Clare spoke and she said, “We want a printing station at five Rebellious locations across London all printing upon the Beautiful REBELS while the police attempt to repel us !!!! ”
Fucksake Clare !!!
Anyway we had a bunch of sets of symbols and words cnc’d out of 18mm birch ply to a depth of 5mm, We had some made by Makerversity in Somerset House - thanks a lot guys !!! , and some by CNC PROJECTS in Leyton, London.
These where cut with a 3mm router bit which meant we had to cut out some of the corners to make them nice and sharp !!! I reckoned this was way less work than sticking laser cut pieces onto wooden blocks, an image from the source file is below, and you can download the BLOCK_Library_cutting_list_V4.pdf from the fb page XR Volunteers, in the files section. If you only have access to a 4mm router then it is not much more work but the smaller words are not possible.
Here is a block in post Rebellion condition, and the one behind has been painted in oil based primer, then undercoat and gloss. I find this paint on the street, so its free.
In the meantime Chris Smith had started 3D printing blocks from my picture woodcuts. These are great, he had to simplfy the images and then create vectors which are now in the above pdf, the objects look kinda weird and ugly but print really well and are stronger than the birch ply.
The Block in the middle in unmounted, I am Gorilla gluing them onto plu and then cutting away the wood to make them easier for the inexperienced user, then painting to protect the wood.
Chris uses a Prusa i3 MK2 3D Printer. Hes and engineer and says its not straightfoward. Chris made 5 sets of 5 images and the logo and I managed to mount some on pieces of wood in time for the Rebellion, without Chris autonomously doing all this we would have had no pretty pictures on the printing stations.
Looks like he has changed colour halfway through.
Blocks almost ready to go out into the world again, we sand the top surface to make it nice and flat and matt.
Katie Wallis had laser cut some blocks from mdf, and these where used at Oxford Circus, words EMPATHY, HUMILITY and FRUGALITY, they where great but the mdf is damaged by water. Louise Riley made all these wooden hearts that I distributed to the other sites.
On Waterloo bridge Louise Riley supplemented her standard issue kit with her hand made unique blocks, including lots of natural imagery loved by little children and adults alike.
Also on Waterloo bridge Val Saunders was printing beautiful silhouettes of insects amongst other imagery.
We printed lots of patches, as did Simon Tozer and team in Bristol, including the new designs talking of HUMILITY, EMPATHY and FRUGALITY, and Hearts, more about who we are, and our priorities.
the bathroom makes great drying space
We printed a lot of Bee flags, and a rack for them to dry on
In the run up we printed some legal Observer HiVis, it saves money and has a good hand made aesthetic
We wanted some new elemenent so we used the blocks I’ve made for use on the human body to make up 4 quadrants, on the “Intersectional Quadrant flags”, I like the idea of 4 ideas meeting, this is just the start , think we need a flag that says [Cimate Justice / Bio Diversity] , all in a one, with no words etc…. there is a lot in heraldry that can be creatively utilised.
some quadrants drying
a highly skilled Companero joining quadrants
I made giant Butterfly block for use on flags and banners, a small block scaled works really well because its not too detailed, and its so rewarding and fast to print, the block is 75cm across, we also made big heart flags with swallows in the corner, the swallow I made for CULTURE DECLARES
after all the flag printing and emailing patch cutting painting siome human sized banners was a joy, especially the change is coming ones, then would whack a big butterfly on them
Flavia made this amazing flag, surely this is the way ahead ? ? ?
Here are the 5 boxes almost ready to go, I was probably crying at this point
Each box had
printing set: word and image blocks, perspex sheets, rollers, spatulas, flat wooden boards, soft cloth padding, newspaper, black ink and a colour.
Human sized Banners: including at least one CHANGE IS COMING, HUMILITY EMPATHY FRUGALITY. NON VIOLENT
Patches, safety pins