July 2020 – Ornamento

Bronze Clay Success!

By: ornamento.blog July 30, 2020July 29, 2020

Art, Bronze Metal Clay, kilns, problem solvingArt, bronze firing schedules, Bronze Metal Clay, Jewelry MakingLeave a Comment

I have been fooling around with my special blend of home made bronze metal clay for awhile and have made some beautiful things but have gotten inconsistent results. Then I moved up to a Paragon Max 119 kiln so I could fire cone 6 pottery as well as glass and metal clay. I also started trying to make hollow forms in the bronze clay. I was having problems with under firing and over firing, so I needed to tweak my firing schedule. I found this article by Mardel Rein to be invaluable. Top Shelf before firing All sintered

Here’s a pan of unfired bronze clay before kiln firing. I prefer to fire in these heavy, shallow stainless steel pans I get from my local Asian supermarket. I find that the more you use them, the less they flake.

The ring on the right is perfectly sintered and not overfired. The one on the left, from an earlier firing, is over fired. Hollow forms

Here are a couple of hollow beads. The one on the left has been repaired. The one on the right has not. I have found that you must put hollow forms through two firings. The form will come out of the first firing looking sintered, but will break if you drop it or hit it with a hammer. I save up beads that have made it through one firing and put them through the next firing with whatever else I have. I don’t plug the holes and I don’t construct screen cages to fire them in. I just cover them with carbon and whoop-de-do. You can’t use cork clay to make hollow beads from bronze clay, because you will never be able to get the cork fired out in an oxygen-free environment which is what you create when you fire in activated carbon. But if you can construct a hollow form with holes and get it through two firings, you should be able to bounce it on concrete without it breaking. In theory.

OverfiredL The piece on the left has been over fired. The pieces on the right went through a later firing and the tip of one broke off. Rather than try to reattach it, I just sawed the other tip off and will design something around the new shapes.

Repaired pair

The piece on the left broke in the middle during an earlier firing and I repaired and refired it. The piece on the right is made up of broken sintered and unsintered pieces from earlier firings for a kind of mosaic pendant.

These pieces went through one firing schedule and sintered perfectly. What I learned from all my experiences is that when you have thicker pieces, the trick is not necessarily to fire hotter, but to ramp up to temperature more slowly. I started out firing to 1550 and holding for two hours. Then I tried two and one half. Then I tried three. Thin pieces were over firing, but hollow beads were breaking. Then I tried lowering the temperature to 1500. A little better but same problem. Then I read that a slow ramp worked best with bigger pieces. I tried ramping at 250 degrees F to 1000F, holding one hour, then ramping on full to 1500F and holding for three hours. That did the trick. All the single layer pieces are coming out fine. I take the hollow ones out and put them in the next kiln batch through the firing cycle a second time, and they have been fine so far. You have to experiment to find out what will work for you.

Make a Tabletop Jeweler’s Bench Part 2: Everything You Need to Know

By: ornamento.blog July 23, 2020October 31, 2022

Art, DIY, jewelry making tools, tutorialsArt, Coronavirus projects, DIY Jewelers Bench, reuse and reporposing2 Comments

This post is a continuation of last week’s post on how to make a table top jewelry bench. Here’s how you do it! 19 bench Materials

1. For the bench top, I used a folding wood snack table that my neighbors left when they moved. You can buy a set of four here. You can make your bench and have three snack tables left over. The top is a thick, sturdy piece of wood you can bang on when you make your jewelry. The legs of the folding tray, also made of the same sturdy wood, can be sawed up to make the other components of the bench.

2. For the sides of the bench, I used a discarded Ekby Hemnes bookshelf from Ikea. Click here for dimensions. Any board with similar dimensions will work.

3. You will need a board for the pull out shelf, I used an mdf board from another discarded piece of Ikea furniture. My board was about 24” wide and I cut it to 20” to fit inside the bench.

4. A wood slat 2” X 21” and ¼” thick for pliers rack. (I used a wood paint stirrer I already had. You can buy them here.

5. Wood screws in various sizes. I used 2 ½” and 1 ½”

6. Feet to raise the bench if desired. I was going to fashion something out of screw-in cabinet knobs before I discovered that I had a set of screw-in furniture levelers I saved from an old metal shelf. They are less expensive than buying legs or knobs. You can get a set similar to what I used, here.

