More metal moments

Following on from my not so good pouring of metal last week, I released my wee cottage. It took me three pours to reach this globular mass and I think it might just get re-melted and I will try again!

The initial unveiling has quite a few marks and globs attached.

After breaking some bits off and trying to grind and smooth some edges.

No matter which way you look at it, it's not a smooth little cottage. Rather lumpy in fact.

Yet the remnants were impressive in their own way! Quite wild.

I am however, getting better at soldering, rolling and hammering silver.

A few pebble-inspired pieces emerging...

I have begun playing with how words might work with these pieces and am having fun with that too. So many things to do in so many different directions...

Harum scarum

 Helter skelter isn't quite right, but neither is hither and yon, but there is something about scrambling around doing bits of this and that I need a better description for! I've gone with harum scarum for now.

Life is full and pulling me this way and that. My making is partly trying to happen to a schedule with deliverables all looming closely; as well as trying to get ahead with heaps of work due next year. 

So yet again, things are progressing on multiple fronts, with nothing yet being able to be ticked off the To Do list as completed. 

Nevertheless, the simplest things give me pleasure. I recently purchased this stack of remnants from the beautiful Ink and Spindle in Melbourne, with the idea of making gift bags from the scraps.  

I felt very bold as I moved away from my usual neutral remnants to warm remnants... some beautiful screenprinted Australian designs on this lovely linen (and cotton).

So far, my plan is not what you'd describe as progressing quickly, but the enormous satisfaction I got from making this double drawstring bag is incalculable!

Meanwhile over in the workshop, I have some metalwork to get done for a piece in an exhibition next year.  Lucky for me I have Barry to guide me in the intricacies and alchemy of smelting and pouring metal. I am however, not yet particularly good at it and I think we may end up re-melting this first effort and trying again. I overshot the mould by a long way and the molten metal just splattered everywhere...

Sigh.

Next time!

And just for the heck of it in amongst it all, we had some weather. It has been stinking hot and steamy here, which has produced afternoon and evening thunderstorms which have been pretty wild. Friends have been without power for over 24 hours, and we got away with simply several large branches down.

This is how we walk to the workshop from our place. Not so much nowadays!

The fence didn't fare all that well.

Our nearby neighbour was lucky that this fence took the brunt of the branches - his roof is covered in debris, but no branches did any damage.

Who knows what the rest of the week will reveal?? There is certainly never a dull moment.

Some days...

 Some days are diamonds, some days are stone goes the song I think.

I had a couple of stone sessions in amongst my making in the last wee while that's for sure!

This first one was because I wasn't thinking and went ahead and messed things up. The second was more because I didn't really trust myself, figuring I was the problem when in fact something else was the real culprit...

I did some writing - handwriting - in black on white paper and headed off to then do my overlay with white acrylic ink.

Tick! That worked well.

I then decided I'd do a half and half leaving the top half of the paper with the white ink over single lines of writing, whilst overlaying writing on the second half. Looking all good so far.

And then I completely forget myself! I forgot to let the black ink dry and went straight in over it with the white ink and got a blurry grey mess!

A very good reminder to pause and pay attention. I have managed to kind of sort of rescue it in a fashion.

I had a brilliant afternoon on Saturday soldering merrily and making great gains. Oh my, did I have plans!

The beginnings of a smaller pebble pendant. It was all going along OK until I decided once again that I would fiddle with the jump ring. This time I wanted to flatten it thru the mill and make it look different, and that all went well.

Until soldering time. I tried absolutely everything I could think of - I varied how I held the piece, I used three different types of solder approaches (sheet, wire and paste); I used three different strengths of soldering (easy, medium and hard) and no way would it work.

Poor Barry had to come and help out, give me some tips, maybe try this, or try that kind of thing. It was so frustrating.

I decided to leave the jump ring unsoldered, and popped it in the pickle to clean up all the residue of heating.

And this is what happened! I had magically turned silver into copper! Which is not generally the direction with metals you would ever want to head - silver being worth that bit more than copper...

So I worked out that the jump ring I had tried to solder was probably silver plated copper or brass, not sterling silver. A very good lesson to learn.  

Which meant I was quicker on the uptake when these three rings wouldn't solder, just deformed on their surface instead. Ahhh now I know, it's not sterling silver.

I had been using a little bag of bits I had been gifted and have now worked out I should really only make work with things that I know for sure are sterling silver.

I am cleaning the pendant up, polishing and buffing it to remove the coat of copper and am hopeful that it will look gorgeous and silvery soon.

Days of diamond and stones. Days of silver and copper!

Silver Sunday

 I have gotten into a bit of  a rhythm since returning, of heading over to the workshop with Barry on a Sunday, and sitting down and trying to do some silversmithing.

