Why We Need to Make It Ourselves

Maskmaker, Maskmaker... IV :: Molding the mask

I wanted to see how much thickness I took out of the leather, so I grabbed the calipers... er... rather, I asked the engineer to loan me her calipers.

The image below was taken before skiving.  The leather is .116 inches thick.

The second, bottom image is after.  The thickness if .0785. It's only a difference of 0.0375 inches, but what a difference that makes when it comes time to sew or fold the stuff.... or get it wet and work it over a mold. 

What I'm about to tell you to do doesn't lend itself to photography, but it's pretty easy to explain.

Fill a sink with water as hot as your tap is able to produce. Keep in mind that you're going to have your hands in this water soon, so don't burn yourself. You want a nice hot bath for your leather, but DO NOT BOIL IT. That's a different thing and it may make dandy Roman armor, but not so much for masks.

Toss the piece of leather you've cut and skived into the sink. If your sink is not deep enough or large enough for the leather to submerge completely, use a washtub or bucket.  I've been known to use a large mixing bowl.

Go and get a sandwich or trim your fingernails; you need to allow the leather to sit in the water for a good ten minutes before you start to play with it.

REMINDER: Once it is wet, everything that comes in contact with the leather might leave a mark. This includes your fingernails and your rings.  Trim your nails and remove your rings before you begin.

When you come back, it's time to get your hands wet.

Start working the leather with your hands in the water. Crumple it up and squeeze it. Keep doing this until the leather is fully saturated with water.

You will notice that the leather has become elastic and just a little spongy. That's the collagen warming up and leaching out into the water. Time to take the leather out of the bath and roll it up and squeeze as much of the water out as you can.

Because you followed the principle of mise en place your mold is sitting right next to you as well as some brass nails, a stapler, and a tack hammer. Right?  Good.  Remember not to put any nails or staples anywhere that you don't want to cut away later. These holes won't heal.

1. Drape the leather over the mask and arrange it so that its oriented just as your pattern (piece of cloth) was.  Pull one edge or corner over and staple it to the back of the mold.
2. Push the leather down into the eyesockets with your fingertip or a piece of wood and nail them in place.
3. Working quickly, start stretching the leather over the mold, and nailing or stapling it to the back of the form.
4. Do one widely-spaced circle and then come around again, always pulling the leather taut across the form.
5. If you have an extra-long nose like mine, you will need to have a fold where the bridge of the nose meets the eye brows. This is okay, it lends to the maniacal look of the mask, which is desireable.
6. You might need to use a strip of cotton or (as I did below) even a wire tie padded by another piece of scrap leather to get the desired drape and tightness, especially on a long nose like his one. Remember to pad it, because the ties can mar the leather.
7. Italian trained maskmakers use a mallet whose head was made from the tip of a cow horn to lightly pummel the mask down into the creases and grooves of the mask. This also helps drive water out of the leather and compacts it, making for a stiffer mask.  On a larger mask than this one, I would do that.

When you get to a point where the mask is fully nailed in place, pummeled and/or lashed into place, put the mask out in the sun to dry.

Some maskmakers use a hair dryer at this stage.  You have to be careful doing that, because you can dry out and crack the leather with that much heat.  Best to let it sit in the sun for a few hours while you make the next mask or go do something else.

The Clown and the Toymaker :: Exit stage left, pursued by bear.

As I mentioned, I've been having back problems. Between May 5th and July 3rd, my spine went into meltdown until I was walking with a cane. Since then, the cane and the pain both went away, but it was an eye-opening experience.

I can no longer keep up the level of physicality that my role as fool requires of me.  Or -- more to the point -- that I require of me. I cannot meet my own standards and that means it's time to hang up the mask.


This year, my fool will play his usual role of Master of Ceremonies atop the castle gate for the opening ceremonies at the Washington Midsummer's Renaissance Faire, but that will be it for me.  

Next year, Calabash the fool will be retired completely.

That is not to say I'm going anywhere, but I just can't caper like I used to or rely on my body to carry me through the run of a faire without crapping out on me.

In the immortal words of William Shakespeare, "Exit stage left, pursued by bear."

What's next?

I needed something to allow me to keep doing the stuff I love, but also to take my time about it. To be able to entertain and interact as I always have, but at a rate and level that will accept whatever is happening to me at that moment. And I also wanted the flexibility to take my inner Davinci out and take him for a walk.

I toyed with the idea of doing a potter or carpenter/joiner sort of thing, but those involved hauling too much crap out of the faire every weekend. But I still wanted to do something artistic, or at least artisinal. Something that incorporated all the stuff I really love to do...

Enter the Village Toymaker.

Forget Davinci, I'm about to let my inner Jim Henson out to play.


How it impacts this blog...

This is to your benefit, dear reader, because this blog is about to get active again. The next series of posts (beginning with the long-promised leather-working tutorials, I promise) will be about creating the toys and oddments that will sell the role of toymaker to the crowds.

I need to make shoes, toy drums, little leather masks, and a boatload of period encampment stuff that I've never really worried about because Calabash was a mobile character. He didn't need a work table, a leather bottel, or a marionette...

Well, maybe the marionette.

So coming soon will be costuming for me and for dolls. (Shoemaking post coming soon!) Discussions of period toys, marionettes, and the clothing of the merchant and artisan class of the renaissance.

I hope you will join me.

Scott

Benched

Technically, I'm no longer a member of a guild at WMRF, in the parlance of this particular faire, I'm an  independent player. However; I still retain close ties with the guild I helped create, Hearth of Saint Brigid, and when they need set pieces or camp furniture, I'm always happy to help out.

For myriad reasons, this year they were facing the unpleasant choice of either bringing modern chairs and trying to disguise them or sitting on the ground. As an alternative, I offered to make them a pair of long benches and to take apart a table they already had to make it usable as a dining table. In the end, we decided the old table was far too heavy to do anything with (the previous carpenter was a bit too enthusiastic about heavy materials) and that two 8-foot benches would be less useful than four 4-foot benches.

There are a number of period images depicting people sitting on simple "five board benches" and the inestimable Karen Larsdatter has cataloged most of them (at least the ones available on the internet).  I had my pick of designs to choose from.

Five board benches are a standard of basic carpentry, so I was confident that they would knock together fairly quickly.

Since these would see heavy use and be used primarily outside, it was requested that I make them sturdy, so rather than the more typical 1X lumber, I chose to make them out of 2X stud lumber. This meant a bit more work to shape them, but the end result is a very sturdy piece of camp furniture that will weather any storm or any butt that comes along.

These are doweled together with hardwood dowels and once the trestles are complete, they will be stained a dark brown to make them look a bit more appropriate to the setting.  The tabletop will be given a matte polyurethane finish since it will be an eating and food-prep surface and the rest will be sealed with an eye toward minimizing shine.

This has been fun for me, if for no other reason than the fact that I've never tried to make a matched set of anything before. At least not out of wood. As is the case when trying to throw a set of mugs or goblets, getting them all to match without making them so plain as to be forgettable is the challenge here.

More pics when I have them stained and paired up with the new table.

De Boekbinder

I've dinked around with bookbinding a time or two as you might remember and one day I'll get my studio back and get back to it (after completing the long-promised leather wet forming lesson, of course) but this... this is divine.

A Pewterer At Work

I claim no skills at metalworking beyond the most basic, but I know enough to be impressed by this.