Blog Posts

The Blacksmith and the Weightlifter - My New Logo

27/5/2015

It's a year and a half since I moved to Arrowtown and I still had not updated my business cards. I liked my old ones and still have plenty, but almost all my contacts have changed from the old cards. About time I changed them up.

A brooch I made on commission for a friend. The photo I took of it made a nice background for my old biz cards.

I sort of already have a logo. Must be about 12 years ago now I had Regal Castings jewellery supply company make me a hallmark stamp. For this I needed something unique, but it needed to be simple, so that it could be milled out of hard tool steel in tiny profile. I made this little design below out of my initials. I made the original using the Microsoft Paint program.

My initials are A.C.T. I put them together in this little design to make a hallmark stamp. On the stamp, it's in reverse to come out the right way around on the jewellery.

The inside of the ring is curved so doesn't take the whole ACT stamp. I've also marked it with my 925 stamp, which stands for sterling silver - 925 parts silver, 75 parts copper.

I reckoned I could do better than that logo now. Not me personally of course, I'm a jeweller, not a graphic designer.

I engaged Finnbar Glover, one of my many creative cousins, who recently graduated from Otago Polytech's Communications Design degree to do the job. He spent a bit of time reworking the ACT logo. That stamp cost me over $400 to have made so I'm not changing it in a hurry. The plan was to incorporate it into a new design, but when Finn showed me the cool ideas he had for the anvil logo, the ACT logo just distracted from the effect so it got turfed off and removed to the back of the business cards.

I had searched up a bunch of images online of the sort of look I was after to show Finn and tried my best to describe it. Finn listened hard and came back with some ideas showing exactly the sort of look I wanted. This one went through a few little changes but is very much like one of the initial designs. What a good listener.

The big heavy looking shape is an anvil. I wanted an anvil because it's relevant both to my arts practice and to my weightlifting.

I love metalwork, and the thing I love the best is forging. I learnt how to forge steel and iron in the sculpture department at Art School, using a coke-fired forge, an anvil, hammers and tongs. I love the beauty of the process, the fire, the rhythm, and the feel of shaping hard metal blow by blow. It's hot, heavy, dirty work and I would be overjoyed to do it all day.

For various reasons I ended up being a jeweller rather than a blacksmith. I still forge silver, using hammers and an anvil, but everything's a bit smaller and not quite so exciting. In the photo below is one of my anvils. It's a bit beaten up, but it serves my purposes well. My good friend and jewellery artist Brendon Jaine gave it to me.

One of my jewellery-sized anvils and the two hammers used in the logo, the ball-pein hammer and the watchmaker's hammer.

As for my strength training, my garage gym is already called "The Forge". The hot, heavy, dirty work of getting strong is like both being the blacksmith and being the metal in a forge. I hammer my body, rep by rep and week by week in all seasons, slowly getting into the shape I need to be to do what I want to do. This analogy has not escaped other people. CrossFit.com's tagline is "Forging Elite Fitness". Mine isn't the only gym that references the art of the blacksmith in it's name either.

One of the hammers crossing the anvil in the logo is a ball-pein hammer. It's a robust, all purpose hammer with one flat and one rounded face. It's used to bash stuff into shape in many fields of craftsmanship. The finer hammer will be recognised by jewellers as a watchmaker's hammer. They come in different sizes. Mine is actually quite big for this sort of hammer. The watchmaker's hammer is for precision work, such as riveting and forging delicate wee pieces of precious metal.

The line in between the words is a barbell, the primary tool of an Olympic Lifter, a CrossFitter and a Powerlifter. The barbell is a tool I use to forge this body to make it as strong as possible.

Here's the finished cards! It actually didn't take much (well not from me, Finn put in plenty of work) to get the logo right, but it wasn't ready for printing yet. Figuring out exactly what information I wanted, deciding on a font, and then balancing out the possibilities and the costs of what sort of printing on what sort of paper took a whole lot more mental energy.

I actually wanted silver foil printed onto black card, but this was going to be very expensive to print, if possible at all. Because of the nature of the silver foil, apparently cards can only be printed on one side if this technique is used. The metallic grey card is very 'me' though, and I'm happy with it.

On the bottom right of the back the card you can see the old A C T logo in slightly sleeker form than I made it in Paint back in the way back when. As this is still hallmarked on my jewellery I'm holding onto it and want it on my cards. You might notice, annact.com has ACT in it, and so does my Instagram handle, act_ion.

How To Get as Awesome a Logo as Mine

Finnbar Glover, the designer can be found at www.finnbar-glover-design.com. He can make you an awesome logo too.

