teapot process - part 3

What is happening is this photo is I am using the height gage on the right to hold the opening on the top of the teapot parallel to the table. The height gage on the left is being used to mark where I will attach the handle and spout.




Marking the center.





The handle will attach to this piece. I have super glued it on so I can make sure it's exactly where I want it and mark it.


It's still super glued together.



Here I have it set up to solder.






Soldered.




Here I am making the little aluminum piece that will go on the lid. The pliers are parallel locking pliers. They are great for holding small parts for filing.




This is the mostly finished piece.

teapot process - part 2

The piece on the left is the part that the handle will attach to. The 2 parts on the right are like sleeves that will go on the bottom of the handle, which will slide into the base. I made these silver sleeves, rather than just leaving it aluminum because it wouldn't take long for the anodizing to wear off from taking it off the base and putting it back on. With silver it could always be refinished.

I was checking to see how the sleeves fit in this photo.

This is the part of the base the handle will go into. The sleeves had to fit this piece very snug, or else the teapot would lean forward.

This is the new base. It is 2 identical pieces of 3/16" aluminum that will be riveted together.

The handle pieces and part of the base.

This is how the parts will go together. There is still a lot of work left to be done.

This part sticking out at the bottom will attach to the aluminum pieces of the base.

I have added the second part that will attach between the 2 aluminum pieces of the base.

teapot process - part 1

I am going to post the process photos of my teapot, which  is  was on the main page of my website, http://www.jonmryan.com/ . I started on it in spring 2006 and finished Aug 2007, but I wasn't working on it constantly that whole time. I finished it the day before I had to ship it to Korea for the Cheongju International Craft Competition. It won the silver prize in the metals category. I got $5000 for it, but they keep the piece. $5000 was adequate, but I miss my teapot.

The teapot was fabricated out of 18 gauge sterling silver and 3/16" aluminum. This is one of the pieces of silver I used.


I formed the main part of the body using a slip roll. I made 2 test pieces in copper before doing the silver. This is one of the test pieces I made. A test piece is also visible at the top of the fist photo. Later the test pieces were turned into 2 cups for pencils, pens, etc, and one cup to hold some small chisels.


These are the 3 pieces that make up the body of the teapot. The end pieces were formed with a large dapping punch, which is at the bottom of the photo.


This is after the 3 pieces have been soldered together and I have done some filing.


The teapot is two pieces, the teapot, and the base it sits on. My original idea for the base was sort of a cradle made of 4 pieces of 3/16" aluminum riveted together with a couple inches of space between each one. In this photo the 4 pieces of aluminum are held together with temporary rivets and super glue to make it easy to work on them all at once.


The 4 pieces are still temporarily together, but I don't get too much farther with this design before I decide to totally change the base.


This is the silver piece the aluminum handle will attach to.


About to solder.


Soldering.


Here I am checking the fit. They fit tightly, which is good.

newest brooch

This is my newest brooch. I finished it a the beginning of last week and photographed it Thursday night.

These are the carved aluminum pieces. they are about 1/4" diameter.


I had some other ideas of what to do with them but decided on this one. The tube is stainless steel left over from the candlesticks.

The stainless steel is cut and has the holes drilled in it. Next I will anodize the aluminum pieces.

I wasn't sure what color to make them. I wanted to make them green, but thought they would look too much like plants. I don't care if they look kind of like plants, but I thought if they are green they will definitely be plants. I tried green, but the color didn't look so good. I need to find out what alloy it is that takes the green color so well. Cause 6061 isn't it.


I mixed a new color. I had a color called orange, but it was too yellow. So I mixed 3 parts of that with 1 part red, and got this new color. I like it a lot better than my other orange. I re-anodized the brooch parts in the new color. Now I guess they look like little flames. I think I would have preferred green, but its not the right alloy for green. The little anodized plugs for the ends of the tubing are on my bench block in the background.

Mostly done.

This is the finished piece, except for the pinback. I thought it would be easier to photograph it before I put the pinback on.

alloys

Yesterday I worked on my new brooch some more. This piece could have been done a long time ago if I would have worked on it alone. Instead I am spreading my time around, spending a little time on it and several other half finished pieces. I don't like to work on a piece from start to finish with out taking some time off to work on other things. If I take time off I can more easily see if I am happy with the design and how it is coming out. Especially with carved pieces. I dwell on small details so long I need to take a break to see the piece is turning out overall.

I think its fine to do that, but I think I do it a little too much. I have too many pieces going. Eventually I will finish several pieces all within a short period, but it gets kind of depressing to have not finished a piece in a while, and to have a piece sitting unfinished for a long time.

I anodized the parts of my new brooch yesterday. I am not happy with it. I dyed them green, but the alloy I used didn't take the color well. I thought I was using 6061 aluminum, and maybe I was. Maybe 6061 just doesn't take green dye very well. I think I need to make sample pieces of different alloys dyed different colors. I have one big piece of 1" thick aluminum, I have no idea what alloy it is, but I used it for the base of my welder hand piece holder and it anodized great. Anyway I have to remove the anodizing and redo it a different color. The color isn't bad, its just not what I wanted.

CAD

I really don't feel like doing anything lately. I have several pieces that are almost finished. And there are things I have to make, and things I want to make, but I don't really want to do any of it.

I was thinking about learning CAD. I was working with it and learning it, but I got so busy at the end of the summer, and I had my mind on other things, and then I went to Korea and I had so much stuff to do after that. Now I am wondering when the last time I even used it was. August or Sept, I think. Its hard to stay motivated to learn to use it cause CAD just doesn't interest me that much. Maybe if I had access to a CNC mill I might feel more like using CAD. But with out a CNC mill or rapid prototyping machine, I am just making designs that I do nothing with. Designs don't interest me unless I can actually make the piece.

working

I worked on my new piece tonight, but didn't really accomplish much. Then I was about to anodize some earrings and decided they were too thick, so I milled about 1.5mm off the back. They are square, and had carving on the front, so I had to be careful about not damaging the carving. I used super glue to hold them while I milled them. I use super glue quite a bit for milling things like that. It works so well and I don't have to worry about the vise, or clamps damaging the part. I have to take lighter cuts though. Once I had a part come off and get damaged, but it wasn't anything important.

While I was milling I remembered I wanted to make some steel knobs to replace the plastic ones on my mill. So I made one on the lathe, its a little short, I'll make better ones later. It wouldn't have taken long except I had to search to find the tools I needed. After I was finished with that I didn't really do anything else. I felt productive making the metal knob, but it wasn't really since I need to finish pieces, and I don't really need a metal knob for my mill.