Scaly breasted munia and Bulbul Sightings Hollywood Hills

In April 2020 we posted our sightings of the Black crested Red-whiskered Bulbul in our garden and this wonderful bird continues to flourish. To our delight this year flowers from our guava tree have been feeding a couple as they build a nest in a fellow birder neighbors tree. One of the few upsides to the pandemic was the time we and other neighbors compared sightings and notes on birds in our Hollywood Hills neighborhood and thanks to one neighbor we have now spotted the Scaly-breasted Munia. The Munia also known as the Spice Finch or Nutmeg Mannikin is a pretty chestnut colored bird with scale like breast feathers and is a gregarious one that tends to be seen in small groups. While we have not noticed this bird until now, it is a well-established non-indigenous species that thrives in sufficient numbers as to be counted on the California State Bird’s List.
As can be seen from the photos here, the Munia is more than happy to eat seeds from a bird feeder and the seed level drops significantly when the flock stop by.

Animal themed door or grand cabinet handle

When we replaced our water starved grass garden with drought resistant vegetation we were concerned that this would reduce the birds who frequent it but the contrary has proven true.
Our prolific honeysuckle and Kangaroo paw plant attracts countless Rufus and Anna Hummingbirds and the magnificent flower of our variegated Agaves attract yellow rumped warblers.
While not as striking in color, our feathered double headed bird door pull does possess drama and texture and is a central piece in our cabinet hardware collection.

Why research and development for custom hardware is expensive

The old and new schools for creating patterns and molds - part 2

Your design skill set and your preference for digital versus free hand designing may influence your choice when it comes to deciding how to create the pattern or file for casting.
Whichever road you take the research and development (R&D) costs will be significant. The R&D costs are often misunderstood, and many consumers have a hard time accepting that the pattern development can run into the thousands depending on the size and intricacy of the design. This cost is on top of the cost incurred in the design process (part 1), so perhaps we are stating the obvious when we state that custom, one of a kind door hardware, is inherently expensive.

Choice of medium for pattern making.

Regardless of whether the design is digital or old school and made with pencil and paper you should be able to use the same mediums when creating your pattern for use in investment casting or sand castings. If you have the budget and are developing a piece for high volume production, then die casting or 3D printing may be good options and may not require a pattern to be made. While die casting and 3D printing do not require a physical pattern, they depend on the design to be made with CAD/CAM software or comparable software that can capture the exact measurements and topography details of your design so that a virtual pattern can be created.


Mediums for Physical Patterns

The pattern for investment casting can be made from any medium that is both strong and non-permeable or that can be made strong by firing in a kiln. Your choice of medium will depend on your manual skills, can you carve or create a design in modelling clay? The choice will also depend on how dense the detail and undercuts are in your design, does the design have a lot of detail or is the design for a smooth piece with the detail confined to the edges? Our patterns are always made in a reductive way by carving or machining rather than by the additive clay modelling method.

Left cast trumpet flower Right hard blue wax pattern with gate in red wax

Mediums for carving or machining

Rigged foam –
High density rigid polyurethane foam comes in a variety of sheet sizes, thickness, and density. We typically use a medium 15lb per ft density. It can be machined on a bandsaw, turned on a lathe or used with cutting routers. It is ideal for moderately detailed patterns but it’s lack of tensile strength and brittle nature make it less useful for very detailed or large patterns.

Basswood & other woods
Basswood is stronger than rigged foam and finer details such as leaf ends or fingers tips that would be to fragile and brittle if rendered in foam are easy to create in this close-grained soft wood. Patterns created in basswood and foam need to be sealed with a paint primer or other non-permeable layer that act as a barrier to protect the pattern from liquid damage that may occur during mold making.

Blue jewelers’ wax
There are many types of wax available in block and sheet form that can be machined or carved to create a pattern, but we typically use a blue hard wax and pattern making.

Taking A Break in the Hollywood Hills - Ways to Re-charge Your Batteries

Don’t be misled by the title as there is noting in this post remotely like practical advise on how to re-charge that battery for your power drill or other electric tool. Instead we spent an overcast May Gray day (not to be confused with Inspector Maigret created by Georges Simenon) on a trail that runs from Durand to Mulholland re-charging our inspirational reserves. Tourists be warned there is no access to the Hollywood sign which if you look closely you can see peering through the marine layer or pedestrian access to Mulholland West.

The overcast sky made the morning refreshingly cool and the Coronavirus gave us time to take a few shots of some of the local birds that were more conspicuous and easier to hear without the throng of tourists.

Flowering Broom

We were treated to both the sight and sound of a Chipping Sparrow perched on a shrub and while we were unable to capture his rust red top we were able to capture his profile as he took off. This family of sparrow is very common in Los Angeles and their tame nature makes them easy to spot.

