Hi Folks,
Brrrr, pretty darned cold out there this morning with the temps hovering around 17f. Ice and snow covers the yard and despite being well sanded the roads are still not quite melted clean from the storm earlier this week. I had to perform an emergency fix on my mailbox yesterday as the town plow had knocked it completely off the post. It's supposed to get down to the single digits tonight so we're staying quite bundled up here in the northeast.
Today I have another really cool drop to offer you, bronze Spin Coins with glow inserts! I've been working on these off and on since the summer and just finally have enough finished to do some sales for them. This is the first small batch, with several more interesting variations to follow.
These non stamped bronze Spin Coins are basically the same long spinning design as the previous batches. But instead of leather inserts, this time I decided to try some glow in the dark effects. I found some GID insert material that works surprisingly well indeed....I'm extremely picky about GID and while this stuff isn't quite on par with, for instance, the C3 Superluminova you might see on some of the better German watches, it definitely does glow nicely all night long so I'm really happy about that. It probably helps that it is a large surface area compared to tiny watch hands.
I did try a comparison piece with epoxy and the best glow powder btw, and these are far brighter. That is largely because it takes an enormous amount of powder plus a white painted base surface to really get a decent effect. I gave up after one test piece because it was obviously going to be a crazy amount of work for no real benefit. I tried glow paints too, same issues plus very messy.
The glow is really neat, but what makes these Spin Coins extra special is the solid glass lens. Now, if you were to merely set some glass on top of the insert like a watch crystal, the finished object does look interesting and the glass keeps things underneath from getting dirty. But if you take matters further and physically CEMENT the two together something truly magical happens. The glass lens now becomes connected and it picks up whatever is on the underlying surface and projects it around the curved dome. From the side it creates a remarkable three dimensional type effect similar to a glass marble. The underlying surface becomes animated and will move and distort slightly as you tilt the coin. It's mesmerizing and just soooo darned cool. :)
On these first coins, I was experimenting with various adhesives to attach the glass and at first everything was going perfectly. I spent more than an entire day assembling and attaching glass to these, and they looked awesome. But after they had dried for a few days I noticed that tiny gas bubbles had formed under the glass and some of these bubbles continued to increase in size for several days afterward. At first I thought this was a defect and was absolutely disgusted that my hours of hard work were ruined, but then I realized that the bubbles are actually quite beautiful! On subsequent batches I have switched to super glue which is also very tricky but produces a clearer effect, although I am once again toying with the idea of trying some more bubbles as well. We'll see how it goes...anyway, there are more brass Game Coins with glow following these bronze ones, and also some wild alternate designs in titanium.
Bronze Glow Coins will run $80 plus shipping and the link to purchase is below. There are only a few dozen so it's one per customer on them please. A much larger batch of antique brass Game Coins with glow will be coming soon plus a handful of stainless and some titanium. Thanks for dropping by today and have a great weekend!
All gone for today. Thanks so much everyone!
