Mainly because my electrical knowledge peaks at wiring penlight batteries..ahem

Then another like in the picture.
I got the wire from a thrown away slimming machine I found next to the rubbish bin.
If I could make a living from it, I would take things apart.

I made a perspex platform .
I used three of those batteries to power this machine.

And I mounted the steel bar, which is just standard round bar, with a bolt and nut through the piece of wood.
Then I made a brass wheel and some posts for an axle.
The posts were made by putting the brass stock into a drill press and filing it while it was spinning at about 1000 rpm, until it was the correct thickness for the die nut to accept.
The wheel is made out of 6.4mm brass stock and silver soldered closed.
Then the wheel was bashed round and flat.
All this is normal cartridge brass, I think, and it is very nice to work, actually.
I drilled and tapped three holes in a steel nut.
Makes division quite easy and if you make a mistake, plenty more where that came from.
The 3mm threaded ‘bar’ holds the axle in place.
With a bit of tweaking, I could get it quite straight.

From the nut, the brass threaded spoke is also threaded through the brass wheel .
I installed them by screwing them from the outside inwards and into the center nut.
Then the iron bars are screwed to them like lock nuts, sort of.
Not very tight, though.

The axle is held true between the brass posts with two brass split washers.
The posts are drilled with a cone from either side, so it actually runs on about 1.5mm wide surface.

I got this one running, with patient Anne’s help.
I got a video at the bottom,I think.

Then I made a second magnets with two posts that are separated, but it does not run very well.I think the U shaped one is better.

This is the points wheel.
It’s got a nut soldered on the back with a grub screw to made it adjustable.
A bit like the axle nut.
It looks bad, but that’s because I connected it to a battery charger to see what would happen.
Two or three sparks later, I didn’t look like such a good plan after all.
Anyway, when it runs it’s much cleaner.

This is the video of it running.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fY71BmIe2kM

The last character is my baby dolphin. I imagine him to be inquisitive and playful, so he will be sporting a pearl necklace. I love adding dolphins to my designs. They are easy to sculpt, and add so much charm.

Well, the sculpture is almost finished. I still have a a lot of finishing work to do, before it will be ready for molding. The surface finish is important, as every little flaw will be picked up by the silicone molding compound. But I am very pleased with the design, and think it will look fabulous when cast.

Cameo carver in Italy.

Here’s his bench, love that natural light, and the little CD player!

Visit what must be the World’s Tiniest Jeweler’s Workshop, here…
(scroll down)

http://deponti.livejournal.com

Pictures by Massimo Zunino, (C) Massimo Zunino 2008 All Rights Reserved, reprinted with permission.

Cyndi’s post Beaded Jewelry as Decorations reminded me of Ornament Thursday, a blog carnival I participated in back in 2007.

Here are the links to the ornaments I posted then:

Polymer Clay Ornament

and

Memory Wire Ornament

That was the  night we put up our tree and  would anxiously wait til midnight to open the package sent from Oma and Tante Helga.

After the cord was ceremoniously cut,  the box would be opened reverently. Wrapped inside layers of the thinnest crinkly Christmas tissue would be more tissue wrapped around small bundles. They made the sound of tinder catching fire as they were unwrapped.

There were gifts for all and each was always perfect. A Hohner harmonica for my brother . My first Bob Dylan album. There he was, with his swirling hair and enigmatic smirk,  holding a  giant chrome Zippo lighter. A ponderous thing indeed.

Miene Tante was always good at choosing the right gift. She was young enough but old enough. Each of us would show off our present as if it were some crowning achievement. To be remembered from the old country, back home.

One year, my mother told us the stories of her childhood. Of gleaming candles on magical trees. Sipping her father’s beer, when her mother wasn’t looking. Combing her baby sister’s fine blonde hair in a tiny cozy room, upstairs, on the featherbed, waiting to be called down for the Christmas Eve unveiling of their family’s tree.

She told us of the coffee roaster down the street, how the aroma would waft all the way to their house on cold mornings, and fill their senses with….

But that was 1942.  Hamburg. A few months later they were bombed out. The Feuersturm they called it. The firestorm. She recounted how the intense blazing wind would whirl down the street and catch every flammable surface, even the road itself. She recalled how human bodies, perhaps her classmates, would just shrivel into tiny charred lumps. She told us how the burnt smell of corpses lingered for days. She was twelve.  She recounted the hardships her family faced after that. Her father had lost his small trucking business and there were no more Christmas Eves for a long long while.

