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| ©2018 Barry Smith - Offcuts of hard brass |
It is the first Friday back on the mountain after our 6 weeks in the cottage in Scotland. Whilst we did quite a bit of manual work around the cottage whilst there it was always with heavy padded gloves and large tools.
Today I started to make 'product' - probably about 15 Leaf Tea Caddy Spoons and 15 Leaf-spoons. Of course it involved cutting up a number of silver plated drink and serving trays which is quite easy with my large bench top guillotine.
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| ©2018 Barry Smith |
But after marking the metal up the curved blanks needed to be cut by hand with small jeweller's metal shears.
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| ©2018 Barry Smith |
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| ©2018 Barry Smith |
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| ©2018 Barry Smith |
After a while I found I needed to add on a couple of band-aids to keep the blisters at bay.
The metal certainly was hard - I suspected there was nickel in the brass.
It did get the stashes cut but I wanted to test doing leaf forming before committing myself to the 30 pieces of cut metal. I annealed a couple and didn't anneal a comparison piece. If you look closely you can see the leaf on the right has a stretch tension lines - this us the un-annealed piece. the other two worked better and unfolded without the tension line.
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| ©2018 Barry Smith |
At least there were no fractures. So all the pieces are ready for forming etc over the weekend if time permits.
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| ©2018 Barry Smith - Ready for annealing and fold forming |
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| ©2018 Barry Smith - Annealed and ready for fold forming |
Ouch Barry! Welcome home to the mountain!
ReplyDeletelove seeing your process but please be gentle with your beautiful hands
ReplyDeleteUsing those embossed trays as raw material is such a stroke of genius. The swirly patterns immediately lend the shapes depth and dignity.
ReplyDeleteT, MC & D - folks - thanks for your supportive comments. T - ouch was right but the hands are hardening. MC - I had to laugh - first time my hands have been referred to as beautiful - functional but not beautiful. D - I do take a bit of time cutting the blanks for my work to capitalise on the patters. None patterned bits are saved for peace leaves and small bowls and such. Go well. B
ReplyDelete