Brass rings

Sometimes I wonder if I'm crazy to do so much of the fabrication myself. Making the band for this type of ring requires:

1. cutting a strip out of my brass sheet
2. sanding off the rough edges
3. annealing with my torch
4. running it through the embossing machine
5. punching a hole in the middle
6. bending the metal strip around a ring mandrel 
7. pickling to get the fire scale off 
8. tumbling to make it shiny

That's just the band, but the rest is easy. I look for a bead, nut and bolt that fits. Usually I need a metal disk as a kind of washer/bead cap. I make those out of sheet metal as well (which involves most of the same steps as the band). Crazy? Perhaps. But I have to justify purchasing all of those tools.

Playing around with photos

I tried to make a logo and add it to a photo. Here's the result:

Considering I'm using free online software, and I have no idea what I'm doing, I'm pretty satisfied. I just wish I could get the text to be white.

Ta da!

And now I need a rustic background.

Getting closer to my goal. 

Recent projects

My Mom's birthday is this coming Friday. I know she really likes lapis, so I made her this pendant with copper wire:

I've been playing around with rivets again. This is my favorite so far. It's made out of hand-cut brass and copper discs which I then rounded in my dapping block. Then I riveted them to a copper band:

That's all for now. I have a few other new items but haven't managed to get good pix of them.

Rivets rock!

I am so happy about rivets. I have not yet perfected the process - probably a riveting hammer would help - but I have been able to make some pretty awesome things already.

Riveted rings

The ring on the left is 14 gauge bronze wire with a copper rivet. The ring on the right is 14 gauge copper wire with a copper disc, silver bead cap and copper rivet.

I tried to make a ring with a bowl-like disc, but it went all wrong. The rivet bent in both cases. I don't know if it was because I didn't cut the rivet short enough or because, due to the bowl shape, I couldn't get right down in the bowl with the hammer. I'm not sure a riveting hammer would help here because they are still large, even on the pointed end.

Hmm...