Single Bolt Transformed Into A Work Of Art

Every once in a while, this job helps you to discover something new and completely fascinating that has little to do with hacking but is worth sharing nonetheless. Turning a single brass bolt into a beautiful Cupid’s bow is certainly one of those times.

Watching [Pablo Cimadevila] work in the video below is a real treat, on par with a Clickspring build for craftsmanship and production values. His goal is to use a largish brass bolt as the sole source of material for a charming little objet d’art, which he achieves mainly with the use of simple hand tools. The stave of the bow is cut from the flattened shank of the bolt with a jeweler’s saw, with the bolt head left as a display stand. The offcuts are melted down and drawn out into wire for both the bowstring and the shaft of the arrow, a process that’s fascinating in its own right. The heart-shaped arrowhead and the faces of the bolt head are bedazzled with rubies; the technique [Pablo] uses to create settings for the stones is worth the price of admission alone. The complete video below is well worth a watch, but if you don’t have the twelve minutes to spare, a condensed GIF is available.

[Pablo]’s artistry reminds us a bit of this not-quite-one-bolt combination lock. We love the constraint of sourcing all a project’s materials from a single object, and we really appreciate the craftsmanship that goes into builds like these.

[via r/interestingasf*k]

24 thoughts on “Single Bolt Transformed Into A Work Of Art

    1. Any time anyone does something amazing, it makes all the lazy people look bad. Maybe it was the product placements (which I never fault anyone for). Or it’s just spite. A friend of mine does short instructional videos on obscure features of a program we use, and every video has at least a few downvotes.

      This guy is amazing. Even if his videos don’t capture everything, his skill is still obvious and massively impressive.

      1. Really that’s a “normal” amount of downvotes for something with near 4 million views. It would not amaze me if it were found that they were stray clicks, missing the upvote, or on mobile devices running YT in a browser when they were just trying to scroll (Like the report comment always gets under your finger trying to scroll HAD)

        However, the “recommended for you” mechanism probably leads people to downvote things they want to see less of at a particular point in time, rather than a real evaluation of the particular video. i.e. “this weekend I’m deep in studying for my calculus exam, stop showing me all this random crap and show me more calculus videos, you’d think what I typed in the search bar was a frigging clue…”

        1. Fortunately for some time now, the recommended/suggestions is really the only thing that differentiates votes.
          For seo they both count the same, up or down = 1 “viewer engagement point”.
          The “trending” list used to only count up-votes and views.

          Beyond that the only difference is you can get a ratio report in your channel analytics to, as the “i” icon popup states, “judge your videos on-topic accuracy with your audience”

          It’s ironic for people attempting to down-vote a video because they actually dislike the video, as ultimately they are helping give a higher engagement score

  1. There’s a craft tradition of limited materials: some woodworkers take pride in trying to use a single tree for a piece of furniture (no melting it down to get better shaped pieces) and similarly when my mom was in high school people had yard parties where (since it was 1952) a woman got a yard of fabric and then had to make outfits for herself and her boyfriend using only that. I guess even the somewhat traditional blacksmith project of forging a knife out of a railroad spike qualifies.

  2. I like the tray under the vise/work area so he doesn’t need to find things on the floor.
    And his tools – I assume he makes jewelry for a living.

    I would have assumed, for the base, he would mark all of the faces, then drill them all, then mount the stones.
    I wonder why he did a face at a time.
    Style? a technical reason?

    I did like the array of shots.
    Shows what would be a long sequence in parallel – well done!
    I echo the kudos to the person behind the camera and editing.
    Fantastic job! Well done!
    Should be used a an example in a University course!

    I really enjoyed the entire sequence.
    Both him and the camera/editors are masters of their crafts.

    1. I think I those trays are pretty standard in jewellery. All of those tiny filings can be valuable when you are working on expensive materials, and the trays help collect them for later use.

    2. I’ve seen leather pouches a few times under a desk designed for jewelry for this purpose. First time I’ve seen this variation of the same idea.

      I think he probably did one face at a time because the smaller remaining bit between the gems would be fairly easy to damage if left sticking out – by putting the gems in the whole face is solid and much harder to snag and snap.. Not sure it makes much odds either way but logically if I ever did something like this I would want to do face at a time for that reasoning (of course actually thinking of the best order of operations while in the middle of doing things comes with practice or taking a tea break to think it through so might well not have occurred to me if I was doing it)

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