Preparation for jewellery making in Scotland

 

When at the cottage Scotland I hope to make some pendants and earrings from the rolled recycled silver that I rescued from one of my batches of melting silver offcuts and objects that folk had given to me for recycling. See this blog post about melting the salvaged and gifted silver.

As you can see from the photo below of a couple of pages of my journal I had sketched out some ideas for making saw pierced jewellery. 

And as you can see from the opening photo I have scribed images onto the metal and drilled the starter holes at relevant points through which the saw blade will be threaded. I also gave the metal a bit of a trim and ground the sharp edges off. You can see the rough metal in the image below.

So the plan is that I should be able to saw the image lines either in the micro Scotland workshop (aka garden shed); or if it is too cold the work might get done at the kitchen table. At least I have prepared the metal to give this idea a go.

A tale of two batches of metal

 

In the future I hope to start a new line of jewellery using salvaged silver that has been melted and rolled into strips about 1-1.2mm thick.

Whilst giving Fiona a bit of a hand with a couple of her experiments I decided to melt a second batch of silver objects I had been gifted - earrings, bangle, chain etc. I was melting the metal in my electric furnace. I set the temperature at 930 degrees to see if the metal would melt at that point. See below  very hot furnace with molten metal in the graphite crucible.

I poured the metal into the metal form you can see sitting on top of the furnace to warm it up. It poured well. But when It came to cutting the metal it simple shattered as you can see from the opening photo. And when Fiona tried to put a piece through the metal roller it just turned into particles as you can see in the photo below.

I have no idea why the metal just turned to a crystaline form. It has happened to me a couple of times in the past. All I can think is that some of the silver metal objects gifted to me must have had impurities that causes the metal to change character when mixed with other salvaged metal.

Fortunately I had done a silver metal melt earlier and when I cut that metal into strips it rolled well - quite hard but able to be used in the future work. Some annealing and rolled metal photos follow. The metal strips when rolled went from 50mm to over 100mm.

It just reinforces that using salvaged metal is always a bit of a lotto as one can never be guaranteed of the quality of the material. 

I re-melted the shattered metal and turned it into stars!!!! See below - a lot of colourful impurities!!!

Hearts, stars and leaf butter knives

 

A good day in the workshop working on melting, moulding and stamping metal - hearts and stars; and making leaf butter knives.

Opening photo shows a stash of stamped hearts that will be gifted to those you need them. The hearts are stamped with: go gently, hope, love and care. 

Following are some stars that will also be gifted to remind each of us that in our own way we are stars.

When I was sorting metal to melt I came across a bunch of larger brass and copper hearts - I gave them a polish as you can see below. They will probably make their way to Scotland and be offered for sale as paperweights.

A couple of other melted metal images follow.

For the Pop Up Art Show I wanted to make some leaf butter knives from salvaged silver-plated brass. In the past I called these leaf forms-objects pate knives - but in reality they have many uses - including spreading butter, cutting soft cheese, spreading pate, spreading jam.  I made five as you can see from the photo below.

A couple of process photos follow.

So all in all a good use of time - good outcomes.

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!!! 

Metal magic

 

Over the last week I have grabbed moments to make. As you can see in this blog the focus was on finishing some small pewter and copper boats - 8.5cm long; and some olive ladles - about 3cm in diameter.

The opening photo shows the finished boats; and the following couple of photos are process related.

I was asked to make three olive ladles for Christmas gifts; and then another person wanted to buy six ladles including two olive, two sauce and two larger ladles. Over the last couple of days Fiona and I were doing packing and posting to get the ladles and other metal pieces including stones, boats and wee metal cottages delivered before Christmas. The ladles are made from salvaged silver-plated copper or brass.

Our online shops are currently offline until we get the studio sorted and settled. However, if there is something you have seen on my blog or insta that you want to make enquiries about and/or buy simply email  me - info@barrysmithart.com. 

Culinary Metal and salvaged metal

 

I have a request to make a larger ladle (6-7cm in diameter) with drain holes and a shorter handle about 12.5 cm long). The ladle is to be used for straining off the spices that are used to make a mug of chai. The above photo shows the outcome from the work bench.

Following are some process photos - starting with a couple of silver plated brass disks cut from silver plated coasters. The positioning of the drain holes were carefully marked before punching the holes with a largish hand operated punching tool. I considered several options for the handles but finally settled on strips of salvaged 2mm thick brass. The brass was quite brittle and needed to be annealed well to enable me to bend the hook at the end of the handle.

The person who requested the chai strainer also wanted an olive strainer ladle. The photo below shows the three culinary functional items - though the person requesting the chai strainer will be given the choice between the 6cm and 7 cm strainer.

I had all but run out of pewter ingots so I did a bit of cutting and melting - so I now have a good stash for making hearts and stars.

A satisfactory couple of periods in the workshop.

Pieces for peace

 

International Day of Peace (IDP) is to be held on Sunday 21 September. 

To recognise this day of peace and to encourage folk to send positive peace vibes on the day I made a stash of metal (pewter) peace tokens to give away. The opening photo and the one below show some of the cleaned and polished peace tokens.

The melted salvaged pewter metal peace tokens was poured into forms that had been pressed into metal moulding sand - the pinkish sand in my case.  The finished pieces are a bit rough as my moulding sand has been reused quite a number of times and is becoming too dry. I melted the pewter to 750 degrees so that there would be plenty of times for me to pour metal into each depression in the sand.

During the week Fiona and I gave the pieces away in preparation for Sunday. There are so many wars going on in the world at the moment. May we all pause for a moment on Sunday and just send strong positive vibes to encourage the perpetrators of war to cease and to choose a peaceful path.