First, the pattern for the casting I hoped to do that weekend: a tree of a dozen small open-frame pieces on a central sprue.

And a single piece, which is what each keychain will be.

A partially successful casting on the morning of April 27th. This is the robot part in the crucible, melting.

Breaking the investment flask open to see what came out.

And the aluminum tree itself. I only got 8 out of 12 pieces to come out, so I need to do another. I think maybe the graphite gasket I made didn't give a good seal, and I didn't get as much vacuum as I could have.

After fettling, the pieces got powder coated, and here they are curing in a toaster oven.

I finished the senior gifts on May 15th. I still have a largish brick of the aluminum left over from the melted-down part, since I didn't use much of it. It's a part we removed because we were over weight, and I plan to bring it in to show people just how much aluminum it was.

After lasering, the coin goes into a rock polisher for an hour or so. It does a good job of cleaning out the soot from engraving.

But the final look is much improved by an application of "brass black", followed by about twenty more minutes in the polisher. Gives it a bit of definition and age.

A purple-lacquered body with a turned spalted-wood cap and finial.

And three from earlier years, dyed red, purple and green and marked 2011, 2012 and 2013.

An ornament cut from a piece of our Christmas tree, in this case from 2015. My wife's Chinese astrological sign is the ox, hence the cow shape.

In December 2024 I caught up by two years. Laser cut and engraved, of course.

The rectangle on the left is engraved with a family selfie from 2018. The ring-shaped ornament on the right is dated 2019.

We built it in place in the apartment, starting with lumber laid out over some storage totes.

Then a 2x4 frame on the floor, which took some measuring.

Once the frame was done, a fit test in the bay window.

The slat boards got cut to length with a pull saw.

And then screwed down onto the frame.

The plan was to melt down some of the broken parts from that year's robot and cast keychains in the shape of the game piece, and maybe laser something onto them if there was time. This project was way more of a pain than I thought it would be, but I learned a fair amount, so I'll call it a win.

here's the finished keychain, presented to the seniors at the wrap-up banquet on May 19.

Here's one of the chains early on, with lumpy welds and the bottle hanging from a hook at the end.

Then a quick run to the makerspace so she could sandblast it.

I happened to snap this photo of her welding links together.

And a finished one, painted grey. This was the best I could do for a photo; it's too big for my lightbox.

My daughter was about to turn 18, and she really likes Infinity Train, which is a bit obscure: a surreal animated series. I'd wanted to do more jewelry, and I'd done a few rings, so I designed these earrings based on One-One.

Here I'm placing the sprue in the middle of the 3D printed pattern. I wish I'd remembered to make some marks to help me center it, so that I could use it to grip the casting on the lathe.

With the sand packed, I separated the two halves of the flask so I could remove the pattern. The bottom half still has the pattern half-embedded in it, and the top half has the matching impression, with the hole for the sprue.

After the pour, I dug the casting out of the sand. It was looking good so far: you can see the disc, the pillar, and the spoon-shaped sprue coming out of the sand.

Success! It's super rough, though. I think I should have sieved my sand. But every surface is going to get machined, so it should be fine.

The next morning I started cleaning it up on the lathe. One face took a cut nicely and came up bright, with the rough sand-cast rim still around it. There were going to be some voids and inclusions in the finished part. Tim said that was fine, as long as it held the thing and conducted heat.

Flipping it around to do the other side meant gripping the faced rim with the chuck's outside jaws, with the sprue stub sticking out toward the tailstock.

It was loads easier to cut most of the sprue off on the bandsaw than to machine it away.

And done. The front face, up top, has a raised center step. This is the back: a shallow recess, with a bit of rough casting skin left on the rim. That's as far as I could take it down without running out of material. I should have allowed more room in the casting, so I'm calling the rough edge artistic. A few of the pits made it through, too.

It shipped off to Tim shortly afterward.

Here's the design iteration from late November: dark walnut body, a granite-looking curling stone on top, and a brass band and handle.

By the third week of December the top was made and waiting on paint.

The face was stained light and the body and wings dark. On October 24, 2021, I had the stained piece clamped to the bench and was off to find a stain color somewhere between those two.