Tag: toolsofthetrade

TOTT: Day Twenty-One

Posted on by Dr-Omega

Tools of the Trade

Day Twenty-One: Cutting Table

A few years ago, I spent each day in January writing about a different tool I use in my maskmaking. As I am currently redesigning my entire website in the new year, I thought it might be nice to revisit this project.  Each day in January 2021, I’ll share a different item that I use in my studio. I hope some of these can help other people who are interested in making wrestling masks. 

I used to own this cutting table from JoAnn’s. It was nice (although not $200 nice! I surely didn’t pay that much for it!)—it has two sides that can be folded up or down independently, so you can have two sizes of cutting areas or fold them both down and store the table away. I managed to knock the thing over one time, and it was wonky after that. It was also a bit low for my comfort, as I’m 6’1″. So I decided to make my own cutting table!

I googled a number of tutorials on how to build your own work table, and ended up taking a couple of elements from different ones, and added a few of my own touches. I’m not an experienced woodworker or carpenter, but I managed to get everything together pretty well (with a few bumps along the way!) It’s primarily constructed of 2x4s, so it’s good and solid. It’s also bigger than the doorway, so I constructed the whole thing inside the room, and now I can never move into another house.

I took the top off that cutting table from JoAnn’s and used it for my new table. I used the skinny section and one of the leaves as my permanent top, and constructed a swinging wheeled support to hold the other folding leaf. 95% of the time I just use it with that section folded down, but it’s nice to have that extra length when I need it.

The top of the table is right at 98 cm, just below my waistline, so it’s just perfect for me now. I don’t have to lean way over to cut things, and I’ve noticed I feel a lot better after marathon cutting sessions. I have a big self-healing cutting mat on there, so it’s really convenient (and decadent!) to just be able to grab a craft blade and start slicing away at things without having to pull out equipment and make space.

I found a really good deal on a router a while back, and came up with this idea for additional storage. I routed parallel grooves across two pieces of shelving board, and spaced them so that I could slide these locking plastic boxes in there, and they’d stay up on their own. (Home Depot had these boxes on clearance, five for $2. I bought like 15 of them—wish I had bought more!) I store my scraps of Japanese patent vinyl in there, sorted by colour. There’s a matching set of boxes on the other side where I store various offcuts of holo vinyl—never throw away anything except the tiniest scraps!)

Next to this stack is just a two-level wooden shelf I made. One side has cardstock up top with clear folders and pattern files underneath, and the other side has my storehouse of adhesives. The space between the two sets of shelves is perfect for storing an oversized ironing pad I made.

Amusingly, I forgot to account for the depth of the 2x4s that make the sides of the cutting table, and had already screwed the top of the table down before I put these shelves in. They wouldn’t just slide in, so I had to cut a huge wedge off the back corners of the shelves so I could leverage them into place. Oops!

One of the key ideas I used from one of the tutorials I found was the use of these galvinized corners designed for attaching 2-by-4s together. They provide strength, help keep things straight, and I think they look really cool. I also put these big red rubber wheels on the legs so I can move the table around to get to the storage behind where it usually sits. The wheels swivel 360 degrees and lock in place so that table isn’t going anywhere if I don’t want it to!

Like I said before, I’m no carpenter, so I felt extra proud of what I constructed here! I use it every day and it’s one of my best tools.

TOTT: Day Twenty

Posted on by Dr-Omega

Tools of the Trade

Day Twenty: Power Strip

A few years ago, I spent each day in January writing about a different tool I use in my maskmaking. As I am currently redesigning my entire website in the new year, I thought it might be nice to revisit this project.  Each day in January 2021, I’ll share a different item that I use in my studio. I hope some of these can help other people who are interested in making wrestling masks. 

I have a number of electrical items that I use occasionally (irons, postal scales, thread winders, etc), and they’re stored away until I need to use them. I got tired of bending down to find an outlet to plug them into, so I bought this Stanley SurgeMax power strip. The thing that made this one particularly useful is that it has mounting brackets built into it, so I screwed it to the edge of one of my built-in shelves, around waist height. This put the outlets in a much more convenient location, and I can quickly get power to my tools quite easily. (It also makes a nice little shelf for my tiny things, like 15 cm rulers.)

