Trenchant_Troll
ad hominid
Registered: Mar 2004
Location: USA
Posts: 24747 |
10k
10,000
I would like to dedicate this achievement of dubious honor to the people that keep this place up and running. It is something that all involved should be proud of. However, I would be remiss if I failed to acknowledge some other people that have made my time here a great deal of fun.
Smug Git: A friend I have gained both here and in the 3D world. Say what you might about Smug, I suspect that it will be true and probably said by me first. As I have attempted to train him in the ways of the imbecile I have been forced to conclude that he is to clever. Wrong most of the time, but clever.
Paint: Despite the abundant empirical evidence to the contrary, Paint is a real class act. Why, I would even go so far as to say that when he reaches my ripe old age he might very well be half as good as someone who is half as good as me.
Skalie: Definitely one of the funniest members of the Asylum. It is a shame he is a clog, but at least he isn’t French. Global warming, Skalie; how long can you tread water?
Simon: What can I say? Simon is a cross between a Robert Ludlum novel and Ripley’s Believe It or Not.
LF: Because he is like the anti-Smug.
ChipsJr: Someone I consider to be one of the smartest and most articulate members here. I taught him everything I know; that’s why I have nothing left.
MstrG: A great guy with the patience to help a really stupid guy, who was/is a supreme mIRC chat-tard, figure out how to make mIRC work and keep it working. I would never have done it out without him. So, let’s give MstrG a round of applause for me being able to access chat. Oh, and stones are on sale at the back table for a nominal fee.
Phorbs: Because of that certain Je ne sais quoi. Ok, that's a lie; I know exactly what it is.
Wonderaz: Because he is basically me, if I knew how to fly a balloon and had to shave my back and he was anything like me.
Jeb: The guy I want to be like when I grow up and have nothing better going for me. 
Avondale: Because he reminds me what would have happened if I hadn’t ‘smarten-up’.
Thimbles: Ah, what can I say about Thimbles?
quote:
Based on archeological finds near Moscow, 30,000 years ago mammoth hunters created buttons by drilling through pearls made of mammoth ivory. They fashioned bone rings to help them apply pressure while stitching the buttons to leather garments. The modern concept of a thimble comes from the Etruscans living in what is today Italy. They made thimbles from bronze using clay casts. They were difficult to use because the high copper content of the bronze discolored fingers and clothing. Thimble technology was brought to Germany when the Etruscans colonized southern Germany about 2500 years ago. The first break-through in thimble technology came in the 15th century. Cologne copper smiths who made the thimbles up to this time, discovered that by throwing special earth into the molten copper the finished thimbles would have a stable yellow color. However, the process created a lot of foul smelling smoke so the copper smiths were forced to leave the town.
In Nürnberg the famous traveling doctor, Dr Paracelcus lived as a sub-tenant in the house of a copper smith. Very curious as to why the copper turned yellow, he researched the problem and discovered that the special earth contained zinc. In a short time, the process was refined to produce pure brass. From then on, the Nürnberg thimbles were no longer cast as a whole but were made from stamped disks and metal strips that were bent conically. The new thimbles were a big success world-wide. Everyone wanted the Nürnberg thimbles because they were better, more comfortable, and cheaper. In order to keep the method of producing brass a secret, the town council of Nürnberg prohibited its thimble makers -- a profession with apprentice, journeyman, and master craftsman -- from leaving the town. For the next 200 years the secret stayed in Nürnberg.
Things changed with empress Maria Theresa of Austria. Angry that she had to buy thimbles made abroad from a place with which she frequently waged war, she sent spies to Nürnberg to steal the secret of the thimble making process. The spies returned with the plans but her copper smiths were unable to reproduce the process successfully. Not to be put-off, she arranged for Nürnberg copper smith masters to be smuggled out of the town in a straw wagon. Each master received his own house and garden. She built a thimble making facility in Vienna and broke the Nürnberg monopoly. Only after his time was brass produced in Europe.