I think living with a metal worker does make it easier to attempt things like this that are far from paper and ink, but I am nonetheless finding my feet and getting into the swing of it. And loving it! It is meditative in a different way to my stitching, writing, setting type and making of books.

It does however take me away from my notion of myself as a maker with words. It will be interesting to see how far away I go. I can see it being an adjunct to, but not the main making I do.

What has happened is that it has brought together my desire to improve at soldering and hammering and making with silver, with my many explorations of pebbles. So I have set myself the challenge of making pebble-like jewellery. 

I soldered 6 small jump rings last week, and today I got to check if they worked and then began to shape them into pebbles. I put them through the rolling mill which flattened and elongated them; and then I got into hammering them.

They are pretty small!

One opened up as I hammered (poor soldering by me) but I figured I could use that as my middle pebble when I tried to overlap and re-join them. Before cleaning.

After cleaning. It was worth taking this photo because I had been polishing the one on the left and thought I was getting nowhere; so when I compared it to the one I was yet to polish I realised I had done OK. Of course, I have no photo of the finished pair! Yet.

I also challenged myself to solder the post on. The posts we had bought have this nice circular plate at the bottom which makes it easier; but my pebble was too narrow and the plate would have shown, so I was bold and cut the plate off and soldered just the post. Very chuffed that I did that. You can see one on the unpolished one above.

But then I wanted to go big, and make some jump rings from thicker wire and formed them into wobbly pebble shapes.

Playing around with positioning.

Reminding myself how much polishing adds, in comparison to clean, but unpolished.

I popped a circular jump ring on, but didn't like the curved nature of it, so took it off and tried to hammer it a bit flatter on the tiniest of mandrils.

Much happier with the hammered look.

And now to try and find some cord or wire or chain to go through and take some finished shots!

Prepping fabrics

 I have two exhibitions next year and they each involve a lot of work, so I am starting as early as I can on both of them. I am trying to push each piece forward a bit at a time so I feel as if I haven't forgotten any single piece. At some point that will change and I will be head down, bum up finishing specific works, but for now, I am a bit of this and a bit of that and a bit more of that over there.

This week was all about prepping fabrics for use in a large piece. I combed through my back catalogue of fabrics and found a bunch that worked well together.

I need a number of long lengths so thought I might also need to dye/stain a few more. Out came some pins.

I folded up the fabric with the pins in, and popped it in a brew of strong black tea.

Which stained it well and the metal made some interesting marks.

It might have been toooo strong a brew so I went again with a slighter weaker mix and random pin placement. Even tho of course it was random in quite an orderly fashion.

 

And here it is hanging in the sunshine in the peace magnolia tree

I started to measure and tear the lengths I might need for the work. And this is how our lounge looks for the time being.

Each one measured and labelled!

I will need to stitch lengths together so that part will be fun.

Soldering and saving

 I was so inspired by our most recent workshop with Lindsey Gallagher jeweller, in Thurso, that I hankered to keep on soldering.

So after getting most of the travel fuzz from our heads, and gathering a few bibs and bobs, I joined Barry in his workshop shed to have another go at soldering.

Starting once again with soldering jump rings - I needed practice and I got lots of it.

I started with 6 small and 6 medium sized O-rings.

Ready to start soldering.

I managed to solder 6 circular O rings, (with great difficulty and much repeating of effort) but I wanted them more lozenge shaped, so I squeezed them a bit.

And then I flattened them in the rolling mill a bit. 

You can see that the soldering was not what you might call consistent!

So I practiced some more, trying to now join the lozenges into a single piece.

And kind of sort of managed it.

Until I didn't it! Here they are after quenching and pickling. One join was clearly too fragile to handle being transferred between bowls and the like. So, I just have to go back and solder some more - but that was enough for today.

Still plenty of cleaning and polishing to do, but it was a solid practice session and I felt like I got back into some kind of groove with it.

Meanwhile as I was going back and forward, round and round, Barry was saving my bacon elsewhere. 

I was really pleased with how some of my Grief is a Stone metal calligraphy and rocks worked out. But I had noticed what I thought might be some corrosion on the lettering, which made me a bit sad and rather uncertain that I could ever sell the work anywhere.

Barry had a look at it for me and came up with a sensible explanation. He suggested that when we had taken the protective coating off the front and back of the words, some stickiness from the tape remained on the metal.

He then figured that some dust from cutting the stones had adhered to this residual stickiness and left this raised discolouration. And of course, he had a plan for rectification. 

So with me tucked away in my corner doing soldering homework, Barry cleaned, tidied and buffed the words back to beautiful. What a marvellous rescue!

Given that we won't be cutting any more stones or rocks for this work in the near future, I think I can safely say job done! With grateful thanks to B for his wizardry.