I love smacking metal with a hammer. There is something satisfying about wacking a hammer down onto something in the means to create, not destroy. This is good. I suppose my love of hammering metal showed itself in my teens when I took a deep interest in how swords were made. I never had the pleasure of hand forging a sword the old fashioned way. Now most are made by machines or cut from pre-forged metal and ground into shape. Boooring... :P I guess thats something I need to change in my life. I want to make a sword from scratch. Learn it properly. However, I digress... This pendant was created in Susan Lenart-Kazmers class Creating Containers & Bezels--Cold Join. I love Susans classes because it's really about puzzle solving. Not the finish line. You can chose your own level. Good stuff there. So I officaly name this piece "The Grinder". It's didn't start that way. It was like many a heavy metal song. Starts with a beautiful thought and digresses into crunchy, grindy, chewy bits. Just the way I like it. My challenges for this project were as follows. 1. connecting the gears on the back without drawing a bead. For one, drawing a bead next to a big aluminium gear would have just sucked. It would have sucked up the heat and.....ten years later you still have the tip of a wire. The next part is that you have a tiny round bit resting aganst your chest like a ball point pen pointed at your heat. Comfy yet? Ok not so much. So I managed to get an anvil in there and make a rivet on the back. Would have been far easier at home with it clammped
into a vice but hey. It worked. The next problem was drawing a bead on the left side of the wire that holds everything together. I watched my gears on the side turn cherry red and start to wilt like a flower on fast worward. Heh....not the desired effect. Any who, I'm very happy with this project except that I have to make a proper chain for it. I like the surprise of looking down into it to see something more.
I love smacking metal with a hammer. There is something satisfying about wacking a hammer down onto something in the means to create, not destroy. This is good. I suppose my love of hammering metal showed itself in my teens when I took a deep interest in how swords were made. I never had the pleasure of hand forging a sword the old fashioned way. Now most are made by machines or cut from pre-forged metal and ground into shape. Boooring... :P I guess thats something I need to change in my life. I want to make a sword from scratch. Learn it properly. However, I digress... This pendant was created in Susan Lenart-Kazmers class Creating Containers & Bezels--Cold Join. I love Susans classes because it's really about puzzle solving. Not the finish line. You can chose your own level. Good stuff there. So I officaly name this piece "The Grinder". It's didn't start that way. It was like many a heavy metal song. Starts with a beautiful thought and digresses into crunchy, grindy, chewy bits. Just the way I like it. My challenges for this project were as follows. 1. connecting the gears on the back without drawing a bead. For one, drawing a bead next to a big aluminium gear would have just sucked. It would have sucked up the heat and.....ten years later you still have the tip of a wire. The next part is that you have a tiny round bit resting aganst your chest like a ball point pen pointed at your heat. Comfy yet? Ok not so much. So I managed to get an anvil in there and make a rivet on the back. Would have been far easier at home with it clammped
into a vice but hey. It worked. The next problem was drawing a bead on the left side of the wire that holds everything together. I watched my gears on the side turn cherry red and start to wilt like a flower on fast worward. Heh....not the desired effect. Any who, I'm very happy with this project except that I have to make a proper chain for it. I like the surprise of looking down into it to see something more.
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