G'day, Chris here

September 28, 2019 7:08 AM

Clickspring Chris (previously) is back at it, this time with a playing card press [YouTube].
posted by noneuclidean (18 comments total)

I'm watching this now, and I had to pause it to comment on the engraving of the base (?). I've seen a good bit of his videos before, and other metalworking/machining videos besides. Seeing him draw more and more detail started to feel more and more over-the-top, and I felt a tinge of relief when I saw the design get transferred to the transparency. "Oh, maybe he's going to etch this. Yeah, let's let light and acid do the work. OH NO CHRIS WHY DO YOU DO THIS TO YOURSELF?"
posted by cardioid at 7:53 AM on September 28, 2019 [1 favorite]

I mean, the result of that engraving looks amazing, and etching wouldn't work nearly as well. Just, ugh. The work involved.
posted by cardioid at 7:55 AM on September 28, 2019

So you press the cards, what kind of juice comes out?
posted by Kyol at 8:33 AM on September 28, 2019 [11 favorites]

I'm torn between "that's amazing" and "you could just use a brick".
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 8:34 AM on September 28, 2019 [7 favorites]

It always seems like a lot of work when he squares holes by hand. Surely there must be a better way.
posted by ckape at 8:35 AM on September 28, 2019 [1 favorite]

So you press the cards, what kind of juice comes out?

Cardonnay, obvs
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:42 AM on September 28, 2019 [12 favorites]

I see he's using the top secret metalworking techniques of This Old Tony
posted by shenkerism at 8:43 AM on September 28, 2019 [4 favorites]

This is just what I needed this week. Thank you, Chris. You give me hope for this world.
posted by skippyhacker at 8:44 AM on September 28, 2019

That was a beautiful pile of work and I really didn't know where the hell it was going so I'm kind of relieved to see it wasn't going anywhere in particular; the "card press" concept is entirely foreign to me and I wouldn't have guessed this was a path toward holding a deck of cards in one place! But the construction was wonderful and makes me want to revisit the idea of trying document some bits of stained glass process even an order of magnitude less well than that.

Oh, maybe he's going to etch this

I had the exact same arc of "oh no what are you do—oh, well, that seems less bad, probably gonna—oh NO".

Cardonnay, obvs

No, no, it's Pinot War.
posted by cortex at 8:46 AM on September 28, 2019 [1 favorite]

"Cardonnay, obvs"

No, no, it's Pinot War.

Picardan or espadeiro, surely.
posted by jedicus at 9:04 AM on September 28, 2019

See also Chris Ramsay's video about the card press. He explains what card presses are for right at the beginning, around 0:18.
posted by allegedly at 9:07 AM on September 28, 2019

Not knowing the end result and being a denizen of the internet I spent many mesmerized minutes thinking "... Okay not a buttplug..."

My visual/spatial reasoning priors should not detract from the beauty of the work.
posted by abulafa at 9:17 AM on September 28, 2019

I see he's using the top secret metalworking techniques of This Old Tony

And this Old Tony gets all of his secret magic from Abom76, who is actually three humorless Tolkein-esque dwarves in a single coverall.

Does anyone else use these kinds of quiet makin' stuff videos as a sleep aid? I can't even remember how I used to fall asleep before YouTube. This Old Tony and Clickspring in particular are pretty good for this. Also NileRed and bigclivedotcom. AvE is also ok but doesn't have the calm, quiet tones as This Old Tony as he's very excitable and likes to do things like open product boxes with mini chainsaws or even cold chisels.

Mikeselectricstuff is also good and calm and I have fallen asleep many times listening to him take some expensive piece of fancy test electronics to bits and mildly talking about those bits.

I think one of my first reliable YouTube sleep aids was AgentJayz which is counterintuitive considering he works on jet engines, but apparently I like falling asleep to the sound of an Olympus or LM-1500 gas generating turbine screaming along in the test cell... with the volume turned way down.

There is something really calming about the rhythmic noises of machine tools whirring away and someone calmly talking about them. I especially like how This Old Tony likes to speed up or time lapse some of the actual machining segments and include the audio as a muted but sped up version of machine noises that sound like little toy machine shop noises.

I know I can't be the only one doing this, but I'm worried that one day I'm going to meet one of these people and the first dumb thing I'm going to do is get all excited and say is "OMG I FALL ASLEEP YOUR VIDEOS ALL THE TIME THANK YOU!" and it's going to come out all awkward and wrong.
posted by loquacious at 9:45 AM on September 28, 2019 [11 favorites]

His arabesque work is outstanding. Structurally, though, the mechanism's a bit of a disaster: two thin screws taking all the tension.
posted by scruss at 9:57 AM on September 28, 2019

Maybe. Those screws might be 10-24? Steel one's are good for 60,000psi tensile. The tensile cross section area is .02 sq in, so each screw is good for 1,200 lbs or a bit more than half a ton to failure.

Apologies for using Freedom Units instead of metric.
posted by Mei's lost sandal at 10:16 AM on September 28, 2019 [2 favorites]

Wow, loquacious, you and I could sleep together. Wait, that came out wrong...
posted by biogeo at 8:00 AM on September 29, 2019

Argh, the parts seemed like they were CGI at times.

What did he do with the (I presume) electrolysis baths? The parts seemed to keep their colour, only look more polished?
posted by Harald74 at 12:34 AM on September 30, 2019

I think they’re gold plated brass.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 12:50 AM on September 30, 2019