Rustnstuff: Found metal

Showing posts with label Found metal. Show all posts

Sunday, January 7, 2024

Metal magic

I have done quite a number of different bits of art over the last few days including: printing (letterpress) 60 cards of encouragement; making a black pearl lariat necklace; making some melted metal forms; and making some meted metal pendants.

This post will focus on the melted metal forms and pendants such as the ones above and below.

I like the free form nature of one of the pendants above and another below. I also like the fire colour I have left on the more regular shaped two above.

I poured some more cone and pyramid forms as you can see below. The metal in the forms is a mixture of pewter and brass and needed to be heated to over 1000 degrees.

The 3D object below resulted from turning off the furnace before a full melt was complete. It seems to suggest building that have fallen - the result of an earthquake or war. I'm going to keep it for a while but it might go back into the furnace. The piece is about 40mm in diameter and 50mm high; and weighs about 350grams.

No two periods of melting metal are every the same - so much of the metal I recycle and melt tends to not really conform to the melting points of the pure metal. Still it is always full of surprises and a lot of fun.

Sunday, July 12, 2020

Unopened books and earrings

I have made quite good progress on making a stash (10) small metal books with inspirational words - they are about 4.5cm high and 3.5cm wide. As you can see from the photo above I have got them to the riveted stage. A few progress photos follow.

During the week I will need to grind all the edges; open the books; give any sharp edges a second grind; and then a final polish - it is not done until it is all done.

I did also manage to complete four more pairs of the earrings I was making out of silver-plated disks.

All the earrings are now in the Deckled Edge Press gallery shop. But if folk who don't live locally or visit want to buy any of them they can message me and we can work out arrangements. I just don't have the time to put them in my online shop.

Friday, May 31, 2019

A gathering of compassion books

I have completed my 6 artists' book for the Compassion Artists' Book Exhibition. One of my six books, "Kindness, care and hope", is a collaborative piece with Fiona.

Though I have blogged on them in dribs and drabs I was taking some final photos before doing my exhibition paperwork so I thought I'd do a post on them together. So what follows is simply two or three photos of each.

I also managed to sort my product for the exhibition. So once the paperwork is done I'm ready to deliver.

Sunday, February 24, 2019

Compassion - book one

Fiona and I are taking part in an artists book exhibition in July. The exhibition has the theme of compassion. Of course July seems quite a long way in the future; but you can bet we will start to run out of time. We have committed to making 6 books - I started and completed my first over the weekend.

I like my artists books to have content. In this first book I have used a quote from John O'Donohue: "May I live this day compassionate of heart, clear in word, gracious in awareness, courageous in thought, generous in love."

The book is made from beautiful patinated copper salvaged from a very old copper laundry boiler.

The book pages are 12cm high by 8cm wide. It has: 7 leaves; three pages with sections of the quote stamped into them; and is held together with 11 brass rivets.

I love the solid feel of this book - both in terms of the metal and the beautiful words.

Friday, February 15, 2019

Tidying up

The tidying up of my garage-studio continues as I'm determined to divest myself of stuff I don't use; and make the garage-studio space a bit more creative friendly. A couple of photos of the rearranging follow.

I'm also determined this year to use some bits that are sitting on the worktable to enable me to keep the clutter down. This means using offcuts as soon as I can - this includes using the spirals of metal left over from the Tree of Life bowls and bits I salvaged as part of the silver-plated tray cutting episode I did quite some tome ago. I was able to cut 'tiny pages' out go the edge of one of the spirals to make some tiny book jewellery and other bits to make some earrings and pendants.

Because I ran out of time the bits need to be ground, polished and assembled - a job for the weekend.

Friday, December 21, 2018

Metal mania

At this time of the year I tend to have an urge to sort out my garage-studio space so that I can start the year a little more organised. This has resulted in my going through containers and shelves of my bits for making Artisan Lamp; and sorting through my watch and clock bits used in jewellery. That has all gone quite well.

This week I decided to rationalise my silver-plated metal stash. Whilst the larger trays stack well and can be cut as needed the small trays take up more room as they usually have attached ornaments and feet and have curved sides. Out of the shelves I pulled about 30 such trays and spent a couple of days sweating the ornaments and feet off and cutting the trays up. Not all the trays were suitable for my work so five were put aside to give to metal recyclers. From the bases of about 25 trays I managed to rescue the stash of metal in the opening photo. Offcuts resulted in the following bits.

Since I had the guillotine in action I decided to cut up other pieces for planned 2019 projects including: a series of small metal books; a series of book earrings; blanks for bowls; and 63 pieces (30mm square) cut from a single larger tray for International Peace Day.

These pieces are now in their various containers in a larger storage container on the shelves.

There can be ornamental bits that get harvested as part of the cutting process including those in the photos below.

Small high quality silver-plated copper bits were also harvested for smelting at a later date.

So a great time of harvesting useable metal. Now I can easily see and select the metal I want for jobs; and of course identify gaps in the metal stash that can be filled from op-shops. or gifts from folk.