sword which might even be functional should I some day decide to pursue a currently vague interest in Aikido.
Anyway, for the costume, I wanted it to look a bit more real than a simple curved stick. Not to the extent of making it look more like an actual blade, but rather in a bit of decoration for the handle.
Enter this site on tsukamaki, or how to wrap a katana handle to get that cool diamond-negative-space effect. Suffice to say that it's an ancient Japanese art form, and takes years of practice before you start turning out handle wraps which a master practitioner would deign to spit on, or perhaps set fire to. So of course I figured I'd do a good enough job for a Halloween costume in one or two sittings.
As it happens, I'm actually doing pretty well. It looks a lot like a katana handle:
My fingers hurt from pulling the ito (that's a fancy word for cheap polyester ribbon) tight, and folding the hishi-gami (a fancy word for small triangular pieces of paper). That handle represents two 3 hour sessions of sitting in a chair and carefully tucking ribbon under pieces of paper while simultaneously holding it on the far side of the handle, so it doesn't all unravel. I'd probably do a better job if I had four hands, but I seem to be making it work with two.
Fortunately, it's going pretty quickly at this point. I should be able to finish up in another hour or two of work. Not bad for a first attempt. Obviously, I've still got a couple of years of practice to do before I can expect any imperious spitting from my betters.
Posted at 22:31 permanent link category: /misc
I'm helping out the current production of Slow Children, again in the capacity of Master at Arms. I'm also supplying them with stage guns, since I have managed to collect a few over the years.
I had two when I started out with this show. One was a copy of a Beretta 92, and the other a copy of a Walther PPK. I bought the Beretta copy new for the first production of Slow Children, so it felt entirely appropriate to re-use it this time. The Walther copy came from a pawn shop, on someone's tip that they had a blank gun or two there.
So I got a call about a week ago. It was the stage manager, calling to say that the Walther had broken. Specifically, the safety lever fell out. I went down that night to make sure it was still safe to use. It appeared to be, so I gave it the green light. I got a call the next night, saying it had broken further: the firing pin fell out. Turns out that on that model, the firing pin is held in place by the safety lever. Oops.
I felt bad for Imogen, who was getting new instructions every night, and had started out saying, "I'm a gun-hating liberal, this is really weird feeling," as she hefted the thing for the first time.
So, I decided that for the good of the production (cause I'm a freakin' softie, apparently), we should get another blank gun in. I looked around a bit, and decided on a .357 Detective Special, since it was a revolver, and revolvers have fewer parts to break.
When I dropped that off, I noticed something: the pamphlet which came with the revolver listed all these part numbers... That suggested to me that perhaps parts actually are available for these things (I'd figured that since they were so relatively inexpensive, they were just "throw-away" items). Hmmm!
Sure enough, a bit of poking around found the Kimar FAQ. They will send you parts, if only you know the part number! Oh, but the broken gun is the one I got used, naturally without a manual.
I took a chance, and filled out a form requesting the part anyway. I figured it couldn't hurt.
To my delight, I had an email in my inbox this morning from Susanna Chiappa, saying that a new safety lever was on the way. Hooray! I love it when broken things can be fixed, instead of discarded!
Posted at 12:21 permanent link category: /theater
Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater