FUCK IT!
The last of my home made christmas presents are gettin given in the unfinished state they are in!
Why?
Because every step of the way in making these presents (four of the same thing that i cant tell you about because one of the recipreints may read this before i get it to them) they have fucking fought me every inch of the way! when i started i thought "cool, shouldnt be that difficult" but oh how wrong i was. the "cheap" home made presents are now costing me a fortune and even at that they are still not exactly what i wanted. not to mention i have almost took my hand off (slight exageration) twice in the making of them.
what is it that it that i am making that could drive me to such distraction? well i shall tell you. its dog tags, specically gears of war cog tags. "what?" i hear you exasibate but allow me to fill you in.
Four of my friends and i would reguarly team up to play Horde mode on GoW2, we would sit for hours battling wave after wave of locus all the time shouting things down our headsets like "cover the right" "their flanking us" "Arrrgh im down" and other such war movie shit that grown men essentially play soldiers would do in the privicy of thier own home. but it was good times and a small brotherhood was formed. forged in hi def explosions and pixelated blood.
so when i saw online a tutorial for making the cog tags i thought that this would be the perfect christmas present for my GoW Brothers. i had it all planned out, i would make the tags, engrave them with our gamertags and dates of birth and they would be placed on a bottle of home made mead. i had loads of time, i started the mead 2 months before christmas and would start the tags at the begining of december.
That was the plan but as you know the best way to make god laugh is to tell him your plans.
and he must have bust a gut at me.
to start i bought the washers that i would shape into the cog tags, i borrowed a dremel with which to shape and engrave them and i had a drill to drill the hole that the chain/cord would go through. after the first time i almost took my hand off with the dremel i bought a pair of gloves and after a few nights of furious dremeling i managed to break my borrowed dremel, fuck says i (at this point i should say that i dint start exactlly at the start of december and was running a bit late as in there are 5 days till christmas and i was going up north in 3) so i decided to at least stat on the next stage, drilling the holes. i had borrowed a drill and started drilling. two tags in and the drill bit snapped almost cauing me to run the drill into my own body. this would be another thing i would have to replace and with no time to get a replacement i made my excuses as to why the presents would be late and vowed that when i got back i would set to them again and i did. i took the dremel appart and managed to get it going again and it lasted long enough to shape and polish the tags. they didnt look that finnished but i figured it added to the "war damaged" look. the next stage was to drill the holes.now with the dremel completely dead i had no way of engraving them myself so i ventured out to see what could be done and the only place that could engrave on a curve told me that it would cost at least 80 to do so. AT LEAST! however the man did say my best bet would be to get the names stamped into the metal. so today i went out and bout a set of the metal stamps as i figured they would be cheaper than having someone else do it but they dont come in letters and number sets you have to buy each seperatly but it had dragged out long enough so i bit the bullet as i was already going to have to buy an new dremel anyway. i also bought a new brill bit and came home smug that the end was in sight.
alas, no.
I wrote out each of the names so as to find what would be the middle letter so to correctly space them on the tag. i took the first one out, lined it up and whack....nothing. again i tried, whack! this time there was a tiny little dent that looked nothing like the letter it was supposed to look like. Whack whack whack and on the final whack did it do its job? no it got my thumb. after several more unfruitful attempts i decided that it wasnt going to happen and that the best thing i could do is to drill the holes and be done with it.
and you would think thats where it would end but with any good comedy of errors it just keeps going. now if you hark back a paragraph or so you will see this line "...and it lasted long enough to shape and polish the tags" and apparently trying to drill a hole on polished metal is akin to a pig ice skating and has the same effects on the newly polished metal with no way of re-polishing them (dremels dead remember) so i try to push down to compansate for the sliding. all that achieved was the table almost collapsing on me. that was the final straw.
so i say enough is enough. get thee from my sight. in short, fuck off.
i tied them to the bottles of mead that is still undrinkable and chalked them up as the most useless christmas present ever.
im off to buy a new dremel
The last of my home made christmas presents are gettin given in the unfinished state they are in!
Why?
