Well, I'm pretty far behind! I've done some metalwork, nearly finished the bone needle cases, some woodwork, and dabbled in wire wrap rings. I'll do the bone stuff as its own post here soon (really!) and the wooden stools will probably merit their own post as well. In the mean time, here's a few different types of metal!
Thursday, April 28, 2016
Friday, March 11, 2016
Pewter
Success! Though I didn't remember to take a final picture. The molds came out perfectly, and I learned that the silicone is softer than I thought it would be. I poured a dozen casts in each, and there's really no appreciable wear on the molds. Yay durability!
I took this before I started really cleaning up the sprues and flashing. You can see upper left has a lot of flashing where some pewter snuck through the edge of the mold. Happily, this is easy to clean up, and some file work was all it took.
I wanted to do a dark chemical deposit on the metal, that I would then polish off the easy-to-reach areas. My experience is with liver of sulfur, which immediately darkens copper, brass, nickle and silver. You'll notice tin isn't on that list? Yeah. Over the course of an evening I got a "maybe kiiiiiind of aged?" look. I may try gun bluing compound next, but I didn't find anything definitive about that. At least some work with 000 steel wool got a slight bit of contrast, and the design itself didn't DEPEND on two tones.
Overall, a success. I have some ideas on how to incorporate a pendant-hanging hole in the sprue of my next work, and we'll see if it turns out.
I took this before I started really cleaning up the sprues and flashing. You can see upper left has a lot of flashing where some pewter snuck through the edge of the mold. Happily, this is easy to clean up, and some file work was all it took.
I wanted to do a dark chemical deposit on the metal, that I would then polish off the easy-to-reach areas. My experience is with liver of sulfur, which immediately darkens copper, brass, nickle and silver. You'll notice tin isn't on that list? Yeah. Over the course of an evening I got a "maybe kiiiiiind of aged?" look. I may try gun bluing compound next, but I didn't find anything definitive about that. At least some work with 000 steel wool got a slight bit of contrast, and the design itself didn't DEPEND on two tones.
Overall, a success. I have some ideas on how to incorporate a pendant-hanging hole in the sprue of my next work, and we'll see if it turns out.
Thursday, February 4, 2016
Back Blogging: Bone Belt Buckle
Last summer I carved myself a belt buckle out of a beef bone originally packaged as a dog chew toy. I was inspired by a few different finds, but mostly this one from York.
Nice, simple, strong and not covered with more typical anglo saxon or viking era carvings (which are nice, don't get me wrong. I just didn't have the right tools at the time to replicate them, but a graver should be coming in soon...).
Nice, simple, strong and not covered with more typical anglo saxon or viking era carvings (which are nice, don't get me wrong. I just didn't have the right tools at the time to replicate them, but a graver should be coming in soon...).
Monday, January 11, 2016
Containers
I've had my eye on attempting a recreation of the Gokstad backpack for a while now. http://web.missouri.edu/~rls555/SCA/research/gokbkpk/gokbkpk.htm is a great summation of the archaeological find, and if you look on pinterest there are a lot of modern recreations, either of wicker or leather. I felt like doing something a little different, and started a model size one in coil basketry. I've been wanting to give coil baskets a shot for a while now and this is as good a way to practice as any. My materials are very much modern, I'm using the twisted brown paper you use to make rush seats and some artificial sinew (nobody sane would use actual sinew in this project, unless they somehow had a T-Rex worth of the stuff).
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