The next break-through in thimble making technology was the development of a device that permitted them to be made by machine. The son of a master tailor in the town of Schorndorf near Stuttgart gave his father a silver thimble for a birthday gift. Having learned the silver smith profession, he recognized the most difficult part of the work in producing the thimble. He experimented for six years before finally developing a device that would do the work. Device in hand, he and his brother built a manufacturing facility and became the biggest suppliers of thimbles in the world, the company Gebrueder Gabler in Schorndorf. They sold more than 4000 different types of thimbles in 18 different sizes and kept an on-hand inventory of over seven million silver thimbles. Each month one railroad car of thimbles was delivered to Russia alone. The company manufactured thimbles for 140 years until the heirs lost interest in the business.
Birchcroft Fine Bone China, which makes collectors' thimbles in Longton, Stoke-on-Trent, has the distinction of having two of Britain's listed bottle ovens on site. Few of these ovens remain, but of the Six Towns comprising Stoke-on-Trent Longton has the largest number and the finest. Thousands of pounds have been spent on renovation, and visitors can now step inside the cavernous relics, many of which have been adapted as museums and showrooms.
The days of using ovens - which took an age to fire - in production have long gone. At Birchcroft they have been replaced by much smaller and more economic quick-fire kilns using off-peak power and very precise automated systems. But the actual process of making the company's fine bone china thimbles differs little from when the great Josiah Spode introduced porcelain at the beginning of the 19th century.
"Although some mechanisation has been forthcoming, the pottery industry as a whole seems not to have noticeably changed," says Keith Forbes who manages the production side of the famlily-run business. "The thimbles we produce are made by a process known as slip casting, which does not involve mechanisation at all as every stage is carried out by hand.
Clay arrives at the factory in slab form, known as cake clay. It is then made into liquid clay or slip by way of a blunger - a large mixer where the clay is broken down and - with the addition of water and silica - made up into specific recipes. This is an important stage in the production process, as the attained density or pint weight is very much a matter of individual mixing.
At the casting benches the slip is poured into moulds made from plaster of Paris which form the basic thimble shape. At Birchcroft the moulds produce six thimbles at a time, the caster seemingly having an infinite number of them at his disposal. Being absorbent, the plaster soaks up the liquid clay and allows a shell to form, which the caster leaves in the mould until dry, the surplus liquid clay having been poured back into a slip bucket. The thickness of the thimbles is controlled by the length of time the slip is left in the mould - the shorter the period - the finer the finished thimble will be.
When the thimbles have been removed from the moulds, they are in what is known as a "green" state. Although a recognisable shape, they are fragile, larger than the finished product and rough around the edges. Spongers, as the name suggests, wipe them smooth for their first firing.
Any rejects at this stage can be reconstituted into slip and reused for casting. The thimbles are placed by the spongers onto batts incorporating specially made formers to retain the product's shape during firing and they are carefully placed in kilns for the biscuit firing.
Fired at temperatures in excess of 1200°C for about eight hours, a biscuit thimble is strong white, translucent, but still rough to the touch. It has to be dipped in glaze, have any surplus solution removed from its foot to prevent it sticking in the kiln, and then be placed in a glost kiln for a second firing. The finished thimble is a white glazed blank which can be gilded and transfer-printed, the kiln having been [b]placed and fired on four separate occasions in order to produce this tiny artifact, the humble thimble.
"Thimbles have been in continuous use throughout the world since well before the birth of Christ," says Tony Forbes, head of the Birchcroft business. It is probably their utilisation by virtually every known civilisation, together with the variety of designs and materials from which they are produced, that has made them so popular as collectable items. They have been fashioned in stone, bronze, wood, leather, horn, bone, tortoiseshell, ivory, mother-of-pearl, glass, a number of metal alloys and, of course, porcelain. The production of porcelain models flourished when the advent of the sewing machine, by men like Elias Howe and Isaac Singer in the 1840s and 1850s, heralded the demise of the common utilitarian thimble."
Victorian England, with its emergent network of road and rail links and rapid industrial growth, proved an ideal marketplace for collectors' thimbles. The Great Exhibition at Paxton's Crystal Palace in London's Hyde Park in 1851 triggered off a rash of souvenir thimbles commemorating the event. By this Lime there were over 6.600 miles of rail track and with greater ease and speed in long distance travel, the dawn of tourism was upon us. Castles, cathedrals engineering masterpieces, royal residences, abbeys, towns and cities - all lent themselves admirably to air increasingly lucrative trade in souvenir thimbles.
