Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Rings for Saturday

The first day of our Open Studios is on Saturday - no pressure but we do need too have a reasonable amount of stock across a few of our art lines.

I gave myself the goal of having about 6-10 rings available for the opening day. So I started a production line. Cut and anneal recycled lengths of brass tubing from old spirit stoves; and with two more annealings I beat them so that the tubing is curved outwards and them over on itself. I ended up with a handful of pretty ugly metal.

As I have mentioned in posts before - one of the risks of using recycled metal is that whilst it looks very similar it can be very different. I cut and annealed 15 lengths of tube from 4 different spirit stoves. I managed to get 10 useful forms as one of the stoves must have had poor quality brass which had a tendency to split when beaten

©2012 Barry Smith - A handful of beaten and bent brass tubing
Quite a bit of grinding and polishing turned that into a handful of shiny bits.

©2012 Barry Smith - Tube rings - state 2
And then the hard part - inserting strips of anodised aluminium without totally trashing it as I did the final fold and beating to get the brass to hold the aluminium in place. As you can see from the photo below I had moderate success - the aluminium did get a little trashed. I did finished one ring with no insert - I actually like this plain ring.

©2012 Barry Smith - A trio of tube rings
Maybe the solution is to stick with the wire I used in a couple of earlier tube rings; or put in strips of copper and silver At least with the copper and silver I can buff the scratches out. Oh well - we learn as we repeat the production.

7 comments:

  1. Lots of hard work there Barry.I bet the plain ring will go first! Do the two of you ever sleep?

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  2. Art is always a learning process no matter what we are working with. Now you know what spirit stove to stay away from. Saturday sounds like it's gonna be a great day and lots of stock to drool over! PS.. I wonder if Alcohol Ink would cover up scratches on the aluminum? Good Luck.

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  3. It amazes me how you can turn a stove into something so beautiful. And I like both the rings with inserts and the one without.

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  4. Must've been very fiddly Barry. The results are definitely worth the trouble.

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  5. it's always nice to experiment. you'll know exactly what to do or what you'd like in round 2 :) still makes my jaw drop how them crusty ole stuff can become so shiny and pretty after your midas' touch!! xo

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  6. It is hard to believe that these beautiful rings were made from old brass tubes. Both versions look great, Barry, but my favorite is the plain ring!

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  7. Fabulous work, Baz - I'm sure they will fly out the door.

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Comments are welcomed - it is good to connect with fellow travellers.