Broom plants and soft fountain grasses have taken hold on this trail making a great foreground to Castillo del Lago, home in the 1930’s to the renowned gangster Bugsy Siegel and in the late 1990’s to Madonna.

Tame and Easy to Spot the Chipping Sparrow’s Head Has A Rust-Red Top

See how birds have inspired our cabinet pull designs

See how other hikes have inspired our cabinet hardware page

See More of Our Flora Cabinet Pulls

HAPPY 4th JULY TO ALL

From all of us here may you have a happy and safe July 4th.

The image used here may not be the iconic American bald eagle but the Blue Jay still ranks as a revered and loved bird amongst  Americans and non-Americans alike.

The sculpture is both a decorative wall piece and a functioning door pull depending on your taste and needs . It is cast in solid silicon bronze and is part of Martin Pierce’s limited edition of  art works that include several insect and fantasy pieces.  The Blue Jay measures 17”W x 12”D x 4”H.

The Opposite of hardware - Fluffy Fledglings

Following on from our last post where I  wrote about the abundance of insect life in Los Angeles I wanted to share some home shots of the bird life we are now seeing. Martin took these pictures over the weekend through our kitchen window and thought you may  like to see this young brood of bush tits. Yes, I know the name makes one giggle but the birds themselves also  make me smile and so I encourage you to print them out  as we have and stick them on a nearby wall as mood enhancer.

This family of 4 bush tits and mum are nesting in a nearby tree that offers more dense foliage cover  but perch in our  guava tree to feed off the aphids and small flies that are drawn by the sweet guava  flowers and leaves.  They share this prime spot with humming birds that roost in the tree and feed from the stamens of the guava flowers and with the occasional unwelcome squirrel that enjoys the flowers in their entirety. While the squirrels do pose a threat to mother’s incubating eggs they do not pose a threat to the fledglings.

The fledglings are very small being about1.75” from head to claw and 3” from head to tail and when mature will travel along with other family members flitting from tree to tree in flocks of 15+. The bush tits are garden friendly and do a great job of removing aphids from tree leaves.

While Martin is often able to draw inspiration from nature in his handle designs and has used the scrub jay birds as natural models for his bird handles he has no immediate plans to develop bush tit handles but is happy that their chirpy good looks are now positioned as colorful prints over his Wacom tablet.

Anatomy of a bronze door handle--Part 2

Sketch is done and details as to how the sculpture will be attached to a door, how to design it so that it can be cast to allow wax and metal to properly flow through the mold and not weigh a ton, it is time to move on to the next step. (you can review the first steps here). To make the mold for the body a pliant silicon membrane over the outside of the body and the legs has to be built-up.  At this stage you are also “gating” the mold by adding square rod sections to the body of the bird. The silicon will from a membrane around these rods and when these rods are later removed what is left is a hollow or void  through which the hot wax is poured . The mold is strengthened by being housed in a rigid metal case that keeps it true to form. Once the mold is complete it is literally cut down the middle and opened up to remove the rods and the result is a hollow replica of the birds body with funnels that have been created through which wax and later bronze can flow.

The next step is to pour  molten wax into the hollow mold through the gates and slosh it around, coating the inside of the mold with liquid wax.  When the wax is dry, the mold is carefully opened and the wax body is removed with the  gates or protrusions attached.

We now have a one piece wax bird replica that is hollow inside and we need to turn it into a bronze piece that is hollow.

We cut around the birds legs and around a bit  of his stomach to create a hole in the cavity of the wax body; we are going to cast the feet, stomach and wings as separate pieces. What we are left with is 4 parts of our bird, all in wax.  Each wax piece is dipped in a clay like substance similar to the way we created the rubber mold, building up a clay slurry over each part of the bird to create a plaster like “shell” for each piece.  When dry this slurry becomes rigid and forms a casing. With the bird body we will pour the slurry inside the hollow wax body and also coat the outside of the body so that, when fired,  both the inside and outside will become a hollow ,walled shell.  These "shelled" pieces are then baked in a kiln that will make them very rigid and strong.  The heat causes the soft wax to melt out and collect at the bottom of the kiln, hence the expression "lost wax".  Actually, not really lost but rather recycled.  Even artists in ancient times recognized the value of re-using and recycling products.

All of these steps will result in a beautiful piece of functional art that can be used as a door pull to create an extraordinary entrance to a business or home, or enjoyed as wall art.  This will become evident in our final post on the sculpting and casting process for this particular piece of architectural hardware.

You can view our entire collection of custom hardware at www.martinpierce.com.