Thursday, January 21, 2010

Another Ice Storm and Progress on Jewelry



Oh no! Not again! Ice has been accumulating on trees and power lines all afternoon and is supposed to continue into tonight. (Best seen on the shrub in the lower left corner of the above photo.) Let's pray that the power stays on this time. Notice that there is STILL snow on the ground from the December 18 storm. There are only ten days left in January -- maybe February will  be kinder to us.



I've been working away and almost have my kiln shelf filled. That means that I'll probably fire on Saturday and have some new things to show. I had an idea of how to make some lower priced items using brass and copper by cutting discs from sheet metal and embellishing them with silver. I borrowed a disc cutter from my friend and Craft Enrichment Program colleague Jim Rice last night.



He gave me a quick demo over at the Jewelry Studio on campus. It looked easy, just put the sheet inside the cutter, crank it down, put the cutting plug in and bash it with a heavy dead-weight hammer. He did one of them with one blow of the hammer. I tried it today and, after many, many hammer blows, finally got a second disc cut. I tried a third one, but gave up because I thought my house would fall down if I tried to hit that thing any harder. I found out later that I need to put the whole set up on concrete or steel so that the wood of my butcher block island doesn't absorb so much of the shock. I don't have any concrete.... Any ideas?

2 comments:

Fred & Lynn Racey said...

Weather permitting you could do it on top of the well cover. Will givt it some more thought,,,Fred

Unknown said...

Be careful if your well cover is concrete, it could crack. Surely you have a big flat rock somewhere?
Your website looks very smart. I like it. You do good work. I want to take your PMC class sometime.
Stay warm and dry.
Lyn