folded copper vessel part 3 + a wedding

Last weekend I drove to Panama City Beach, Florida for my friends wedding. I was hoping the weather would be nice, but it was overcast the day of the wedding and raining most of the other time I was there.


I finished the copper vessel before I left and gave it as a wedding gift. The patina is liver of sulfur.

folded copper vessel part 2

In this picture I have mostly sanded the piece. I do as much finishing as I can while the piece is flat. It's much easier that way. The only parts I cannot finish while it is flat are some of the edges near the center.


Even though I have done a paper model, when folding the real piece it is sometimes hard to tell how much each part should be folded, so I fold the piece a little bit at a time.




The tabs are what keeps the piece together.




This is where I am at right now. I need to file some edges around the bottom of the piece and put a patina on it. I like it, especially the top, but I am not going to do this exact piece in silver.

folded copper vessel part 1

I came up with one idea for my folded silver vessel. I made 2 paper models then decided to try it in copper since I don't have gas to solder the pin back on my aluminum and silver brooch.

In the picture below I have the design glued to 12" x 24" 20 ga. copper. The design was sized to fit on a 12" x 12" sheet. I use Elmer's School Glue to glue the paper to the metal. Usually I sand the surface of the metal a little to help the glue adhere to it. This time I decided to skip that step and see if it would still hold ok. Skipping that step was a big mistake. The glue does not adhere to the metal at all. The paper was constantly peeling up while I was trying to saw out the shape and I kept having to glue it back down with super glue, which will be more difficult to remove when I am finished.



This is about where I stopped last night. I have almost all the holes drilled and I am deburring them.


This piece should be different from the others I have made so far, I am trying something new. Except for the holes. I am getting a little tired of the holes. The silver piece probably won't have holes, or if it does maybe they will be smaller and much closer together.

What ever design I decide to use for the silver vessel I will probably not cut it out of a single sheet of metal like I have done with every other folded vessel. I will probably cut out each side individually then solder them all to a center piece. There's lot of waste when I cut the design out of a single sheet of metal. That's ok with copper, brass and bronze, but silver is too expensive to waste.

12" x 12" sterling

I got this awesome 12" x 12" sheet of 22 gauge sterling silver a couple days ago. I am going to make another folded vessel with it. I haven't given much thought to the design yet. I plan to do a prototype in copper before I do anything with this silver.

photographing a stupid bronze vase

I photographed this piece yesterday. I made it in grad school in 2005. It's cast bronze, about 6.25" high. This was probably the most difficult piece I have ever photographed. This photo isn't that great, but it's the best I can do. I photographed it back when I first made it, but the pics were terrible. The problem is it is reflective and dark. Normally if you have something reflective, like polished silver, if you photograph it in a light tent, which is all white material, it's ok. The white reflections on silver look ok. But on a dark piece like this, light colored things reflected on it look terrible. The main problem I was having was the backdrop I was using, this big piece of paper that goes from white to black. The white and gray in the foreground were reflecting on the piece and making it difficult to see the patina. So after messing around with it for a while I decided to move it to a darker area on the back drop. I no longer had the reflections and the patina looked good, but its difficult to see the shape of the dark piece on the dark background. I gave up on photographing it and decided to try to work with what I had on Photoshop. I have limited Photoshop skills, just like I have limited photography skills, but I was sick of taking pictures. This photo is what I ended up with. Its dark, but it shows just how the patina really looks. If I really wanted a good photo the thing to do would be to send it to a professional photographer, but this piece really isn't worth it.

brass vessel

Sunday I took a break from commissions and stuff for galleries and made this piece. It is cut from a sheet of 12" x 12" 22 gauge brass. The finished piece is about 3 3/4" high x 4 3/8" wide.


I used almost the same design as a different piece, but made the neck longer and scaled the piece up to fit the larger piece of metal. Doing the design with CAD makes it so much easier to scale the piece to fit the sheet of metal.


This is right before I started drilling the holes. I used a highlighter to mark the borders of the areas where I will drill.




Finished except for the patina.


It is the same design as the smaller piece except it has a longer neck.

new glass for photography

A couple days ago I got a new piece of non-glare glass on which to photograph my work. My old glass, which was about 24" x 24", broke several months ago. Since most of my work is small I was able to use one of the broken pieces for a while, but it wasn't big enough for everything. I got the new glass cut to 17" x 20" so it fits inside my light tent.

Here is my first photo on the new glass, the piece I posted some process photos of Sept 10th.

brass vessel

I made a small folded brass vessel last week. I have several commissions to do and some other things I need to finish, but I felt like doing something else that day. It took one night to make, from designing it to the to finished piece. It was cut from a 6" x 6" sheet of 22 gauge brass. Finished size is 1 3/4" x 2 3/4". I will post a better photo of the finished piece after I photograph it.

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.