The flu/cold/whatever that has been stalking me for a month got me last week. I spent last weekend doing very, very little which put me behind in many ways. Then, of course, CNC classes have been about manual threading old school on crunchy old lathes which takes bloody forever, especially when that chunk of well-sized "this is mild steel, right, instructor?" metal turns out to be tool steel. This rankles in particular when my whole point of doing this shit is to get better at programming CNC and the CAM software we're using is so ghetto and awful that it won't even talk to any of the machines I'm going to have to work with.

Got some really great results with copper etching. Probably going to be greater with enamel. We'll see this afternoon. If this is a win I might drop $400 on an electro-etching/electroforming rig from Rio Grande. It's hilarious. Jewelers freak the fuck out about buying expensive things - "ZOMG you're using silver? That's like $14 worth of silver!" which, if you're a redneck with a Lapua is like five rounds. My instructor sharpens number 11 blades. I bought a pair of Fisso magic arms on eBay for $170 each 'cuz they're usually $370 and all they do is hold my travel indicators.

But they hold them really goddamn well.

I might buy some movements, buy some cases, etch some silver and put together a handful of watches just to fuckin' do it. In the meantime I have to do a project with chain and decided I'ma do Milanese. Wanna see how you make Milanese?

Unfortunately this violates the spirit of the assignment (and costs $17k - I asked over the summer). So here's your other option:

I'll say this. Attempting this in 26ga copper is enough to make you glad you didn't attempt it in 26ga silver. We'll try 16ga copper, which will look manly as fuck, but might actually succeed.