TOTT: Day Nineteen

Posted on by Dr-Omega

Tools of the Trade

Day Nineteen: Lightboard

A few years ago, I spent each day in January writing about a different tool I use in my maskmaking. As I am currently redesigning my entire website in the new year, I thought it might be nice to revisit this project.  Each day in January 2021, I’ll share a different item that I use in my studio. I hope some of these can help other people who are interested in making wrestling masks. 

When I was growing up, my mom owned a needlepoint store, and she drew a lot of original art for canvasses. She had a light table that she made herself, to help her trace her art. It was basically a light bulb fixture inside a wooden box that had a plexiglass top. You’d lay your art on top, a blank piece of paper on top of that, and then you’d turn on the lamp and the light would shine through both layers of paper and let you trace the image on the bottom sheet, making changes to the art as you wished. Much later, technology had advanced, and one Christmas I got a fancy LED light board as my main gift. They were fairly expensive (and at the time, only available at fancy art stores), but now they were much more portable, flatter, brighter, gave a more dispersed light, and didn’t get hot! It was a miracle! I still have that board, but now that time has passed and prices have dropped on LED components, I now use an inexpensive A4-sized LED board that’s super-thin, super-bright, super-handy, AND is rechargeable via usb, so I don’t have to fumble with wires! Brilliant! I just stash it on a shelf where I can grab it, use it, and shove it right back again. I use it just as my mom used her old light table, to trace and modify art, and also to align multipart patterns that are too big to print all on one sheet (as seen here).

TOTT: Day Eighteen

Posted on by Dr-Omega

Tools of the Trade

Day Eighteen: Rolling Ruler

A few years ago, I spent each day in January writing about a different tool I use in my maskmaking. As I am currently redesigning my entire website in the new year, I thought it might be nice to revisit this project.  Each day in January 2021, I’ll share a different item that I use in my studio. I hope some of these can help other people who are interested in making wrestling masks. 

This is one of those products that I searched for forever, but couldn’t find for the longest time because it didn’t exist. It’s a simple device, and very useful, so you’d think it would be fairly common, but it turns out it didn’t come to be until Kickstarter was around. It’s called the Curve Runner, and it’s a rolling ruler, basically just a circular ruler mounted on a handle grip. You roll it along a shape and it gives you a measure of the total distance. I find it invaluable when I’m creating patterns and I need to make sure the length of the seam line of one piece matches the length of the corresponding line on another piece where they’re sewn together. I used to clumsily try to do this with a tape measure, but this tool makes it MUCH easier! This one is in centimetres because I try to do everything metric, but it’s also available in inches.

TOTT: Day Seventeen

Posted on by Dr-Omega

Tools of the Trade

Day Seventeen: Clear Folder

A few years ago, I spent each day in January writing about a different tool I use in my maskmaking. As I am currently redesigning my entire website in the new year, I thought it might be nice to revisit this project.  Each day in January 2021, I’ll share a different item that I use in my studio. I hope some of these can help other people who are interested in making wrestling masks. 

I think clear folder may be one of the best inventions ever. Common in Japan, clear folder is used to conveniently store documents and loose bits of paper. They’re pockets made of a sturdy medium-weight plastic, sealed on the left side and bottom, and open at the top and right, with a little thumb cutout in the upper part of the right side. Basically, you can easily separate the front and back at the thumb cut, and then slide whatever you want inside for safekeeping. Clear folder makes it easy to store or carry around papers.

I used to store my pattern pieces in paper envelopes of various sizes. I found that bugs liked them, little patterns got stuck in them, and various other ills. Then I discovered clear folder and my life changed for the better! You can see exactly what’s in them, they lay nice and flat, patterns go in and come out easily, and they’re quite inexpensive. In Japan, you can even get them at the ¥100 stores. In the USA you can order them online from Amazon or whatever. I use A4 for most things, and these can be filed away in most any container that is designed for LTR sized materials. I also have some B4 for bigger things, and then some A6 and B6 to keep tiny stuff from being lost. The latter two can be tossed inside an A4 for storage.

You can also get clear folder with art on them! (These are usually then opaque, but are still called “clear folder” in Japan.) You can find them with manga characters, movie posters, music idols, business logos, and just about anything else you can think of. At arts and crafts shows, you frequently see artists who sell clear folder with their own art on them, like American artists might have stickers or poster prints at their comic con booth.