Over a century later, Birchcroft have targeted tourist meccas throughout the world in much the same way, from the Tower of London and the Kennedy Space Centre to the Sydney Opera House, as well as developing an impressive collectors' market. The firm uses several freelance artists to produce new designs, printing is done in-house, and all the production stages for an original set of thimbles can be handled from start to finish under one roof. Compact and flexible, the company has a reputation for being able to manufacture thimbles bearing any transfer-printed design quickly and in relatively small runs.
Thimbles as we know them almost certainly came into being with the introduction of coarse thread and fabrics. Early needles were difficult to use because they were not smooth or polished, so some form of protection was required for the finger when stitching. Simple protectors in bronze or iron were employed initially, with needleworkers using the side of the finger in much the same manner as tailors use the open-topped thimble of today. Later when garments and soft furnishing became more elaborate and necessitated greater sewing, thimbles for general use were made of brass.
Silver thimbles in a variety of styles and decorations date from the 17th century. They invariably feature waffle-like indentations and chevroned strapwork, and are often found without rims. Decorative circular knurlings gradually replaced square-shaped indentations as the century progressed. English thimbles from the mid 17th century were tall and cylindrical and usually made in two parts.
The early 18th century saw a preference for the shorter, rounder shaped thimble, although up to the 1750s they were still being produced in two sections - a welded cylinder topped by a small cap. During the second half of the century, however, one-piece thimbles were made by hammering a metal disc into a mould. They grew in popularity as artistic needlework became a fashionable pastime with middle and upper class ladies. Records show that Elizabeth I gave a thimble lavishly encrusted with precious stones to one of her ladies in-waiting, so it comes as no surprise that thimbles as gifts, chased with ornate Rococo designs and made from expensive material, were later included in finely worked etuis and chatelaines of the 18th century. (Originating in medieval times, chatelaines had a number of chains suspended from a central clip, with a different item attached to the end of each such as scissors, thimble, buttonhook, pincushion and needle case.)
Porcelain thimbles, such as those made by the Meissen factory in Saxony, were never intended for practical work although many thought them ideal for sewing delicate fabrics such as silk. As with tortoiseshell and mother-of-pearl they were less likely to snag the fine threads. Made specifically as extremely beautiful gifts arid now financially beyond the reach of the majority of collectors, few Meissen thimbles exist outside museums and top private collections. Their distinctive rounded form is enhanced by exquisitely detailed and delicate landscapes, seascapes, birds, flowers and romantically portrayed figures, and they have an unrivalled quality and charm.
Fine examples of English porcelain thimbles were first manufactured in the early 1800s by Royal Worcester, Coalport, Spode and Wedgwood, although possibly the richest period for such items is from about 1885 to 1910. This was when thimble production at Royal Worcester in particular was at its height. Although the firm's early thimbles are seldom marked, they can be identified by their highly translucent bodies, elaborate gilding and detailed brushwork. Signatures of qualified artists like William Powell, who hand painted a series of British birds for Royal Worcester, only began to appear after 1900. Wedgwood Jasper thimbles were also being made in the first half of the 20th century and by exactly the same methods as they were 150 years earlier.
Today Birchcroft make a million thimbles a year, exporting them all over the world.
My, you scroll almost as fast as I do.
 Aptly, this enormous thimble marks the textile district in Toronto, Canada; the country from which our Thimbles Worth of Opinion hails from. It gives one a certain understanding of what Canadians mean by a “thimble’s worth” and offers further proof of why Canada is solely responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs, the Great Flood, the Crucifixion of Jesus, the Holocaust, WMDs, AIDS, global warming, and the theme from Titanic.
Anyhoo…
I am sure that I have failed to mention many others, but I am tired of writing this. I mean, what do you people think, that I have time to post a bunch of shit here?
By the way, has anyone seen Dead_Inside, I think he’s gotten himself lost again.
__________________
I think the best possible way to show Iran that nuclear weapons are not what they want is to give them one. - Steven Colbert
Report this post to a moderator |
IP: Logged
|
![[new thread]](/images/vb/button_newthread_off.png "Post New Thread")
![[post reply]](/images/vb/button_newreply_off.png "Post A Reply")
07-11-2005 12:26 AM
Re: 10k