scale necklace and procrastination

My goal is to finish my scale necklace in time to enter in Cheongju next month. There's no reason I would not be able to finish in time, but the problem with these major pieces that get dragged out for years is they start to feel like they will never end. I started that piece in grad school in spring 2005. So while the piece is nearing completion, I am also feeling like after 4 years, is 5 more weeks really going to be all I need?

It's kind of embarrassing when a piece takes so long. Cause there usually isn't any good reason for something to take so long. I have identified 3 common reasons why my pieces end up taking way longer than they should. The scale necklace has been victim of reasons #1 and #3. My teapot was victim of reasons #1 and #2.

1. Other more important things come up that need to be finished (like work that I am actually being paid for). This happens with almost everything I am working on that does not have a deadline and I will not be paid for immediately after finishing (like work that I hope to sell in the future, rather than custom orders).

2. I have to make a decision about the design and don't know what to do. I never have pieces totally designed when I start on them. Some times I get too indecisive about certain things, and end up putting the piece down thinking I will decide later. Some times "later" is not for several months.

3. Work gets too boring/tedious. Like making these scales. Making waxes from the rubber molds, spruing trees to cast, casting, cleaning them all up. It's just so boring. The finished part of the necklace has over 100 hours of labor in it already. Boring boring monotonous labor. Or with my carved scale brooches, when I feel like I am not making any progress.

Sometimes when one of these reasons comes up and I stop working on a piece I will put it away and just forget about it.

When I sign and date a piece I usually just mark it with the year I finished it, not the years I took to finish or the year I started. I'm not sure what other people do, I usually don't bring up the topic of pieces taking years to finish due to procrastination when I talk to other jewelers or metalsmiths. I really have no idea how many other people do that sort of thing.

Pictured below are about 450 sterling scales for my necklace. They are almost ready to be attached to the necklace. I have about 50 more that I am still working on. After I attach those 500 I should be about finished except for the edges.

teapot process - finished piece

Here are the photos of the finished piece.





Here I am in Cheongju, S.Korea at the 5th Cheongju International Craft Competition in October, where I won the silver prize in the metals category.

teapot process - part 6

Here I am with my finished teapot. Actually I don't think I was totally finished, I think I was still working on the base.


I had to ship it to Korea the day after I finished. I made a box to ship it in. Each piece was wrapped in cloth before going in its compartment.




That box went inside another box with padding. There was no way that thing was getting damaged during shipping.

teapot process - part 5

Before anything that involved the aluminum parts could be assembled I had to anodize them. This is a photo of my anodizing set up where I anodized the parts.

Once everything was anodized I could start putting it together. I am attaching the silver sleeves to the handle with rivets in this photo. I have the whole piece wrapped in a paper towel and tape so I cannot accidentally scratch the anodized surface.

These are the pieces of silver tubing I used as spacers on the rivets to put a space between the two aluminum parts of the handle and the two aluminum parts of the base.

Here I am putting the handle together.

I am getting ready to rivet. There are 20 rivets, not counting the 2 that will attach it to the body of the teapot.

Again I wrapped the handle in tape to keep from damaging the anodizing. I worked on a couple rivets at a time and kept the rest of the handle covered. It is kind of annoying to have to keep taping it, removing tape, and re-taping it, but I think it is worth it when I consider the possible consequence of not being so careful. I really hate getting a scratch in my anodizing before I am even finished. And if I wanted to re-anodize the handle I would have to remove all the rivets and the sleeves, which would be a lot of work.

In this photo all the rivets are done, and I am sanding them so they are all the same height.

I put a slightly matte finish on the teapot. I don't like high polished silver.

I am almost finished.

The handle isn't actually attached. If you look closely you can still see the two holes for the rivets that will hold the handle on.

The two parts of the base are read to be riveted together.

Taped up to avoid an accident.

All the rivets are in. I am working on the 4 that hold the aluminum to the big silver piece.

teapot process - part 4

This is the lid. I made a handle out of plastiform from Otto Frei to hold the lid while I worked on it. All the tool suppliers sell the stuff under different names. Its a plastic that gets soft when its heated and you can use to to hold parts. I think its great.




The handle.



One end holds the piece from the top, the other end holds the piece from the bottom.



The mostly finished lid.




This bottom piece was very difficult to fit to the curve of the lid.



I hadn't given much thought on what the spout would look like. I made some clay models to try to decide.






There were a few other ideas, but I went with this one.





After deciding on the shape and size of the spout I cut holes in the body of the teapot. I this photo I have only drilled the holes, I filed them all square to make them look nicer.



This is the spout in progress. I made it at Haystack in July 2006 when I was there as Chunghi Choo's assistant. I messed up the first one and had to make a second, which I barely had enough silver for.






I have the two parts taped up so I don't damage the edges of them while I sand the rest of the teapot.




More sanding.

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.