Aluminum and sterling brooch part 3

I did a bit more forming and it is ready to be cut.


Cut, filed and sanded, drilled and soldered.






This is where I am at right now. The pieces are still separate. I have not yet drilled the holes to attach the silver and I have not made the pin back. After I do those things I will finish sanding the aluminum and anodize it.


I really liked the drawing in my sketch book, but looking at the mostly finished piece I don't like it so much. I think it's the holes in the silver, they looked much better on paper. Oh well. I will finish the piece and see how it looks. I might like it more once the aluminum is anodized. I am thinking I will dye it green, but I have not decided yet.

Aluminum and sterling brooch part 2

I didn't take any photos till I got to this stage. It's ok, there wasn't much to see, I cut it out of 1/2" aluminum with the band saw, and then shaped it with a belt sander till I got to where its at in this photo.


I continued shaping it with a rotary tool and 1/2" cylinder bur. The burs seem to be the best way to shape aluminum, but I am really starting to get sick of getting covered with aluminum and getting aluminum everywhere. Something about aluminum chips I just don't like.


This is the silver piece. Most of the forming has been done. I used something like 22 gauge I think.


I was getting ready to cut the silver, but decided to bring the sides of the silver in a bit more. I have the aluminum piece covered with tape to see how it fits in the silver piece while keeping a space between the silver and aluminum.

Aluminum and sterling brooch part 1

I started a new brooch the other day. I was looking through my sketch book and saw this little drawing I had copied from my old sketch book into my new sketch book in August 2008, the original drawing was from August 4, 2005. It popped out and me and I knew I had to make it next. Rarely do I copy the designs in my sketch book as exactly as I did with this piece. Usually I change some things when I start making the piece. About the only change I have made in this is I have made the top part slightly skinnier.

Aug 2008 copy


Aug 4, 2005 drawing

My first piece, for real this time.

A while back I posted the first piece of metal work I did in 1996. Well I forgot that I actually did a piece long before that. I made this wire cat out of galvanized steel wire and soft solder around 1984 I think, when I was probably 9 years old. It's about 8.5" x 9.5".

I scanned this on my scanner that's why it's such a poor image, and it was slightly too big for the scanner.

An update

There hasn't been much going on worth writing about lately. I have some commissions to do, but I really don't feel like working on anything. There is one piece I finished last month I still need to photograph. It's one of the folded sheet metal pieces. Those are always difficult to photograph, so I have kind of been putting it off.

I finished these lock picks the other day for a customer in the UK. They look simple but they were a pain to make. The simple looking things are always the most difficult. They are for picking dimple locks. A key for a dimple lock can be seen here.

older work

I thought I would post these photos of a ring I made in 2002 or 2003. I just photographed this ring a couple weeks ago to enter in Lark Books 500 Gem and Stone Jewels book. It is cast silver, the green stone is chrysoprase, the orange stones are carnelian.

This ring is pretty typical of a lot of the designs I was working on when I lived in San Diego (1999-2004). I used to carve a lot of wax, mostly rings. Eventually I got sick of these kinds of rings because they have straight sides and can't be sized without changing the shape of them.




More rings I was working on 2003. I think 2 of these are sitting in a box still unfinished.



I used to love carving wax. One of the other reasons I carved wax was because I didn't have a lot of tools and you don't need much to carve wax. I was also living in an apartment, so I couldn't make a lot of noise. When I moved to Iowa to go to grad school in 2005 I pretty much totally stopped carving wax because I had access to a large studio and wanted to take advantage of it.



Carving a wax in my apartment in Oceanside, CA. Sept 2003.

What I have been doing lately.

I realized today that I haven't posted any thing I have made lately. Mostly I have been doing commissions, but I finished this brooch recently:



I also made some Christmas presents.
A chasing hammer head...


And a folded vessel. Almost like the titanium one in 500 Metal Vessels. I found an old paper model, and I thought it was the same as the titanium one, but it wasn't, this one has slightly different proportions. I didnt know it till I was finishing it. This one is much more closed than the titanium one.