Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Metals Studio - 1/31/09

Mom and I went to the metals studio on Saturday. When we got to the studio, the door was propped open, music blaring, lights on, the gas was left on, the pickle was left on, and no one was around. That totally honked me off. I cannot believe students just left the door open so that anyone could walk in and steal stuff. Plus leaving the gas on, how irresponsible is that. Oh yeah, I am talking about students…

Well, mom and I cleaned up and turned on the kilns to heat up so we could enamel some things. Shannon, a friend of mine, was suppose to be coming over later on in the morning because I told her I would solder some things for her. Shannon does not like the torch, so I help her out by soldering things for her. I hate soldering, but this gives me a chance to practice. Plus I still need to show mom how to solder, so I am killing two birds with one stone.

On this day I worked on enameling and mom worked on cutting, sanding and filing pieces. I got a pair of earrings enameled. It was a pair of hands I cut out from my time at Penland. I was going to use the hands to make a goblet, but I figured a different way to make the goblet and had the hands left over. So mom and I decided to make earrings out of the hands. I used a crackle white and misc. purple enamel on the hands.

I also got mom’s bowl enameled. Overall I think the bowl turned out pretty good although two of the holes in the petals filled with enamel again, but mom said don’t worry about it she had an idea on how to get around that issue.

I also finished enameling a Celtic pendant. I used cobalt blue enamel for the color. I also finished enameling a "family" pendant and I used the crackle white with black sprinkled on top of it.

Mom also finished cutting out, sanding and filing a bunch of geckos that I am going to enamel and then make into a necklace with some of our flameworking glass beads. Mom already knows what beads she wants me to use, but she has to find me an example so I can make up a bunch of them to go into the necklace. Those geckos I will get enameled next Saturday.

I also worked on fixing a goblet I made in 2007. I had sealed the copper with sealant, but it did not work out as planned. So I started to sand it off, but it wasn’t working very well, so I thought I would use the big torch. That worked really well, and helped my hands so I didn’t have to sand for hours. I tried a technique, to turn the goblet red, by heating up a bowl of water on a hot plate and then when the water was boiling I would heat up the goblet with the torch and once it was heated up, drop the goblet into the water. This is supposed to turn the copper a nice red. It worked on parts of the goblet, but of course I am not happy with it.

Mom and I are going to look for Linseed Oil and rub it on the goblet and see what happens with that. Mom has another idea if that doesn’t work. I really want to enter this goblet in the Undergraduate Exhibit next week. This will probably be my last undergrad exhibit and I want to enter the goblet, my headdress and a drawing I did of a horse.

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