The design, etching and manufacturing of Steampunk Family’s Victorian style decoder disk PART 1

Or Steampunk Etching design using Photoshop using layers

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There has been much interest in the Steampunk Family’s decoder disk. Like most of the costume items I make, I aim for function and the use of Victorian feeling materials when possible. However, the process was about as modern as a home shop tinker can manage and while it was an involved process, the skill level needed is not high. Really just a steady hand mixed with patience is fifty percent of the battle for the more skilled bits.

I originally drew out the idea in sketch book, where I did the math for how many places for alphabet characters, numbers and symbols I would need. It was quickly apparent that 27 or 28 for the alphabet places on the out ring was too many for easy of construction and use, so some vowels were moved into the inner ring. I came around to a multi-layer inner ring design concept with a wire ring space and a hollow back. In the construction phase I simplified it, but more on that later. I used basic math and map symbols to fill the blank spaces.

The etching design was finalized and made into a resisting transfer in Photoshop, but I am sure Gimp (a free Photoshop-style program would work just as well). First I needed a template to lay out the alpha-numeric-symbols. I did this by making a 4×4 inch work box, with the view>rules field checked. After I added a new empty layer and turned off the view of the background layer, I used the rectangle selection tool to draw a 1/32 wide selection horizontal at the 2 inch mark. Make sure you have feather set to zero. I filled this in with red. Before  you remove the selection copy it, then rotate the canvas 90 degree by image>rotate canvas>cw 90 and paste. Since we want 24 spaces, we can divide 24 into 360 degrees. My pocket mathematical engine tells me that this gives use 15 deg between the template lines.

Now using the image>rotate canvas>arbitrary command with the number 15 enter, I can rotate and paste to lay down all 24 lines evenly spaced. I changed every second and third to blue just to keep my eyes from going fuzzy. Being that each time you paste a cut a new layer is made, it is easy to drag using the transform tool in to place. Fill one quarter of the template. Now it is time for a short cut. Rotate the image 15 degrees and use the crop tool to reduce the image back to the original square. (command +/- for Mac, or control +/- on a PC changes the size of your view quickly in most programs and crop boxes can be adjusted by moving their corners). Use layer>merge visible to make all but the background image into one layer. Select>All, copy, then rotate 90 degree and paste. Once you merge visible layer again your template is finished. The big trick is as you draw trans form lines you line up the centers.

Now to start the black and white design itself, but first turn on your view of the background layer and choose to work in that layer. Fill it with back. Using Elliptical select tool, the side rulers along with black and white fill tools the inner and outer rings can be laid out. Remember to leave at least a 1/8 between the inner and out rings so you can cut them apart and to make a center mark in the center for drilling later.

With this we are ready to add our symbols. At this point I decided to include Aether communication symbols instead of map symbols and to move the vowels to the inner ring. How you arrange them makes up your code, but if they are in a random order the decoder ring can be hard to use. To add into them the design, I started by rotating the image 7.5 degrees. Make a larger than needed text box, choose your font, size and engage caplock, type your first letter. Use the corners of the text to drag it into place and trim down the text box. Rotate 15 degrees and repeat. Once complete hide the template and the back group, merge visible layers. Save with remaining layers, then hide the template and merge the text with the background, save again separately Now all I need to do is mirror flip the image and reverse the image b/w to a negative for resisting, because I get mixed up when working in negative design. Save again separately, so if you wish to mod the design you don’t have to start from scratch.

Photoshop and Gimp are great design tools. Saving layers allows a person to redesign an etching concept without doing all the work over. In part 2 on I’ll cover the building of the decoder itself.

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