Thursday, April 28, 2016

Misc catch up (metal)

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!




So I took a knife making class back in February, but I didn't finish for some time after that. For some reason, the sanding and polishing part wasn't quiiiiite as interesting as hitting hot metal with a hammer.


After the first of two days in the class. After the shot, it was heated to red hot and then put in an insulated bucket, in order for the blade to cool very slowly. The next day was spent filing, quenching and tempering (and then filing some more).


And my finished project.  It took a few evenings of work to finer-file off the rough file marks, and then progressive sanding with 400, 600, 800 and 1000 grit sandpaper.  I'd kind of like to break out the 2000 grit and put a real proper polish on the edge, but it's not necessary unless I want to use the knife for really fine carving work.

The style is billed as a "viking women's knife" but I think that's more of a reenactorism than actual archaeology. The few finds of that type were on mainland Europe, and not dated to the actual Viking Age.  Plus, there's not much room in the design for fancy intricate designs, and much of Scandinavia was pretty iron-poor at the time so a plain blade that manages to take up two knives' worth of metal just seems out of place.


Next up was a batch of cloak pins. I found out that Lowes has rolls of bare copper wire between 4 and 8 gauge and now I do too.  A vice grip, chunk of steel pipe and a couple dremel cut-off wheels later, I had a lot ready for hammering.


The inner diameter is about 1 1/4" and 4 ga wire for the spread out ones, and the pile to the right is 8 ga wrapped around a 5/8" dowel. My next step is to flatten out the ends, so as to keep the center pin from being able to slide off.


Also a little bit of filing, but these aren't supposed to be masterworks, just little gifts. And as I don't remind myself quite often enough, my time does have value.


And a center pin made of 8 ga wire, flattened at the end and wrapped around fairly tightly. The day after this, I went and got some 10 ga wire which I think will work just a little better. However, they do exactly what they're supposed to and I'm happy to have some gender-neutral gifts to add to my barony's largesse stash.  As for the pile of smaller rings, I went through the same process with them to make ... well, they're more safety pins than cloak pins, but would work great to gift as pairs to someone wanting to make Roman garb.


The striations visible on my brass center pins are a result of (slightly over-)spinning the metal between a vice and power drill.  It's a process that work hardens non-ferrous metals, and changing 16ga craft wire from ... well, floppy bendable craft wire into a strong metal rod that won't deform nearly as easily. It's also a process that should get it's own blog post, it'd be handy to have a quick URL to send out.


Speaking of wire, I was sent a few wire ring images in the last week or so. 

These purport to be viking age rings, but documentation seems scarce. However, they're neat! Both are made of a single piece of wire that was tapered on each end and decoration was formed by twisting these thinner ends.  The silver one is more interesting to me and I took a quick and dirty shot at replicating it with 16ga brass wire I had in the house.

Also I need a light box.

I'm going to have to practice a bit more (and/or maybe make some use of a torch to soften the wire for the tight spirals), but I think this works as a proof of concept.  Also, it's a sizable, which was a neat realization (move the two spirals further apart for a smaller ring, closer together for larger).  I could also get more of a band by wrapping one more time around the finger, but it may be difficult to keep two wraps the same size while attempting the resize trick.

I'd really like to give this a try with the tapered wire, buuuut that's a more involved project than just fiddling around with store bought wire. Starting with 10-ish ga wire and either using a rolling mill repeatedly or dragging ends through a drawplate are a little outside the scope of "what I can do in a small apartment".  Also that kind of time investment demands at least silver!

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