Rustnstuff: Riveting metal

Showing posts with label Riveting metal. Show all posts

Friday, September 5, 2025

Olive ladles

One of the designs I developed for my handmade ladles is a perforated tiny (3.5cm diameter) ladles with the handle bent at about 90 degrees to the bowl. See a photo of the bowl section of three olive ladles in the opening photo.

I refer to these ladles as Olive Ladles as initially I designed them being used to scoop olives out of a jar; and for the perforations (holes) to let the oil or vinegar flow back into the jar.

People who have bought the ladles say they can use them for scooping out cocktail onions and capers.

Some process photos of the making of the ladles follow including - starting with disks of decorative silver-plated metal cut from salvaged silver-plated brass placemats; punching holes into the disks; planishing the backs of the bowls after they have been formed from the disks (see planishing hammer in the photo); and attaching the brass rod handles with copper or brass rivets (see the small riveting hammer in the photo).

In my last couple of making sessions I made seven of these olive ladles as you can see from the photo below. Why 7? I like odd numbers; and also needed quite a stash as I had orders for four!!

Sunday, May 26, 2019

Low tech assemblage of largish etched metal books

Fiona and I have assembled and opened our largish aluminium sculptural book collaboration. The trio of books focuses on aspects of compassion. The trio is to be exhibited in the Compassion Artists' Books Exhibition.

If you check out Fiona's blog she gives a great overview of the words etched into the metal (care, hope and kindness); and the reason we chose the Ubuntu symbol for the front covers of the three books.

Because we used salvaged aluminium sheet it was necessary to paint the backs of the etched sheets to cover the very distressed look of the metal.

I thought I would complement Fiona's blog by showing a few photos of the low tech assemblage process including riveting.

To open the books accurately we utilised some of the very solid hardwood posts in our stash.

Fiona was in charge of judging the angles of the open pages to ensure the words were visible.

I think the outcome of our combined effort has resulted in a strong piece for the exhibition.

The trio is meant to be installed in a garden but or course it could also be installed inside. Given that it made from 1.5-2mm thick aluminium sheet it is light enough to move around. Now of course there is much paperwork to be done for the exhibition.

Sunday, November 4, 2018

Ladles - hammered bowls meet twisted brass rods

Over the weekend I managed to start and finish a stash of small ladles - 9 in fact.

One of the things I like about the ladles is taking some pretty ordinary silver-plated metal and being able to form shallow vessels from it; and then bring out the beauty with hammering; grinding and polishing.

I surprised myself with the making and riveting of the solid brass rod handles I managed to do this task in about 2.5hours.

And the ladles looked good when they were assembled - hammered vessels meet the twisted brass handles.

Just a last bit of a grind to ensure that none of the rivets sit proud and then they are ready for market.

Sunday, August 12, 2018

Metal and buffalo horn jewellery

I like how the silver-plated metal, blackish buffalo horn and rivets have come together - quite elegant.

I will just let the pieces speak for themselves.

©2018 Barry Smith - Blackish buffalo horn with inlaid brass and stainless steel wire - this was Fiona's suggestion - she thought the saw cuts in the horn needed highlighting - it worked - still a bit rough but it started from a very rough off-cut - about 6cm long, 3.5cm wide and .8cm thick.

Hopefully I will be fully functional again next week.

Friday, August 10, 2018

Preparing horn

I got a bit of a twinge in my back after shovelling some gravel so no heavy work involving bending and twisting was the order. The next planned post installation for the terraces just has to wait a while. I decided to continue my riveted jewellery work but combine slices of almost black buffalo horn with the metal and rivets.

Slicing and sanding horn is quite a time consuming process because I do it by hand to: minimise horn dust; and also not to burn the horn with fast rotating sanding equipment.

The goal was horn for three pendants and 3 pair of earrings. But one tends to cut a bit more when one is in the process.

I do the sanding sequentially with the following grits: 80, 240, 400 and 800. I finish off by polishing the horn with metal polish.

©2018 Barry Smith - Sanding on 80 grit creates quite a lot of horn dust - smells like burning hair when sanding with the coarse sandpapers - I wear a good quality charcoal filter mask when I do this work

The pieces are then ready for drilling, riveting etc.

The process of making the above horn pieces took about 3.5 hours. I'll post on the finished pieces on Sunday.

Friday, March 10, 2017

Assembling fish

The title is right. Today I finished the components for the 10 Funky Fish assemblages I'm making. So I started the job of riveting the components together.