I was having a hard time this morning getting started working in the shop.  

I get one day a week to work in the shop and as a result I often end up with a list of things I want to get done that is about three times longer then it is possible to accomplish, stress results.

Today I decided "screw it. I'm making a lamp."  

I started with a couple of pieces of brass from an earlier, rejected, project that fit together to form a reflector and kerosene reservoir . . .

Quote from L.A. Bike Show Website "What is it? Some bike contest entries defied classification and description..."

We know what it is, don't we folks?  It's Steampunk!  

This is the home of Dave Geertsen's home made metal sculpture on wheels,the wheels are straight but his custom motorcycles are anything but off the shelf. If you have a creative idea or a custom motor bike part you would like to have made or created by a true artist, metal worker, craftsman and biker you have come to the right place, the home of bentwheel.         [via THE NEW CAFE (RACER) SOCIETY]

This is my original artwork for the Steampunk Strat - Right click and choose "Save Image As" to download a copy.

I am just speechless.  More here und here via Burnlab

I love it when people write me with pictures of things they done after visiting The Steampunk Workshop. 

Here we have two electrolytic etching projects based on my original posting here.

Click through to read about the details of these two very different but related stories of etched brass plates.

Long before I got into Steampunk, in fact long before that name had been coined, I had a love for scientific instruments.

I would rescue the catalogues of instruments and demonstrations from the dumpster behind our school at the end of each year when the science teachers would discard them and take them home to pour over like the Sears xmas Wishbook (or maybe the lingerie supplement ;-) )!

Here's a marvellous resource for the Steampunk fabricator, with hundreds and hundreds of pictures of vintage scientific instruments organized by area of investigation. It's a place I often look to for inspiration.

I am not quite sure what is going on here, but as near as I can tell this is an offer for a beautiful brass orrery kit. An orrery is a mechanical simulacrum of the Solar System with clockwork designed such that the planets of the orrery move in the same relation to each other as the actual planets do in the Solar System

It appears from the google translated page that you will receive a different kit of parts each week until your orrery is complete.

It seems to me that we used to have kits like this here but they faded and disappeared sometime in the last twenty or so years, pity that.

[Thanks Jellyfish!]

No, not that Whitechapel!

Whitechapel Ltd. is a supplier of an incredible variety of brass hardware, findings, and finials.  They have just about anything you can imagine that is cast from brass.

Prices range from a few dollars each for the feet I used on the Victorian all-in-one to hundreds of dollars for door knockers suitable for haunted mansions!

We have a new puppy in the house, and while this is a wonderful thing in general, it means I sometimes have to get up in the middle of the night to let him out. The problem is I don't have a bedside lamp so I end up stumbling across the bedroom to turn on the overhead lamp so I can find the leash as well as my robe and shoes. Needless to say this does not please The Lady. So, my next project had to be a new bedside lamp.

Like most of my lamp projects this one started with a visit to the junk bins.  At right you see part of an antique student lamp I rescued from the metal recycling bin before the ban on picking at our local dump went into effect.  It's quite nicely made, but this is all I was able to retrieve.  The other parts are from various more mundane fixtures and the bulb at left is a reproduction Aerolux glow lamp. 

. . .

Found this pair of brass lanterns on my way to work yesterday - I used the old "shoelace tie" trick to carry them with me on my bike.

It absolutely kills me how many of these I have in my collection - close to 20 now, I think.  Invariably they are complete, functional, and merely tarnished.  Has no one ever heard of Brasso?!