Is this legible?

[Cherie Lee]

For the record:

 "海" is unnecessarily complicated. 

 

just sayin'

[Shelley]

I would say biang is unnecessarily complicated, in comparison 海 is not. It has 57 strokes.

 

[Cherie Lee]

Oh no!   It's great!   What the heck does it *say*?

[Lu]

It's the name of a type of noodles. Also nice is 龘, meaning 'flying dragon'. 海 is not that complicated in itself, but I think it might be a difficult one to carve into an egg. Fortunately, it doesn't mean 'grace', 'beauty' or 'thanks', so as long as you don't get inspired by the sea, you're good :-)

[Cherie Lee]

Lol!   I don't know - I did tell him once that teaching a bunch of middle aged housewives tai chi must be a lot like teaching the ocean to wave!   

 

Maybe a whole *series* is in order!   

[Zbigniew]

On 20/08/2017 at 7:07 PM, Cherie Lee said:

So I wasn't kidding when I said I'd love to see your work.   

I'll have to see what I've got lying around that's relevant and then photograph it first. If I've no pierced work to hand, I'll have to make an item or two.

It's great to see what you're doing and how you go about it. Presumably your new drill will work on other materials besides egg shells?

[Cherie Lee]

Just about everything but stone.  It'll engrave metals beautifully, and smaller holes in softer metals works fine.  

I was etching a few hobo nickels (Google it, cool stuff) but I got aggressive and wanted to do carved coins (hobo nickels on steroids).  I got two of my holes drilled, but I broke three brand new bits in the process (granted, the bits I have are meant more for eggs and glass,  so I would need to see if they have heavier duty ones).  I knew I was pushing it, but I was learning my parameters.  It'll never get finished,  but I obviously have no problem sharing my failures!  

 

The bits come in both diamond and carbide, but they are mostly rather small. Shown here with the quarter for perspective:The photo is soft, but the two bits on the left are my smallest and largest round-head carbides.

 

I hope this helps you.   I couldn't be happier with my drill and I put a great deal of research into which one I wanted (you'll find about 6-8 top known companies to choose from - it was frustrating,  so I will help in any way I can if you'd like).

 

Please don't let the desire for the perfect photo of your most perfect piece stop you from sharing!  An artists passion shows better in their daily doodles  than in their one opus.  I don't want to judge your skill, I want to share in the passion that would compel a man into action... I can't go over a bridge or past a sky scraper (and i live in newYork! ) without admiring the amazing audacity and tenacity of man to have ever thought that they could manipulate a substance as hard as metal with their soft flesh to bent to their will and then make it stand stright up to the clouds!  

 

Isn't everything amazing? 

 

[Zbigniew]

OK, I got my jeweller's handsaw out and pierced out some 1.2mm sterling silver sheet so I could show you a photo of some basic piercing work.

 

I think you might be best off using a jeweller's saw rather than a drill to tackle those coins you've shown. You might think it's difficult accurately cutting small work like this, but it's a bit like riding a bike; you quickly get the knack.

 

[Cherie Lee]

Ooohhh!  I seeee!  Beautiful work - very tight and neat!   

Jewelers saw, huh?   Oh dear, there I go. .....

Thank you

[Cherie Lee]

I'm afraid I have more questions, guys.   

Group:  I realize that parts of speech and diction are not nearly as interesting as the characters and history themselves (except to us word-nerds), however I do have to get practical.

 

 In English we have articles such as "the", "a", "an" etc.  I can't necessarily figure out how sentences are composed here.

For instance in the photo below there's essentially just a bunch of nouns.  Is it supposed to be context alone, or do characters change slightly based on position or part of speech (that one doesn't feel right - the structures don't seem to lend themselves to that)?  Ignoring the fonts for a moment, 

How does this read?   It's a line from a poem, so I think specificity would be in order for a quote.  It's SUPPOSED to read,  "walking in the abundant forest in the summer in a fog".  

