crafts - Bracelet inspired by a thrust bearing

Abrasha wrote:
I uploaded another project to my project pages. This time I show the
making of a bracelet from scratch.

The idea for the bracelet was based a common thrust bearing.

Ohmygosh! My first reaction was that I had nearly thrown away a treasure
-- the left-hand wheel bearing from the trailer for my classic Boston
Whaler! I was ready to retrieve the rings and balls from the scrap
barrel, wipe off the grease, and offer it to the Museum of Fine Arts. :-)

Unfortunately, that wheel bearing was too small for a bracelet -- and
too large for a ring. So there it still sits, beside a pile of smelly
quahog shells. Maybe I'll go back down and look at it again. After all,
there's beauty in the shells......

Thanks for posting that info, Abrasha. There are a lot of good lessons
in that series of web pages, starting with how two different people can
look at an object such as a bearing. One person can briefly pause,
admire the design, dismiss the inspiration as impractical or unworthy,
and delegate the object to the trash. A second person can build on the
inspiration and through hours of painstaking work create a piece of art
that makes several commentaries on life -- if you know how to read them.

One of the things I liked the best in that series of pages is the
interplay between eye-guided handwork and precision machine work. Many
of your finished pieces give the impression that most of the work is
done by semiautomatic machines, like the manufacturing of a wheel
bearing. (A commentary on our mechanical age.) But impressions are
deceptive. An old lesson well worth re-learning again and again.

Also, thanks for the background-info about the game in which the steel
balls are used -- a metaphor of sorts about the interplay between
control and lack of control. (Skill, and determination vs. random
happenstance.)