2007 scale brooch - finished

This carved brooch was one of the pieces I found in my drawer that was very close to being finished. I started it in 2007. It's the kind of piece I could work on forever trying to make it perfect and never get it exactly the way I want it. I decided to just finish it up and move on.

I thought it would be cool to polish several random scales. I was worried they wouldn't look much different from the matte finish scales after the piece was anodized, but decided to try it anyway. I wouldn't have cared if they were indistinguishable from the matte scales, but what I didn't want was for them to look only slightly different.


I anodized the piece and got exactly the result I didn't want. The polished scales look only slightly different, but different enough that they don't fit in. I thought it made the piece look like I did a poor job finishing it.

But that wasn't the only problem, I had lots of little spots in my anodizing. I also wanted the color to fade from dark at the bottom to light at the top, which didn't work out very well, and I didn't like the color I used (fast blue).


So I decided to reanodize it. It was a lot of extra work cause I had pits open up when I etched the color off. I don't know why. I had to burnish them closed. I also put a different finish on the piece. I used scotch brite in one direction. For the previous matte finish I had used pumice. The color is blue 4A, and I got the color fade looking better. I had no significant spots in the anodizing, I think because I neutralized the acid a little differently this time. I am working on some posts showing how to set up an anodizing tank and how to anodize, so I will write about that later.

The finished piece is ok. It's not as good as I wanted, I don't think it ever could be, but it's good enough and I just want the thing to be finished so I can move on to something else.