Monday, 31 January 2011
S.o.t.D. - Spiritual High - Irresistible Force
Tourniquet Holder 3
So I’ve been on a bit of a tear lately, devising different ways to hold a tourniquet on the outside of a blowout pouch. The first one was my take on an already existing design, the second one was a little bit more original.
It’s a fairly simple premise, and yet it’s not. A tourniquet is something that needs to be accessed quickly, and when it is accessed, the user will quite possibly be injured and will likely have diminished fine motor skills. (Oh and it also needs to be securely attached. It doesn’t do a lot of good if the easy way to access it causes it to get lost.) The first design I found awkward to get the tourniquet out of - it required two hands to work free as the windlass and clip got hung up in the elastic. The second design utilized a cord lock, which under normal circumstances might be okay to manipulate, but not when you’re under duress.
Back to the drawing board. I though of using some WebDominators, but the orientation didn’t really jive with where I wanted to carry the tourniquet.
I grabbed a piece of 1.5" webbing 3" long, a piece of 1" webbing 3.5" long and three pieces of 1" webbing 1.5" long. I didn’t bother with a piece of plastic to stiffen it as the Malice Clip would suffice.
Two WebDominators.
The other thing about this design is that is can also hold an H&H CinchTight...
...or an Emergency (or Israeli) Bandage.
CUTOUT: Greg Curnoe, Shaped Collages 1965-68
Just wanted to give this a little plug. It's been close to twenty years, and I still think of Greg often and fondly.
From 1965 to 1968, Greg Curnoe produced almost 50 shaped object-collage works, in series of repeated “face” elements and one-of-a-kind objects.
Curnoe had been making collages for many years, but the cutout collages featured in this exhibition departed from his previous methods in several significant ways. Rather than framing them, using conventional wooden frames as he had done previously, he mounted these collages on cutout, painted wooden shapes. He also introduced the idea of a group of works that collectively form a coherent representational whole.
Curnoe had been making collages for many years, but the cutout collages featured in this exhibition departed from his previous methods in several significant ways. Rather than framing them, using conventional wooden frames as he had done previously, he mounted these collages on cutout, painted wooden shapes. He also introduced the idea of a group of works that collectively form a coherent representational whole.
In CUTOUT, guest curator and former London artist, Robert Fones revisits this under-examined aspect of Curnoe’s work. Indicating an important bridge between the artist’s interest in early Dada and his later shaped paintings, the exhibition will add an important chapter to the understanding of Curnoe’s life and work. Concurrent to the cutout works, Curnoe worked on several larger paintings, including Kami-Kazi and The Heart of London, which are also included in this exhibition.
CUTOUT will be accompanied by a publication featuring essays by Robert Fones and writers Ben Portis and Carol-Ann M. Ryan.
January 22nd, 2011 to April 17th, 2011 at MuseumLondon, London, Ontario
Sunday, 30 January 2011
S.o.t.D. - Even the Stones Sing – Bluetech
Type Design - Line 21
Again, not so much design as production work. I did this back in 1995 for Joe Clark, who has a tremendous interest in typography for captioning. Line 21, also known as EIA-608 was for a long time used for closed captioning on TV. No Postscript version existed and since he was writing articles arguing that this was a really bad typeface for the purpose, he needed a version that could be easily typed out.
Saturday, 29 January 2011
Tourniquet Holder 2
After one attempt to create a tourniquet holder, based on another design, and not being entirely happy with it, I decided to tackle another approach.
This time I used one solid piece of the plastic material I used previously (I didn’t care whether it flexed in the middle or not) and put channels on the bottom that I could route two separate pieces of shock cord through, and join in the center with a cord lock.
This approach makes it easier to get the tourniquet out I find, but my only concern with this approach is whether the cord lock might be too small and fiddly for someone to manipulate wearing gloves and possibly experiencing a loss of fine motor control due to an adrenaline dump.
On the bottom of the Emdom B.O.M.B.
On the front of the Emdom B.O.M.B.
I have a few other ideas for this I want to try out yet.
Tourniquet Holder 1
I had the idea to make some room inside a medium sized/second line first aid kit, like the Emdom B.O.M.B., by making a tourniquet holder to go on the outside of it. Not only that, putting it on the outside also makes it more easily accessible - an important thing for a tourniquet to be. There are some holders on the market - Mayflower RC’s Tourniquet Retainer, 215 Gear’s Tourniquet/GP Holder, and Blue Force Gear’s Tourniquet-NOW!. The latter is what I based this on.
Raw ingredients. Two pieces of plastic from an old back pack frame sheet, three pieces of elastic webbing, and two pieces of 1.5" webbing.
And the end result. The plastic pieces are end by end inside the 1.5" webbing, which allows it to flex in the center, making the extraction of the tourniquet easier.
On the bottom of the Emdom B.O.M.B.
On the front of the Emdom B.O.M.B.
As you can see, BFG’s is skinnier, but also different in that it only has two elastic loops. The center part goes under a PALS channel and the tabs on the end go under two other PALS channels.
The idea I had was to place it on the bottom of the Emdom B.O.M.B., and two PALS channels seemed logical, with a gap in between them. I thought of just one PALS channel in the middle, but I thought it would cause it to wobble around too much this way, since there wasn’t really a way to anchor the ends. BFG’s two elastic loops do a better job of holding the tourniquet in place. The two end elastic loops on mine seem not to hold as well. Maybe I made the elastic a smidgeon too long, maybe it’s just where it’s placed. And yet, getting the tourniquet free just seems way too snaggy and awkward with this set up.
That’s the dichotomy of something like this. You want it to hold the tourniquet securely in place so you don’t lose it, yet you want it to be easily accessible when you’re panicky.
I decided to give it another try with a slightly different setup.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