But the tissued bundle my brothers and I most sought out contained the Lubecke marzipan. These were not just candies. These were Sculpture. Art. A supreme delight to see. And to hold. Little marzipan pigs. Little marzipan potatoes. We pondered aloud and excitedly whether to taste them now, or keep them for trading after New Year’s.

I heard my mother sobbing gently much later that night. Retreating to sleep. Retreating to a dream.

Its only now I understand.

Next - a dolphin and a school to tiny fish complete the scene

I always admired how polite he was to everyone from close friends and family to complete strangers.

He once told me, “My father always told me to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you,” and those two phrases have been a huge part of my success.”

For years, I’ve told jewelry makers like you to include a brief, handwritten thank-you note with every order.

Why?

Because in a world that has become automated, the personal touch means a lot.

Because in a world where everything comes off a printer, your handwritten note STANDS OUT!

And because taking the time to write not only makes an impression on the customer, it impresses on you, too, how important it is to appreciate and show gratitude for the people who give us their hard-earned cash.

If you’re not sending hand-written thank-you notes with each order now, go get some and start writing!

If you’re sending pre-printed notes, stop and switch to the old-fashioned kind.

I never thought I’d encourage people to do what’s traditional to stand out, but my friend Bob’s dad was right.

Now you can be, too.

From Hadar’s Clays (powdered), here’s a how to torch fire video:

http://www.youtube.com/artinsilver

From Sabine, here’s a tutorial (in French) on Aida’s Copper Clay, torch fired:

http://www.sabinealienor.com

Find Aida’s clay at Art Clay World or your favorite supplier.

Jeweler/metalsmith Stephen Walker has a very complete chart on his website to help you out with that. Scroll down past the chart for even more info.

http://www.celtarts.com/ring_size.htm

It was only in August of this year that I had resolved to make a serious effort to making jewelry.

The good news, is that the results are even now beginning to materialize:

1) I have gained a great deal of confidence in using my Taig CNC to machine diverse types of metals at diverse feed rates using diverse endmills.

2) I have learned at least a little about how silver feels: to hammer, melt, bend, and polish.

3) I have even written a little bit of computer code to support my efforts.

4) I believe I have managed to step a little further away from the abyss. Certainly the presence of my wife and my daughter serve as the ultimate check here. But finding an outlet for frustrated creativity has also helps great deal, as do all of your feedback and encouragements.

That being said, I’ll be the first to say that I have barely scratched the surface of jewelry making, and nobody has made that more clear to me than Helen from the UK and some other people.

I realize that I’m insisting on reinventing the wheel nearly every time. But this is how I learn: I need to explore, and I need to question. Why does this objective need this process or this material? If I don’t have everything listed in the instructions, can I substitute or even do without? Just how important is tradition as opposed to science, anyway?

I’ve accomplished a lot of “oh, shits!” along the way in the process. But once I have a technique down I can do twice as much in half the time with better quality simply due to the increased experience and confidence.

Although the appearance of my crosses are “lumpy” as Helen had put it, I have still few regrets concerning my results. I even think their appearance is valid from a theological point of view, and I was thinking a lot about The Message while making each and every one of them.

The Rabbi Jesus had announced Himself king in Heaven, which the agents of the emperor were unable to understand as anything other than a coup attempt. He was therefore executed with a crucifix: a Roman torture instrument meant to execute someone with excruciating pain for treason and other crimes against the empire, at about the same level of overall gruesomeness as drawing and quartering.

However abstracted from the crucifix that a cross actually is, the timbers upon which Jesus had died where rough hewn, an asymmetrical mess of lumpy and bumpy scraps with notches and holes and splinters and other painfully apparent imperfections reflecting the fallen nature of humanity and all its works. The chains attached to it are also uneven and overlarge, reflecting the shackles all too often used by the Romans against slaves and prisoners and dissidents.

So a cross is not supposed to look like a bloody starship to the afterlife!

Instead the cross took Him to Hell for three days…

So far the vote of the locals is unanimous that they are beautiful. Probably because the many awkwardnesses of my first design ever, lend character and message to what beauty and symmetry is presented by the overall shape and bevelling.

The locals do agree with Helen to lose the overdone French ear hooks and replace them with plainer ones. Makes my life easier, too.

I will with lots of practice get to where my work can be judged alongside other entries of the classical school, eventually. But right now my entry comes from the Black Velvet school, and so needs to be viewed as such.