Tools

1. A portable electric jig saw like this one is handy for cutting out the top. You can get by without one since there are only straight cuts, but it is easier with the power tool. You can also use it for all your cutting. I used hand saws the rest of the bench because I felt I had more control over them.

2. C Clamps to hold the wood as you saw.

3. Straight saw or hack saw

4. Drill and various sized drill bits to assemble the bench and attach the feet

5. Cordless screwdriver

6. Ruler, retractable tape measure, pencil and permanent marker to measure and mark. I am horrible at measuring. Take your time with this. As a matter of fact, take your time with all of it.

7. Mallet and nail pry bar (to help disassemble the wooden tray)

8. Beeswax or soap to lubricate your saws and drill bits. You will not believe how much easier this will make the job

9. Safety glasses and dust mask. (Unless you like breathing in sawdust and getting it in your eyes.)

Some preliminaries about this project. I am not a wood worker. I do not have access to a wood shop. I do not know anyone with a wood shop who I would ask to make a bench for me.

I learned most of my skills (and that’s being charitable) on YouTube University. What few tools I do possess, I either inherited (like a couple of great saws that belonged to my Father-in-Law, which sat in my basement for 25 years before I realized I should use them), bought at house sales (an ancient portable jig saw) or scored at discount stores (like my drill that is not even cordless and which I have been threatening to replace for some time now). My modern tool is the cordless screwdriver which no home should be without.

3Snack Table top marked opening — Snack tray top disassembled and marked for cutting. I opted not to go for a round cut out on the bench top because I don’t have the skill to cut one.

4 jigsaw cut — Cutting out the bench top.

I smoothed out some rough edges. You could use a file, but this was faster.

The finished top

I sawed my bookshelf board in half, and attached it to the bench top with screws. I positioned them so there would be a lip to keep things from falling off the top of the bench. Then I sawed two lengths of wood from the snack tray table legs and screwed them to the back of the bench to form the pliers rack.

I cut two more lengths from the table legs and screwed them to the inside of the bench to accommodate the shelf. I cut the shelf to fit and added a lip at the back to prevent things from falling out. The pliers rack on the rear of the bench keeps the shelf from falling out the back.

15 legs screwed into place after drilling underside if bench

I added a strip of wood from the snack tray leg to the back of the bench top to make a lip to keep things from falling off the back of the bench. Then I cut the paint stirrer and screwed it to the back for the pliers rack.

Last, I drilled pilot holes into the side boards and screwed in some adjustable feet which let me level the bench and adjust the height.

Here’s a side view of the bench that shows where I screwed the sides.

20 -16 inches deep, 24 inches wide and 9 inches high

I attached the bench pin with clamps. I also made a nifty little forming tool with a piece of wood and some metal furniture knobs. Clamp it in a vise and shape yourself some metal. It’s also handy for riveting.

17 c knob screwed into wood salvaged from table leg

If you are interested in trying to make one of these yourself, I have drawn up some rudimentary plans for you to download. Feel free to share the plans but remember where you got them.

Make Yourself a Tabletop Jeweler’s Bench

By: ornamento.blog July 16, 2020July 16, 2020

Art, DIY, jewelry making tools, Recycled furnitureArt, DIY table top Jeweler's benh, recycling3 Comments

A few weeks ago, I decided to make myself a tabletop jeweler’s bench similar to this one. I don’t have a proper jewelry bench and needed one that fit into a crowded work space. I had a few more requirements: I wanted to set up the bench directly across from my soldering station. I wanted the bench to hold my bench pin at the right height for comfortable sawing. I also wanted to have a bit of storage underneath the bench. Most importantly, I needed a portable bench so I could move it out of the way if I needed to use the work station for something else.

My last requirement was that I wanted to make the bench using tools and materials I already had on hand. I possessed an old hand-held power jigsaw, a couple of miter box saws, (inherited from my father-in-law), a drill, and a cordless screwdriver. My materials consisted of a wood snack tray (which seemed to be the perfect size for the top of the bench,) some boards and wood scraps picked up from dumpster diving, and an assortment of screws collected over the years. I didn’t want to buy anything else if I could help it. And every time I was ready to break down and buy something, I discovered that I already owned something that would do the trick. I didn’t have to buy a thing!

