Experimenting with fire colour

 

I am back into making my small Scottish herring fishing boats - prototype below. 

I now need to focus a bit on colour on the hulls and sails. I have decided to use copper for the hulls and brass for the sails - but I don't want the sails to be shiny so have decided to see if I can give them a bit of fire colour as in the opening photo.

To get good colour I discovered one must ensure the brass is very clean and free of oil and patina - otherwise they tend to become brown. All the sails forms were given a good clean on the sander before being given the heat treatment.

Every piece turns out differently which I like.

The hulls I have made to date have some reasonable fire colour - see below.

But I thought I'd like the sails to contrast more with the sails - so they were heated until there was an underlying colour and a soot layer on top. I have fixed the soot layer with spray - it still allows some colour to show through.

The sooted hulls reflect the use of tar on the fishing boats. I haven't made up my mind which way I will go yet.

I have also been having an initial play with weaving wire - it could be used in some fishing creels - anyway the piece below was a useful experiment.

Art experiment days are fun days if one approaches them with no particular expectations.