You might not see much in my blog for a while:

1) I will be taking off to my wife’s hometown for Christmas and New Year’s.

2) Then the household will have to be started up again and daily routines restarted.

3) I’m very much looking forward to teaching myself how to shape stone with an eye toward intarsia work, using my Inland All-In-Wonder. But I am going to have to take the bull by the horns and practice, practice, practice! And that might take some weeks.

4) I’m already thinking about what what I want to make for Valentine’s or St. Patrick’s Day.

Finally:

I’ve taken down some sections of my blogsite, such as the request for donations. They’re no longer necessary since I was actually able to sell something, and my skills can only get better with time.

Thanks, everyone!

Aulë

I am open to change.

I am open to change.

I am open to change.

Does saying it make it so?

Whether spurred by  the choices of others, the flow of nature, or just the circumstances of life, change happens.

I find myself at the moment approaching the bench in a completely new way, after all these years. My health condition and the related risk of extensive bleeding means that I simply cannot cut myself. I have never had to approach the bench with such risk or restriction before, and I’m discovering that this reality is making me change the way I work.

This change was not my idea. And I confess frustration and anger related to it at first. But, perhaps this is a good thing. Perhaps I will discover that going slower and physically holding objects differently creates work that is more deliberate and thoughtful. Vice grips are my new best friend. (Metalsmiths, I know you know what I mean.)

The studio hasn’t been my only venue for change lately. For months I have known that I needed to do something about my website. The design was launched in 2008, and it was indeed beautiful. But, there were contact forms with dead destinations, and old inventory featured that I was unable to update myself, among other static issues. Either I had to find a way to update the site (which would have involved money being spent), or I needed to redesign while retaining editing capability.

Without going into lots of technical detail, I was experimenting with design templates (I don’t speak html), when I assigned the domain to a template. I didn’t realize that it would instantly kill my existing site without any “publishing” being clicked upon. Suddenly, I had no website.

I had planned to deal with building a new site in January, but because I had inadvertently massacred my stagnant site, I needed to do it now. So, I did. We did. I called in the reinforcements (my teenage daughter), and we had a new site up by the next day. And, I love it.

There are still a few “under construction” apologies, and certainly there is always room to expand. But the site is fresh, and is just right to reflect the change in my studio life.

Change feels good after all. Either I change, or I die a slow, figurative death of stagnation and motionless dormancy.

Image bar for new website

I’ve added hair to the mermaid and some jewels. The Mermaid’s body is finished and soft fired, for 10 minutes at 265 degrees. She is not hard all the way through, but she is hard enough to scrape and sand, before adding her hair. She looks so much better with hair. Here, also, is her fancy little hand mirror. All the tiny pearls are glass, and will be fired and cast, right into the mold.

Next - Sculpting an Octopus

Call for Entries:

DEADLINE: June 30, 2010
METAL Inclinations2 will debut on the Internet October 31, 2010- and remain online a full year
until October 31, 2011

For more information go to: http://metalinclinations.org/enter

METAL Inclinations2 is sponsored by Hauser & Miller and presented and produced by the Society for Midwest Metalsmiths.

METAL Inclinations2 International juried jewelry (jewellery) exhibition for 2010-11 will include selections of the most exemplary fine metal art jewelry created by metalsmiths, silversmiths, goldsmiths and jewelers all over the world. Check this site frequently for updated information.

AWARDS:
$2,000 First place award sponsored by the Society for Midwest Metalsmiths.
$1,000 Second place award, sponsored by Hauser and Miller.
$500 Third place award gift certificate, by Rio Grande.
$200 Award of merit gift certificate, by Pasternak Findings.
$200 Award of merit custom tool kit, by Xuron Corporation
$100 x 3- Three award of merit gift certificates by Pasternak Findings.

JURORS:
SMM is happy to announce our four jurors for METAL Inclinations2:
Jamie Bennett, Bio and art: Click here
Klaus Bürgel, Bio and art: Click here
John Cogswell, Bio and art: Click here
Sydney Lynch, Bio and art: Click here

The Society for Midwest Metalsmiths was Established in 1995 as a non-profit organization. The Society’s goal is to promote, develop, educate, and encourage individuals who are interested in metalsmithing.

I’ve been making some various wire braceletts and necklaces. It has improved my solder control a lot.  What I really enjoy though is making the findings..catches and latches and hinges..really a blast when all goes well! Here are a few pics. I hope you like them. I wish I could say they were my own designs but alass…