a work in progress….
Last September I had the opportunity to play with aluminum at the Milwaukee Maker Faire. I didn’t pour the molten metal myself, just carved out the designs in the sand mold.
Something similar will be going on right here in Madison the first weekend in February. Come check out the Pour’n Your Heart Out Community Iron Pour!
I had always been taught to use a container at my jeweler’s desk to catch metal filings, so I could melt those little bits and make more things…. but I never really took that seriously since I was working on things that seemed so small as to be inconsequential. Well guess what. Even though small, it adds up! See those 10 little balls of silver near the top-middle of this picture? Those are were made from the metal filings from the other silver shown (like, literally I collected all the bits I filed off of all those circles shown in this picture). HOLY MOLY. What didn’t look like a very big pile of metal dust turned into something I use on other jewelry with almost no work on my part, other than to be a little more diligent about where my dust falls.
I can’t believe how much silver I’ve wasted up til now.
O_o
Playing with silver in February:
Now to figure out what to call it. Any ideas?
Took a class this summer to learn a new technique. Here are some of the results of that class —- I’ve yet to spend much time on my own doing this at home. I guess I sort of got distracted by all the other fun things one can do in the summertime.
I have so so many ideas of what else to try with this technique that I almost don’t want to post this, just because i KNOW I can do better. Perhaps putting this up here is a way to egg myself on to DO this, not just occasionally think about it.
Here are two examples of the new idea made into actual physical real life objects….
Today’s efforts after work yielded these! #27, #28, & #29 in a series of fifty. I am 58% finished with my bezel setting challenge! Yea!
Here are a couple new pendants that I’ve been excited about:
I’ve been playing around with a new technique: polishing stuff in a rock tumbler. Initial results? WOW!!! Sooooo shiny!
And there’s an extra bonus, too. Yesterday I found out that half an hour is enough to polish the silver BUT LEAVES MY DICHRO ALONE… Which is awesome because that means I can polish all of my glass bezel pendant without dealing with the buffer!