Postscript:

For my mask patterns, since they’re a bit bigger and I’m grabbing them and putting them away frequently, I keep most of them in a hanging file rack on the back of a closet door. The various pieces (body, crown, etc) are clipped together with a small binder clip, and the patterns are roughly sorted by type (traditional, chinless, full-face, etc). There’s also a clear folder in there with frequently used pattern pieces (laceplates, tongues, and the like.) I’ve seen a lot of mascareros who store their mask patterns by punching a hole in them and just hanging them on the wall, but I’m low on wall space (I have a lot of built in shelves in the studio, and I gotta have wall space to put up my cool posters!) and this was a convenient alternative.

TOTT: Day Sixteen

Posted on by Dr-Omega

Tools of the Trade

Day Sixteen: Surgical Tools

A few years ago, I spent each day in January writing about a different tool I use in my maskmaking. As I am currently redesigning my entire website in the new year, I thought it might be nice to revisit this project.  Each day in January 2021, I’ll share a different item that I use in my studio. I hope some of these can help other people who are interested in making wrestling masks. 

Surgical tools can be very useful when sewing. Hemostats, forceps, or clamps (the three items on the left) can help you clean out hard-to-reach areas on the inside of your sewing machine. More than once I found a piece of fluff gumming up the works in my bobbin area, that I couldn’t reach with my fingers. Forceps easily reached in there and removed the offending material. My dad had a lot of these laying around the house when I was growing up; seems he had a bit of a roach problem. Surgical scissors (the rightmost three items) are extremely sharp and can be helpful in sewing. The first pair pictured are designed for removing stitches, and have a little hook blade at the end; they’re excellent for seam ripping. The other two pairs have curved blades, making it easier to trim surface fabric without cutting the fabric underneath.

I have no idea what the official name of this type of clamp is. I’ve seen them used when giving somebody a tongue piercing; they have a flat loop at the end. I usually use these when I need to grab something a bit bigger, things the small clamps can’t handle. The other day, they came in handy in a way I hadn’t used them before. I was making a tab to cover the end of a zipper in a mask. Usually such a tab would be made of vinyl or leather, but in this case, the tab needed to sort of blend in with the mask, so I made tube of the same spandex the mask was made of, turned it right side out, and fingerpressed it flat. The problem was, since it was just spandex, I thought it was a bit floppy. I wanted to stiffen it up a bit with some interfacing, but stuffing the rectangle of interfacing in there was proving difficult. Then I had a brainstorm: I locked the rectangle in the clamp, with the tip of the clamp right down at one end of the interfacing. This now easily slid down into the tube, whereupon I pinched the end of the rectangle, released the clamp, and pulled it out, leaving the interfacing in place. It worked a treat!

TOTT: Day Fifteen

Posted on by Dr-Omega

Tools of the Trade

Day Fifteen: Hardware Press

A few years ago, I spent each day in January writing about a different tool I use in my maskmaking. As I am currently redesigning my entire website in the new year, I thought it might be nice to revisit this project.  Each day in January 2021, I’ll share a different item that I use in my studio. I hope some of these can help other people who are interested in making wrestling masks. 

I like to use grommets in the holes on my laceplates, and I sometimes have to use snaps for things like chinstraps. There’s a number of tools on the market to set grommets and/or snaps, and there’s a range of reliability and quality as well. The leftmost tool is just a simple setter and anvil that came with a bargain assortment of grommets. The next one is a bit more professional, with a solid + hefty anvil that can accommodate a range of sizes of snaps. The plierlike device is what I usually recommend to people who are dipping their toe in the craft: it’s called the Crop-O-Dile, and it can punch two different sized holes and set a number of grommets and snaps. It’s simple to use, and produces consistent results. The next item is a professional grommet setter from Japan. The last item is a drive punch, which is how I prefer to make the holes for my grommets and snaps.

What I use to set my grommets nine times out of ten is the Heavy Duty Press from GoldStar Tools. The press is the easiest way to set hardware in the most consistent fashion with the least amount of effort. You need to buy a set of dies for each size of each type of hardware you want to set. I store them in labelled compartments in a plastic box. (You can also buy dies for punching holes, but I prefer to use drive punches, as I think they make a cleaner hole.) Goldstar sells a number of different packages that include the press; the one linked above comes with one die, which saves you a little money.