I think I'm being so picky because the poem uses the article "a" here specifically. ..in A fog,  rather than in THE fog, because it is implying double meaning (haze or confusion).  It's important to the poem,and therefore the quote, but I don't know sentence structure rules.   

Does it even matter? 

 

Topic shift:

Zbigniew,  I have so many questions for you!   I'll start with some basics: how do you drill your holes for your center cuts?   Did you cut the round (the edges are so clean)?  The jump ring is cut solid-state and not welded?   How are you clamping down? Where do you get your supplies (tools and materials)?  What does your work area set-up look like?   There's so much I need to know! 

 

[Publius]

Cherie Lee, we don't have articles in Chinese. Also, Chinese is a language where verbs don't have tenses, and nouns don't have numbers, and there is no morphological distinction between word classes, and all that doesn't seem to prevent us from communicating with each other. Latin has not articles, and yet it was the lingua franca of an vast empire and remained so in the learned world for many centuries. Different languages decide differently on which bit of information is encoded explicitly. Gender isn't a factor in English verb conjugation, which is inconceivable to Arabic speakers. 'Uncle' is used in English to describe all sorts of relationships, mother's brother, father's elder brother, father's younger brother, father's sister's husband, etc, but this kind of messiness is unacceptable to us Chinese. On the other hand, to a Chinese mind, the definiteness of a noun - whether it's a fog or the fog or fogs - is simply irrelevant.

 

And there's a cheat sheet to Chinese syntax rules, which works exceedingly well with Classical Chinese.

Basically, there are four types of grammatical relations:

1) Parallelism;

2) Modifier-modified;

3) Subject-predicate / topic-comment;

4) Verb-object / verb-complement.

And this applies on all levels: morpheme->word->phrase->sentence.

 

Take your sentence for example:

[步][華林夏霧] is a verb-object structure.

步 = step -> to put steps on/through -> to walk (This is called zero-derivation, a common feature of Chinese, similar to 'verbing' in English.)

[華林][夏霧] is a parallel structure, in which

[華][林] and [夏][霧] are modifier-modified phrases.

華 = flower -> to blossom -> blossoming -> luxurient

林 = forest (head noun)

夏 = summer

霧 = fog (head noun)

So put together, they mean 'to walk luxuriant forest and summer fog'. Simple as that. How to parse or make sense of it is a trivial and intuitive process for a native speaker, but may need some training if you are a learner. Then how to make it idiomatic English is the translator's job. And there is no 'a' in the original poem, because there is no particles in the Chinese language.

[Cherie Lee]

How geeky am I that I had the biggest dopiest smile the whole time I was reading your post, Publius?  Thank you for taking the time.  That was much my line of thinking all along the path so far.  I don't know what made me pause and question that early assumption, but I find each time I do I should have trusted myself.  The more I delve in, the more I see just how intuitive a language it really is.  I think my biggest problem is I keep trying to overthink it, when I really need to just get out of my own way.

 

I know some languages are direct-object heavy in their sentence structure, so I wasn't confident I had my verb in the proper place.  I once told my kid sister (25 years ago!) that a deaf person wouldn't say "Today I rode a horse".  They would structure it as, "Today, horse rode, me" (also no articles).  The comma helps a little here, but when I told her that she thought it sounded so ridiculous that I had to be lying and it started a big fight.  Not one to accept things at face value, by time she got done looking it up she had so fallen in love with the language she became a sign-language interrupter.  (Came in doubly handy when she had a deaf son 4 years ago, but that's neither here nor there).

 

It's precisely these communications differences that I love so much for so many reasons.  Buts it's also why I feel compelled to check at each step that I am still honoring and respecting them!  You're input is invaluable, and I thank you for it.  (dont go far!  I'll have more questions!!)

[lips]

To throw in a monkey wrench — if this is a line in a Chinese poem then you'd have to worry about rhyming as well.

 

 

[Cherie Lee]

Wait, what?

Oh it's you again, is it Lips?  Here to throw me off base again, are you?   Ok, I'm on to you now!   I can see I'm going to have to keep an eye out for you!  ;)

 

All right you little trouble maker, talk to me.   It IS a line from a chinese poem, but just the one single line, so I was hoping to quote it exactly so I didn't accidently mangle it or change any meanings.

