LongHouse Reserve

I just found out one of my pieces was acquired by LongHouse Reserve.  It is this folded copper vase from 2008.

I am told it will be in a basket exhibition from April 29th.  It's not a basket, but I guess they think it looks close enough.

finished copper vase

I finally finished my vase. I had some issues with the patina, and had to redo it. It was a real pain in the ass to remove the first patina attempt. But I don't know if I am satisfied with the second attempt either. I might redo it again, or maybe put a totally different patina on it. I will wait a while and see how I feel about it later.


The model and the finshed piece:


Here is a link to all the process photos on Flickr.

copper vase

I finished trimming the extra metal off the edges of the folded copper vase that I was talking about in a previous post. I used a separating disk to cut it off then filed it smooth. Now the sides fit together much better. I need to fix some little things on it, and patinate it and I will be done.

trying to fold the vase

I was pushing out the strips of metal on the vase last week. I made a pusher out of delrin and a file handle.


Pushing the things out went ok.




Folding did not go so well.


There are certain edges I need to trim down a bit so the piece fits together better. I need to cut about 1mm off about half the edges. The piece is not very rigid because it is pierced everywhere, so trimming these edges will take a while. I haven't worked on the piece since this point. I was annoyed about the extra work I will have to do, and I have some other things I need to do, so this vase can wait.

done piercing

I finished the piercing today.


I am going to sand it while its still flat. In this photo I am sanding what will be the inside of the piece. I don't think I will use the palm sander to sand the outside cause even with fine grit sand paper it sometimes leaves little squiggly scratches that are hard to get off and I don't like the way they look. The final finish on the piece will probably be 400 grit sandpaper.

I need to decide on a patina. Maybe a light liver of sulfur patina. That's kind of boring, but I don't know of anything else that I like.

a lockpick

My friend's father is a locksmith, and my friend commissioned me to make a lockpick for his dad as a gift a couple months ago. His dad liked it and wanted me to make another type of pick for him. I finished this one yesterday.


*****

I have most of the piercing done on my copper vase, all that's left are the difficult areas. The areas that are hard to get to even with deep saw frame. Now things are going much slower. I am looking forward to getting this piercing finished.

piercing

I am still working at the piercing on my vase. I am working slowly but steadily. I would guess I am about half done. I have been keeping track of the number of saw blades I have broken, just out of curiosity. I have broken 36 so far. I don't have a lot of patience for piercing, which is why I work at it for short periods of time.

table

I needed to raise the table up 5 1/2" to make the bench pin the same height as the one on my bench. So Saturday I got 6" high cinderblocks at Menards. I am happy with it.

I finished filing the edges of my copper vase and put a rivet in the hole I had drilled in the wrong spot. I think it's ready to start piercing.

I need to do something to make my work area more comfortable to sit at. The thing is too big to work on at my bench, so I have to use my work table which is too low for sawing. I think I need to get cinder blocks or something to put under the feet of the table to raise it. I tried sitting at a lower height on a little stool but that was not very comfortable.

filing

Last night I ground some of the edges of the vase on the belt grinder. Then I put it in a vise and was filing the parts I couldn't reach with the belt grinder. I will work on it some more today.

cutting

I cut out the shape of my vase on the band saw. It's pretty rough, so I still have to do a lot of filing, and trim some parts with a jewelers saw.

done drilling

I finished drilling my holes tonight. There are 975 holes total. 976 if you include the one I drilled in the wrong spot. It didn't really take that long, and I only broke 4 drill bits.

These holes mark the beginning and end of the lines I will pierce in the piece. The holes going across the middle of each section are where I will be making the folds. The holes look bigger in the picture because of the light shining through them, but they are all 0.7mm.

drilling holes

I worked on my copper vase tonight. It was the first time I have worked on it since my last post. I started drilling holes for the piercing. I got off to a real bad start, within the first 10 holes I had drilled one in the wrong spot and broken 2 drill bits, and I have to drill over 800 holes. I will fix the hole I put in the wrong spot by putting a flush copper rivet in it. As for the broken drill bits I thought about using a larger size, like #60 or #68, but I only have a couple of them. I had planned on using #70, and had bought about a dozen bits at the same time I got the deeper saw frame. I hadn't been lubricating the drill bit before every hole, so I tried it lubricating the bit before every hole and that made all the difference, I drilled over 300 holes with the same drill bit and then stopped for the night.

I was working at my 2nd bench because it is mostly empty and better suited for working on such a large piece of metal. It is next to my soldering area, and I noticed I had left my pickle pot plugged in. I don't do a lot of soldering, I think the last time I soldered was when I sized a ring about 2 weeks ago. So I guess my pickle pot had been plugged in and left unattended for about 2 weeks.

Layout is finished

The layout is finished on my copper thing. Now, after I cut out the shape, I have to pierce about 400 lines. That's a little bit more work that I had planned when I was designing the piece, and I am wishing I hadn't added up the actual amount of work I will need to do. It's easier to just know I have to do "a lot" of piercing, and add it all up once its finished. I also don't have that much confidence in the design that I wanted to do that much work. But its too late now.

new saw frame

Friday I got a new saw frame for the copper vase I am making. This saw frame is 11" deep. It's the deepest saw frame I could find. I have always wanted one of these.

layout

This is the 24" x 24" sheet of 18 ga. copper I will use. I love big sheets of metal like this. Too bad its not silver.


This is after most of the layout had been done except for the piercing I will do on the sides of the piece. The black lines are just to make it easier for me to see the shape while I finish the layout. When I start cutting I will follow lines scribed in the metal.


In this photo I am laying out the lines I will cut in the sides of the piece. They are all parallel to each other. I have super glued the 12" ruler to the metal so I can put the square against it and scribe the lines more easily.


A close up showing the lines I was scribing in the previous photo.


All this layout has taken 2 days so far, not full days, but long enough each day that I had to stop working on it cause I was getting tired of doing it. I have to finish scribing all those parallel lines on the other 4 sections. 72 lines on each. I am looking forward to finishing this layout and getting started cutting.

new piece

I wanted to do some kind of piercing on the piece, it's boring if its just plain. I decided to cut it like the first one of these folded boxes I did in 2005. I make all the cuts then push some out and push others in.


This is the general idea:


It is going to take a long time to do so much cutting, but I think it will be cool. I also need to order a big saw frame.

starting another piece

I started another new piece today. I am not sure how many I have going right now. I try to excuse these work habits by saying that I may not be finishing anything now, but later on I will finish several pieces all around the same time. Sometimes it works like that, sometimes it doesn't.

I am starting this new piece because lately I am sick of the work I have been doing. I just need a break from the aluminum. I need to do something totally different.

What I am making is another folded vessel form. I have made some of these before, here is an example, this one is in the 500 Metal Vessels book:


These are cut out of a single sheet of metal and folded. The ones I made before were smaller. The one pictured above was cut from a 12" x 12" piece of metal. The one I am working on now will be cut from a 24" x 24" piece of copper.

I think I have finalized the design tonight. Tomorrow before I start laying out the design on metal I will look it over once more and make sure I am satisfied with it. I went with the design on the left.


This is the shape of each piece.


This is pretty much what I will be cutting out of the metal. This is not the design I am making, but it is very close to the one I will make. The only difference is the location of 2 folds, and this model is slightly wider in one dimension.