To see and even have a go at some real blacksmithing yourself head on down to Dunedin to the Gasworks Forge.

You can catch Brendon Jaine, buy his wonderful glass jewellery, and have a good yarn at the Queenstown Markets every Saturday in downtown Queenstown.

If you love tools like hammers, get onto the Regal Castings website and have a drool. Just don't use your precision-crafted jeweller's tools to try to make big sculptures. you'll wreck them. I learnt that the hard way.

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A Pendant for Heather

21/5/2015

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Here is another of my progress photo sets from a special commission I made this last summer. You may have seen some of these photos on my Facebook page, but here they are in one lot, enjoy!

The client, Heather, has three sons whose names start with A, J and K. The brief was to incorporate their initials into a piece of jewellery in a similar style to other pendants I have made, using green stones. Heather had helpfully done some drawings herself so I had a good idea of what she wanted. This was one of my interpretations, getting there but not final form yet.

After a while we both settled on this design, with each letter clearly defined in silver strip. The extra metalwork takes more time and materials, and therefore cost a little more than other designs, but it's well worth it to get exactly what the client wants.

I only started taking photos at this stage in the metal construction. I was using great big chips of solder (bad jeweller) but this surface with the solder puddles will not be visible in the finished piece. Lots of solder in this instance saves the hassle of cooling, inspecting, finding gaps, resoldering etc. until there are no gaps in the solder seams.
It was pretty fiddly getting the letters just right. Teeny tiny faults in the quality of line or shape make the whole thing look awkward, so I took my time getting the shapes perfect.

The metal is all soldered well in place. Here the top surface has been sanded off flat to inspect for faults in the solder joints.

This photo is taken through my jeweller's loupe held right up to the lens of the camera on my iPhone. Here I'm rounding off the ends of the letters ever-so-carefully with the tip of a needle file.

The obsessive part of the process starts. I have a collection of tiny green stones, picked one-by-one out of sand. Here I'm figuring out where to put them in this pendant. The base layer is garnet sand from off the beach at Orepuki. It's mostly black but with some other colours and tiny little natural garnets.

I've poured in the resin and while it's still liquid, I use a saw blade (jeweller's size saw blade, of course) to poke around to release any bubbles and put back any stone or sand that have been disturbed by the resin pour.

After a few days sitting in the warm sunlight on the windowsill in my studio, the resin is set hard. I sand it off flat using wet and dry emery paper with a little water in reducing grades of grit.

Oh dear, a fault has shown up. Even though I had the metal perfect before the stones and resin went in, sanding off the top of the resin takes the metal down a bit further and sometimes irregularities are exposed, such as these. It's annoying, but I keep sanding until it disappears.
The surface is sanded down to 800-grit paper and then polished on the bench polisher. To see what that looks like, go here. (This page I have doesn't let me put videos right in posts yet.)

I have a collection of bigger green stones. Here I'm figuring out which one or ones to put in the gap.

I've chosen stones for the gap and a bigger one for the toggle. Here I'm drilling through a stone underwater, using a diamond drill in the handpiece of my flex-shaft, which is fixed into a drill press. The water is essential for cooling, lubrication and carrying away the ground-up stone.

Check out this amazing stone. It's naturally heart-shaped green argillite with fossil worm casts all through it. I *think* (please let me know if you know more than me) that is from the Permain Brook Street Terrane, laid down as sand and mud 250-280 million years ago. The lighter green streaks are from where ancient worms who had ingested lighter coloured mud pooped it out in the darker green mud before it was metamorphosed into rock.
Carving a hole and groove into an ancient, fossil-bearing stone initially felt sacrilegious. But I've decided that they are better being used in jewellery, even if it means altering them such as I have here. Fossil worm casts in argillite are actually quite common among the beach stones at Orepuki. I have a another couple of stones like this in my collection currently, and I have used a few more in jewellery. They are out in the wide world being loved and appreciated right now, rather than stowed away in a shoebox being too precious to use.

Plaiting the cord, at night, as usual.

Attaching the toggle stone and making a loop in the plaited cord using a technique called "whipping."

The finished pendant, photographed on some of the the concept drawings.

Heather, the client with her new jewellery. She told me she loves everything about it. I love my job. (Photo used with permission)

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A Roadtrip and Autumn in Arrowtown

4/5/2015

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Dunedin to Arrowtown

On the Sunday after the Provincial Powerlifting Champs I took a slightly longer road home. I had never taken this way before and it was STUNNING. It was windy with some cloud so the light shifted constantly. The landscape changed suddenly as I drove through one geological substrate to another. The Rock and Pillar Range, The schist torrs, the Maniototo, the Hawkdun Range have all got to be seen to be believed. Seriously, If you're travelling from Central Otago through to Dunedin during the day, make the time to take this route. It's very well worth it.