Note: there are many companies out there that sell presses that look like this one, but they are not all the same—the dies are not necessarily interchangeable! Manufacturers love to make proprietary fitting methods for their dies, so you have to buy from them and them only. When I was originally looking to buy one of these presses, I did a bit of research and decided I liked GoldStar the best. They seemed to be a reliable and reputable business (and have proven to be, as I’ve now been buying from them for years.) They had the widest variety of items that the press could be used with, and very importantly, they had the best prices. A GoldStar press by itself is currently $60, while dies run about $30. Other companies charge $170 for the press and $70 or more for dies.

TOTT: Day Fourteen

Posted on by Dr-Omega

Tools of the Trade

Day Fourteen: Awl and Corkboard

A few years ago, I spent each day in January writing about a different tool I use in my maskmaking. As I am currently redesigning my entire website in the new year, I thought it might be nice to revisit this project.  Each day in January 2021, I’ll share a different item that I use in my studio. I hope some of these can help other people who are interested in making wrestling masks. 

There’s a number of ways to mark the hole placement on a laceplate, and my first inclination was always to use a Sharpie. I was then shown how to do it with an awl, and I’ve been doing it that way ever since. It’s easier to get a precision mark with an awl. And once I’ve marked the holes on one side of the laceplate, I can fold it in half and quickly mark the holes on the other side by pushing the awl all the way through the material. I figured I’d need some cork or something to back the material with when I did this, but had a hard time finding a piece of of cork thick enough for the job. Then it struck me that we used to have a candle in a jar that had a large cork lid, so I searched around on Amazon and sure enough, you can buy replacement cork lids there! I use one of my dad’s old wine corks to protect the point of the awl when I store it.

TOTT: Day Thirteen

Posted on by Dr-Omega

Tools of the Trade

Day Thirteen: Brayer

A few years ago, I spent each day in January writing about a different tool I use in my maskmaking. As I am currently redesigning my entire website in the new year, I thought it might be nice to revisit this project.  Each day in January 2021, I’ll share a different item that I use in my studio. I hope some of these can help other people who are interested in making wrestling masks. 

Here’s a tool that’s not really essential, but that I enjoy using. I use various methods to get my patterns onto my vinyl to cut out the plates for my masks. One of the methods involves printing out the pattern, reversed, and then using spray adhesive to adhere it to the back of the vinyl or leather before cutting it out with my art knife. I briefly flirted with block printing as a hobby years ago, so I had one of these Speedball brayers laying around. I use it to roll over the paper patterns and make sure they’re adhering well to my material.

While on the subject of rollers, here’s another one I keep in my work area. To be honest, I have no idea what it is. I got it at a really junky surplus store. I’ve since seen them somewhere like Home Depot but I can’t remember what they were for. I use this small roller to crease folded-over edges, like the neckline of my masks, when I can’t be bothered to iron a crease into them.

TOTT: Day Twelve

Posted on by Dr-Omega

Tools of the Trade

Day Twelve: Silicone Finger Sleeves

A few years ago, I spent each day in January writing about a different tool I use in my maskmaking. As I am currently redesigning my entire website in the new year, I thought it might be nice to revisit this project.  Each day in January 2021, I’ll share a different item that I use in my studio. I hope some of these can help other people who are interested in making wrestling masks. 

I’m getting a really late start today, so today’s article is short but sweet. Have you ever been nyxing your mask fabric (ie using spray adhesive to glue the outer layer of your mask fabric to the lining) and accidentally wrinkled the fabric or flipped it over on itself, and the adhesive made the whole thing a tangled mess? And have you then tried to pull it apart and smooth it out? It can be nearly impossible, as the glue sticks to the fabric and to your fingers and you end up with a bigger mess than you started with. This happened to me more often than I’d care to admit, so I was looking for a way to handle glue-coated fabric without the fabric sticking to my skin. I eventually found this set of silicone finger protectors (the red items,) and they worked a treat. They fit tightly over your fingers and thumb, and you can handle the sticky fabric and untangle it without it getting stuck to your fingers. Later on I found the pink items in the picture, which are little caps that slide over your fingertips. They’re designed for soaking nail varnish off your fingers, but since they’re made of silicone, they also can help when handling sticky fabric. I found these at my local dollar store; you can’t beat that price!

As a bonus, either of these items are also helpful to wear if you’re ironing something small, as the silicone will help protect your fingers from the heat. I’ve also sometimes used them while gluing small items so that any stray glue won’t get on my fingers.