Is there something I need to know first?  

I know poetry here has all kinds of rules, but I never put that thought to other languages' poetry.   Makes sense that it would, but now here I am wallowing in my own ignorance again! 

But for the love of all things holy, please don't send me a link to the rules of Chinese poetry --- your links have a way of making me dissappear for days!!!  

 

 

[lips]

OK.  First off, do not mix simplified and traditional Chinese.  So in traditional Chinese it should be

步華林夏霧

or, in simplified Chinese,

步华林夏雾

 

If it is indeed originally a line in a Chinese poem, then you don't have to worry about rhyming it, obviously.  Modern Chinese poetry doesn't care about rhyming anyway.  My initial impression was that It looks like a line from a classical Chinese poem, but with unorthodox rhyming.  Anyway as a stand alone phrase it's perfectly OK, quite a good title for a picture, for example.

[Zbigniew]

On 23/08/2017 at 1:13 PM, Cherie Lee said:

how do you drill your holes for your center cuts?  

Hi, I drilled access holes for the saw blade in the captive areas of the design using a 0.6mm HSS twist drill.

 

I could be wrong but it looks to me as if your "drill bits" are not twist drills but carbide or diamond-encrusted engraving tips. These are fine for enlarging existing holes in metal, but aren't well suited to boring the initial holes. The initial hole in metals should really be made with a twist drill. All jewellers I know follow this practice.

 

On 23/08/2017 at 1:13 PM, Cherie Lee said:

Did you cut the round (the edges are so clean)?

Yes, the perimeter of the design, like all other areas, was cut out using the saw.

On 23/08/2017 at 1:13 PM, Cherie Lee said:

The jump ring is cut solid-state and not welded? 

I'm not too sure what you mean about the jump ring, to be honest. It's a standard 5mm split ring that I silver-soldered on to the pendant after I'd roughed out the design.

On 23/08/2017 at 1:13 PM, Cherie Lee said:

How are you clamping down?

The only clamp I used was my left hand. No other kind of clamp can give you the same freedom of movement.

On 23/08/2017 at 1:13 PM, Cherie Lee said:

Where do you get your supplies (tools and materials)?  

Mostly from three places: Cookson, H.S. Walsh, and Suttons. All are in Birmingham, as you might expect.

 

If you need more info, it might be more appropriate if you pm me, as these matters don't strictly belong on a Chinese discussion forum.

[Cherie Lee]

Of course you're right.   I do get exuberant, I know! 

Instead I will simply say:

 很多

[陳德聰]

Hehe I would say 多謝 rather than 謝很多 but nice grass calligraphy carving ya got there

[Lu]

1 hour ago, Zbigniew said:

If you need more info, it might be more appropriate if you pm me, as these matters don't strictly belong on a Chinese discussion forum.

You guys can start a thread here if you like, so other people can also see the beautiful things you make. If you 'report' one of your posts, a moderator can split them off for you. I'd have done it already if I had power in this section, which I don't.

[Cherie Lee]

I'm sorry everyone, the summer has gotten crazy busy, and I've been remiss here.   I don't even have much time right now to properly reply to the last several posts, but I did want to pop in and at least let you know I'd like to!     

It's been so busy that, now that I'm finally ready to dive in to the project full force, I can only look longing at my cold lonely drill as I wiz by thru my day at break-neck speed,  stirring the dust moats behind me. 

I never even got a chance to post the last test drill I did, which feels like weeks ago now, so I thought I would now. 

As always,  input is very welcomed...I miss our chats! 

And yes thank you I would like very much to see more of Zbigniews work, but obviously with proper decorum, so thank you for the guidance.   I hope to have more time (and less crazyness!)  to be able to do that soon. 

Smiles to all! 

oh yeah, I still think I'm having issues with those last few strokes, much like I did on my very first post, so I obviously have some kind of hang-up!