Because every step of the way in making these presents (four of the same thing that i cant tell you about because one of the recipreints may read this before i get it to them) they have fucking fought me every inch of the way! when i started i thought "cool, shouldnt be that difficult" but oh how wrong i was. the "cheap" home made presents are now costing me a fortune and even at that they are still not exactly what i wanted. not to mention i have almost took my hand off (slight exageration) twice in the making of them.
what is it that it that i am making that could drive me to such distraction? well i shall tell you. its dog tags, specically gears of war cog tags. "what?" i hear you exasibate but allow me to fill you in.
Four of my friends and i would reguarly team up to play Horde mode on GoW2, we would sit for hours battling wave after wave of locus all the time shouting things down our headsets like "cover the right" "their flanking us" "Arrrgh im down" and other such war movie shit that grown men essentially play soldiers would do in the privicy of thier own home. but it was good times and a small brotherhood was formed. forged in hi def explosions and pixelated blood.
so when i saw online a tutorial for making the cog tags i thought that this would be the perfect christmas present for my GoW Brothers. i had it all planned out, i would make the tags, engrave them with our gamertags and dates of birth and they would be placed on a bottle of home made mead. i had loads of time, i started the mead 2 months before christmas and would start the tags at the begining of december.
That was the plan but as you know the best way to make god laugh is to tell him your plans.
and he must have bust a gut at me.
to start i bought the washers that i would shape into the cog tags, i borrowed a dremel with which to shape and engrave them and i had a drill to drill the hole that the chain/cord would go through. after the first time i almost took my hand off with the dremel i bought a pair of gloves and after a few nights of furious dremeling i managed to break my borrowed dremel, fuck says i (at this point i should say that i dint start exactlly at the start of december and was running a bit late as in there are 5 days till christmas and i was going up north in 3) so i decided to at least stat on the next stage, drilling the holes. i had borrowed a drill and started drilling. two tags in and the drill bit snapped almost cauing me to run the drill into my own body. this would be another thing i would have to replace and with no time to get a replacement i made my excuses as to why the presents would be late and vowed that when i got back i would set to them again and i did. i took the dremel appart and managed to get it going again and it lasted long enough to shape and polish the tags. they didnt look that finnished but i figured it added to the "war damaged" look. the next stage was to drill the holes.now with the dremel completely dead i had no way of engraving them myself so i ventured out to see what could be done and the only place that could engrave on a curve told me that it would cost at least 80 to do so. AT LEAST! however the man did say my best bet would be to get the names stamped into the metal. so today i went out and bout a set of the metal stamps as i figured they would be cheaper than having someone else do it but they dont come in letters and number sets you have to buy each seperatly but it had dragged out long enough so i bit the bullet as i was already going to have to buy an new dremel anyway. i also bought a new brill bit and came home smug that the end was in sight.
alas, no.
I wrote out each of the names so as to find what would be the middle letter so to correctly space them on the tag. i took the first one out, lined it up and whack....nothing. again i tried, whack! this time there was a tiny little dent that looked nothing like the letter it was supposed to look like. Whack whack whack and on the final whack did it do its job? no it got my thumb. after several more unfruitful attempts i decided that it wasnt going to happen and that the best thing i could do is to drill the holes and be done with it.
and you would think thats where it would end but with any good comedy of errors it just keeps going. now if you hark back a paragraph or so you will see this line "...and it lasted long enough to shape and polish the tags" and apparently trying to drill a hole on polished metal is akin to a pig ice skating and has the same effects on the newly polished metal with no way of re-polishing them (dremels dead remember) so i try to push down to compansate for the sliding. all that achieved was the table almost collapsing on me. that was the final straw.
so i say enough is enough. get thee from my sight. in short, fuck off.
i tied them to the bottles of mead that is still undrinkable and chalked them up as the most useless christmas present ever.
im off to buy a new dremel
evapilotone:
I'm gutted to hear these didn't work out man...
connor_obain:
ach it was a good idea, i just didnt have the correct tools to do it. at least the story has became part of the present and raised a good laugh.