The vagaries and beauty of metal

 

Using salvaged metal comes with is rewards and sometimes unwanted surprises. More on the unwanted surprise later. Image of the furnace at 925 degrees follows.

Some more images of hearts and stars from two different metal melts. One produced stars and hearts with rainbow fire colour as you can see from the opening image and those below. The melt was mainly pewter but with a touch of vintage silver plated copper.

The more silvery melt was pewter with a touch of what was supposed to be sterling silver.

Now about that unwanted surprise. I did a melt at 925 degrees of metal from a vintage silver hand held mirror that was supposedly sterling silver. The metal melted and poured into the sheet metal form as you can see below; but when I came to cut the metal so I could roll it thinner the sheet simply shattered. So there was obviously something suspect about the original claim about the metal - who knows what impurities were in it.

I will remelt the shattered bits and add some pewter and i will pour more giveaway hearts and stars.

The metal used in the bowls and leaf words below was more predictable - a salvaged silver-plated placemat and several small silver-plated trays. The bowls ended up so shiny that they reflected the ceiling of the workshop!!! The leaf words are part of a commission.

The ongoing lesson for me regarding salvaged metal is that it offered mainly beauty but occasionally unwanted surprises!!! 

The magic of multiples

 

Making multiples can be hard work - the task seems to take so long to come to an end. I was determined to get the 7 sets of Daily Leaf Words finished over the weekend - in fact there were 8 sets of leaf words as you can see from the photo above (56 word leaves in all). I managed to find a spare Daily Word bowl at the studio so was able to make up 8 sets as you can see from the photo below.

A couple of photos of the bowls and leaves finished  - one on the work bench and the second of the seven bowls reflecting the painting on the wall.

Following are a closer shots of a few of the bowls with words including the torn bowl and the spiral bowl with a couple micro cracks.

A great outcome.

Stitched metal...

 

I'm making an effort to finish off some metal work before heading to the cottage in Scotland. I planned to make 7 Daily Leaf Word sets. I have all but finished the sets of leaves; but had hardly made a start on the bowls - today was the day as you can see from the photos in this blog post. 

But working with metal can have its challenges. I was using metal cut from different silver-plated trays - some silver over copper and silver over brass. However I discovered that one larger tray I cut up was in fact silver over brass that had nickel added to it - makes it more silvery.  In past blogs I have reported that depending on the amount of nickel the metal can't really be annealed and can be prone to split. The metal on two of the bowls split. As you can see from the opening photo one split badly. Rather than scrap the bowl I decided to finish hammering it into shape and stitching across the split with 1mm brass rod. I like the outcome.

Before I show some process photos, below are few more photos of the two split bowls - including a spiral patterned bowl - the only ones I completed today. The shiny metal was reflecting the painting on the wall - I rather like it.

And as promised some process photos.

I hope to finish the other 5 bowls over the weekend.

Progressing Daily Leaf Word sets

 

I am making more Daily Leaf Word sets - the sets are made up of a shallow hand formed hammered bowl and 7 smallish leaf forms with inspirational words stamped on them - one for each day of the week. Whilst I'm aiming to make 6 sets I decided to make 10 bowls (see above) as I have had a couple of enquiries about making sets with words chosen by the client.

A couple of process photos of the bowls follow.

A few more photos of the finished bowls.

I progressed the work on the 42 word leaves - including folding them and cutting the leaf forms.

Over the weekend I will hammer, open, grind and polish the 42 leaf forms.

They just keep giving

 

I have been selling Daily Leaf Word sets lately  - leading up to Christmas I think. I decided to make a few more sets to replenish stock in the Deckled Edge Press studio-gallery shop.

I like making these sets. They not only look sculptural; but given that the leaves have seven different words stamped on them they can be used as daily inspirations and so by mixing them up an choosing a leaf each day they do in fact just keep giving - inspiration that is.

A few photos of the making of some bowls.

And a few of the making 28 leaves for four sets of seven.

These were not all made today - I made the bowls last Sunday and made the leaves today.

Last metal for the gallery-shop for a while

 

I'm currently packing up my metal work garage-studio and moving it to a new location. Given the time for packing-moving-unpacking I estimate it will be about 6-8 weeks before I put hammer to metal again.

Still these beauties have made there way into the DEP gallery-shop (10/74 Maple Street Maleny) which means there is a bit more eye-candy for folk to look at and maybe purchase.

Fiona and I have used the opportunity to bring pieces of our art together - Fiona's calligraphic words and my hammered brass bowl. This makes a great daily word set very much like the one we use each morning.

I guess my arms and Fiona's ears will appreciate the break from hammering metal.