Art Archive

The Ordinator: Slighty Baffling but Beautiful Sculpture

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I’m not entirely sure what I am looking at here, but the ‘Ordinator‘ by Flickr user Imajilon is a pretty sexy bit of workmanship. It’s like some weird steampunk/psychedilic milkshake. I want to pull the levers and run my hands over the grill; expecting electrical shocks and vision quests. 

Defending the Electronic Frontier- A Steampunk Warrior Pinup!

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I’ve been thinking about what this whole Steampunk thing is and I still haven’t gotten a handle on it.  But anything that brings together such a wide range of artists, makers, and fans has got to be good.  Is there any other hobby that will bring you email from

Philatelic Keyboards – More Model M Goodness

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Andy sent me a couple of shots of his beautiful stamp decorated keyboards.  He write that he's made about 10 of these beauties. Each of his keyboards are made with the stamps of a single nation and often commemorate a royal coronation or celebrate a particular sport. Andy's friends

How to Make a Cheap Lightbox

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For many of my recent projects I have found myself in need of a lightbox so I took a couple of hours from working on my latest project to put together this one.  I used a piece of glass from the old Xerox machine that I bought for ten dollars

Copper Plating and Etching Altoids Tins

Author: | Categories: Art, Favorites, Projects, Steampunk 15 Comments
UPDATE: There's some great information on this page and it's comments, but I've recently published a far more comprehensive article here: Etching Tins with Salt Water and Electricity  With this project I wanted to try a number of new things: Magazine pages as cheap toner transfer media Copper electroplating Etching

Electrolytic Machining of Brass – Part II:

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After the perhaps overly optimistic attempt at electrolytic machining in Part I, I decided to try etching parts from thinner sheets of brass.  Sheet with thicknesses of .010 and .015" were chosen and I used the advanced image search feature of Google to search for black and white appropriately steampunk images.

Electrolytic Machining of Brass, a Clockwork Trilobite

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I have been having great success etching brass plate with a solution of copper sulfate and an electrical current.  The depth, quality, and speed of the etchings have been quite controllable and it seemed to me that I might be able to etch completely through a piece of brass.  This capability

Electrolytic Etching of Brass

Author: | Categories: Art, Favorites, Projects, Steampunk 5 Comments
  Update: I'm often asked about the thickness, type, and source of brass I used for these journals.  I am very lucky to have a local place, Metal Source, were I buy most of my supplies.  I used 22 ga. (.025") brass and any alloy will do.  In a

A Clockwork Guitar, the Steampunk Stratocaster

Author: | Categories: Art, Favorites, Projects, Steampunk 3 Comments
I have a Fender US Highway One series Stratocaster, which is a half decent guitar, but looks just like a million other Strats.  I had been planning to replace the pick guard with a black mother of pearl guard but my experiments in electrolytic etching made me think I'd

The Mae West, an Elegant Kerosene Lamp

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This is another lamp for my bus conversion project, I think it will  go on a newel post by the entry door.  This is another quicky project, it took about 3 hours.   This lamp uses more parts from the above left donor lamp that provided the arm for