I would normally take State Highway 8 through Alexandra to Roxburgh to Dunedin, but this map shows the amazing way: Turn off at Clyde towards Ranfurly and go through Middlemarch onto Dunedin.

Of course I stopped to take photos. Couldn't help it.

Arrowtown in Autumn

It wasn't long after I got a smartphone that my 'big' camera got forgotten about. The iPhone's photograpahy is great. Really, it's incredible what we can do with that machine that fits in our pocket. My 'big' (as in can't fit in my pocket) Cannon Powershot SX40 is a few years old and is only made for the casual photography market, but it's still just a smidge better than an iPhone.
Recently I got the camera out for the first time in a couple of years. How could I not, surrounded by such beauty? I'm not a photographer by any means, but I'm enjoying it. I'm throwing some photos up here because I can.

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Southern Provincial Powerlifting Champs

1/5/2015

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I got a gold medal for Powerlifting in the weekend! Not quite real gold, and I've gotta admit that I was the only one competing in my class, but it was a medal and I am chuffed.

I wrote a few weeks ago about my goal of getting stronger by getting more sleep. I'm pleased to report that I have been managing 7 or more hours of sleep almost every night. As predicted, it means I'm not staying up late blogging. This is why this write up comes a few days after the competition on Saturday.

Give my What is Powerlifting post a look-see if you need to brush up on your sport-specific knowledge before reading about what may seem an odd way to choose to spend my ANZAC Day.

Setting up for the deadlift.

Prep and Rego

It was a warm, windy morning in Dunedin on the Saturday of the competition. I met my buddy Mel for a short black before weigh-in at a cafe near the Fryatt St gym and talked hopes and dreams about powerlifting, as you do.

At weigh-in Mel managed with the help of some club members to borrow a soft-suit for lifting. The rules are that you need a lifting suit - a onesie, a unitard, a lifting singlet, a wrestling outfit - to compete in powerlifting. The requirements are usually slackened off for novice competitions but this was the Provincial Champs and Mel had only just found out that she needed one to compete in. It was pretty tight and somewhat short but Mel is brave and it's reassuring that everyone else was wearing them. I still had my suit from when I competed at the Olympic Weightlifting Nationals a couple of years ago. At the time they were very hard to source and I had mine made by a local gymnastics leotard maker.

The Otago Amateur Weightlifting Clubrooms at Fryatt St in Dunedin. It's down by the harbour in among other neglected industrial buildings. It has a spooky, dingy look to it but be assured, there's a lot of love inside.

We left for breakfast at Capers on George St (eggs, bacon, beans and mushrooms, excellent weightlifter breakfast) in the two hours between weigh-in and lifting, then back to start warming up.

Sylvia preps her squat in the warm up area

Check out Sylvia's outfit as she warms up her squat in the photo above. She's the club secretary, the gets-things-done-person and the one who has been answering my questions about competing. She also holds all the NZ powerlifting records in the Women's Under 63kg Masters III (age 60-69) category. I would like to be like Sylvia when I grow up.

The gym with audience, lifters, judges, spotters/loaders and the squat rack all set up.

Event One: Squat

In the photo above you can see how the gym is arranged for a powerlifting competition. Even in larger venues the arrangement will be basically the same, although often the lifters are in another room to the back or the side of the lifting platform.

The audience is at left. There were a few rows more of people than you can see here. The lifting part of the event went from 1pm right through until about 7pm so the audience drifted in and out as they were supporting their mates. Everyone is careful to be quiet and not to walk in front of the stage while a lifter is on.

At the middle back of the photo are the lifters. They're warmed up and waiting their turn. The lifters go on in order of what weights they're attempting, with the weights getting heavier until the last lifter has had their first attempt. It starts again with the first lifter's second attempt, and goes up through the weights again until the last lifter has had their third attempt. Then they have a break and warm up for the next event, in this case the bench press, while the other group of lifters, called a "flight" has their turn on the platform.

The guys in blue teeshirts on the platform are the loaders and spotters. The load up the weights as directed by the people on the desk, which in this case is out of the photo to the right. The plates are loaded onto the bar which is in the blue squat rack. It's set to a specific height for each lifter, measured at weigh-in. For the heavier squat attempts, the lifter and bar is surrounded by five spotters who's job it is to help with unracking and racking the bar before and after a squat, and to shadow the lifters movements, ready to catch the weight if the lifters fail. The lighter squat attempts have three spotters.

