Week 8 - Steel on My Mind

This week I have two finished items to show. More than that got done, but these are the ones I took photos of.

First is the piece I had hoped to finish last week, then gacked when I was closing the last prong. It's fixed, has a new patina, and a new prong mount. May I present Don't Leave Home Without It. Copper, chased and repousséd, cupric nitrate patina, sealed with Renaissance wax.

This is your brain on jewelry.

Back side showing the steel setting.

The setting is steel wire soldered together. I owe a debt of thanks to Peg Fetter, who was kind enough to field my phone call full of questions out of the blue and who pointed me in the direction of a book which had clear instructions and photos on how to solder steel. That's The Penland Book of Jewelry: Master Classes in Jewelry Techniques. The chapter by Rob Jackson covers fabricating jewelry with steel. Thanks Peg!

When the focal was done I decided to try fabricating a chain for it. That's currently in pieces on the bench.

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Second is a bit of tool reclamation. While clearing out boxes from the studio I came across this poor thing. It is a mason's chisel (I think). You can see that it's in terrible shape; heavy rust all over. Just steel brushing wasn't going to bring it back to usable condition.

So I stuck it on a bath of white vinegar (the cheap stuff you can buy by the gallon) with some table salt thrown in it. Left it there overnight. The next day I fished it out and brushed it off under running water. This is the result.

It was pretty obvious that the rust pitting was very deep and there were a couple of spots that looked like they might be cracks. Some other spots looked like a bad weld job. In any case I didn't need a mason's chisel. But a hatchet stake could be useful. So it was on to a 60 grit flap sander in a 4.5" angle grinder.  The surfaces were taken down to bare metal and the edge got reshaped a little to reflect its new use. That got it to this stage.

Finally, I taped off the edge and gave it a good coat of enamel spray paint to protect it from further rust. Ready to join the other stakes in the rack.

A good deal more got done on cleaning up the studio but that's enough for now.