19 finished bench

This is my finished bench and I think it looks pretty good considering that I didn’t know what I was doing. I’m not skilled enough to make drawers but I did make a pull-out shelf and added a rack on the back for pliers.

19 Back of bench

The portable bench measures 24” wide, 16” deep and about 9” high with the screw-on feet and 8” without. It is put together entirely with screws. This means it can be disassembled and stored easily. Or you can just slide the shelf out and stow it a corner.

I have no carpentry skills. I have never made anything out of wood unless you count the Popsicle stick trivet I made for my mother in Kindergarten. So I watched a lot of YouTube videos on carpentry and using tools. I wish I could tell you that there’s a great video on how to make this portable bench, but there’s not.

My raw materials:

Snack tray

Snack tray legs-I used these too!

Assorted boards

I will post plans on how to make the bench, and step-out photos next week. Stay tuned.

What’s On My Bench Now

By: ornamento.blog July 9, 2020July 8, 2020

altering tools, Art, Bronze Metal Clay, porcelain, rock tumbler, Tools, What's on my benchArt, bronze clay, Porcelain Clay, Rock Timbler Barrel Repair, rock tumblerLeave a Comment

I’m in the process of refining my homemade bronze clay firing schedule. The pieces below sintered beautifully, but they were the only things in the kiln that did. I had to re fire everything else, but they turned out fine on the second firing. Some more tweaking is clearly in order.

Second firing before cleaning. Everything sintered

I’ve been fooling a around with low-cost texture sheets. These are silicone brush cleaning mats that I cut up to make them easier to use. You can find these at Five Below, Wish.com, and Amazon

I got this texture stamp at Wish.com. I can’t find the link, but they have hundreds of designs.

Some previously-fired bronze that I have shaped in a swage bock. I’m waiting for it to talk to me.

Some more bronze and ceramics. I think the white pieces will end up as earrings. The bronze triangle might end up as part of a toggle clasp.

Some more ceramics and bronze wire in various shapes.

I have been thinking about riveting these two pieces together. I don’t know. They might work better as separate pieces.

A ceramic piece waits for me to decide what to do with it.

More ceramic pieces.

I am in the process of finishing a new batch of ceramic components. I burnish them in a rock tumbler and am trying different polishes to see what I like best.

My new dual barrel tumbler from Harbor Freig ht. I still have my vibratory tumbler, but I thought I’d give this one a try. The first one delivered from Harbor Freight had a leaky barrel. I asked for a replacement. They said they didn’t stock replacement barrels and sent me a while new unit. Which is a good thing because the first tumbler developed a short and ended up frying a circuit breaker. (Which the electrician pointed out to me after the tumbler tripped the circuit breaker several times.) The second tumbler is working fine and I hope it doesn’t develop a short. Which leads me to another thing. Before the second tumbler arrived, I looked high and low for instructions on how to repair the leak in the barrel. I found nothing. One site said it couldn’t be done. Then I found a tumbler barrel repair kit on line which inspired me to devise my own repair. If you can patch tires, why can’t you patch a rubber tumbler barrel? I mean really.

I had some liquid latex that I use for mold making. I cut a two-inch square of scrap silk fabric (because I figure silk in strong), soaked it with the latex and applied it to the barrel. I let that dry and added another layer of latex. When that dried, I covered the patch with a piece of packing tape.

No leaks yet and the tumbler has been going for a few days. Liquid latex is not that expensive and has many uses. For more information, check out the ultimate guide.

Porcelain and Bronze Make Jewelry

By: ornamento.blog July 2, 2020June 30, 2020

Art, Jewelry Making Tutorial, links to free tutorials, ring making, solderingArt, Colored Porcelain, Jewelry making tutorialLeave a Comment

I’ve been fooling around with colored porcelain components for a while, and usually make them into pendants or earrings. Here’s my first ring which might not be a practical application, but it was fun to try. The metal is bronze, my current favorite.

diagram I decided to go with a prong setting in bronze. The basic diagram (not to scale) is above. I cut a piece of wire, soldered it closed with hard solder and shaped it with a round mandrel. Then I laid out the prongs in the 2, 4, 8, and 10 O’clock positions and soldered them on with hard solder. (The red dotted line is an estimate of the size of my ceramic focal so I could be sure that I cut the prongs long enough.) Then I cut, shaped and filed the shank and soldered it on with medium solder. Here’s a tutorial that shows something similar to what I did.