The guy sitting by himself in the middle is the head referee. There are two other referees, one on each side of the platform, who carefully watch each lift and have certain things to watch out for to call a lift good or not. A good lift gets a white flag or a white light, a bad lift gets red. A lift needs at least two white lights to get the lift counted.

My best squat. If you want dignified expressions, you're reading about the wrong sport. Go find a poker blog.

For months before this event I had been bothered by a mild pain in my hip and absolutely no progress, even some regression, of my squat capability. Recently my physio and I had tracked the pain down to a niggly little tight spot and I had been doing my best to fix it for the last few weeks. I knew I had improved significantly and I was looking forward to testing out my squat. Boom! 112.5kg. That's 5kg more than my previous best.

Event Two: Bench

Mel on the bench.

My buddy Mel is the best. She got into powerlifting because I'm doing it. After her first event last month she officially joined the Southern Provincial and National Powerlifting body so she can come lift with me in this comp, the South Islands and maybe beyond! What a friend. It was great having her there so we could look after each other. We can remind each other of our cues, look after each other's gear, be encouraging and motivating and generally what a coach does for their lifters on competition day. Mel is incredibly fit and strong at CrossFit too. She's making a good powerlifter.

Mel did brilliantly with a best of 60kg on the bench press, considering she's very new at it. I got 65kg up fine, 67.5kg felt really heavy, then barely moved 70kg before failing. I was hoping for the 70kg but looks like we'll save that for next time.

Event Three: Deadlift

Ryan deadlifts 135kg successfully. You can see behind him the people at the desk, doing a stellar job of keeping track of everything.

Deadlifting in the picture above is Ryan Stewart, a Special Olympic Athlete and a really neat guy. I had met him before at other lifting events and I've been enjoying getting to know him. Ryan and some other Special Olympians were competing in the Provincials too, on exactly the same terms as the rest of us. Ryan holds the current U54kg South Island Open Men's Deadlift record at 140kgs. He made 135kg on Saturday, I hope to see him at the South Islands in five weeks time.

My deadlifting didn't go so well but was a good learning experience. I warmed up to 140kg, then got a good first attempt at 150kg. I was red flagged twice for my second and third attempts at 155kg for faults at the finish of the lift - I was hitching the bar up to get to full extension, leaving my knees not quite straight. I asked a referee about it after, and he said I am standing up too soon and need to keep my upper body over the bar for longer.

This makes perfect sense. In training, when I'm doing sets and reps at, for example 5x5 at 135kgs, I was wondering why for the last reps the finish was so difficult and I was having to jerk the bar up with my arms. The skin on my thighs was getting sore from dragging the bar up, which shouldn't have been happening. Now I know why! I'm really such a noob at this and have so much to learn.

Libby successfully picks up 95kg.

I got to meet so many amazing people at the lift. Here is one of them, Libby Angus, usually known as figure compeditor. I knew who she was already because I've been following the gym she trains at, Full Spectrum Training Facility. Even though this was her first powerlifting competition, she lifted like a boss and easily qualified for Nationals. Good to see all that bodybuilder strength put to use in her off-season!

Medals!

Mel and I got medals! Much excite.

When the lifting was finally over (it's a looooong afternoon) there was a medal presentation. There's Mel and I with our medals in the photo above. I don't think I've gotten a medal ever before! Mel qualified for South Islands and I totalled 330kg, plenty enough for Nationals. We all went out for dinner and the club AGM at an all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant. They may rue the day when they let weightlifters eat all they can eat.

The next day I took the long road home, a gorgeous scenic drive through Middlemarch and the Maniototo. Will put photos up of that later.

Next sports event on my schedule is the Bad As Women's Weightlifting Competition at MaD CrossFit in Wellington in a month's time. Mel is coming too and we're meeting another friend from Rotorua. Can't wait!

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My Jewellery on TV! (sorta...)

21/4/2015

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Steve and Amanda Nally own a pioneering craft brewery in Invercargill. I'm not so much of a beer person, but I like what I've tasted of theirs, and I can tell you that their cider is fantastic. And as a bonus it's only 0.5% sugar! Much less sweet than the lolly-water cider brewed by bigger companies and good drinking for athletes.
They have an extra special cider project going on right now, though: they're asking people to bring in their heritage apples for that special taste that old-fashioned apples make when fermented. In around six month's time they will have a limited edition 'Taste of Southland' cider. You can read more about the project on Invercargill Brewery's website.
Even better, Amanda and Steve are active supporters of local artists and craftspeople. In this clip last night that was on Three News, you can see a pendant I made proudly worn by Amanda. It's a one-off design that I made just for her some years ago, based around some paua pearls that Steve had found.