OLIO 3

Sorry, don't have anything to show for this post, but I have been doing a few things.  Those pesky little chores that most of us have to go through every now and then.  Mainly making a  bunch of jump rings, different sizes, different ire gauges.  They are pretty easy to make if you have one of the jump ring makers.  When I use the cutting part of the tool, I always insert a small dowel, or piece of bamboo skewer through the coil, then when the coil is cut, I don't have rings flying around inside the cutting jig.  The rings come out a lot better that way.  The next step, I pour the rings into a wire sieve and swirl them around in a bowl of water that has  dash of Dawn dish soap added.  This get rid of the lubricant. After the are dried, I close up the rings, string them on a piece of wire, and tumble them for about an hour to toughen them up a bit.  While still strung on the wire, I swished them around in a solution of liver of sulfur to put a bit of patina on them.

I also took some common house wiring, 12 gauge copper, annealed it and ran it through the rolling mill, flattening some of it out to 24 gauge.  Then cut the wire into various lengths, and twisted them to make chain links, and drilled the ends for 20 gauge jump ring.  These I strung on a temporary wire, washed them, and swished these through the patina bath.

Then, I made a bunch of wire drops.  Various kind of coils, tight and loose. These are decorative elements to add interest to designs.  Some have a single stone bead added, mainly some kind of agate or jasper as some of these type of stone go pretty well with copper.

Next, balled up the ends of pieces of copper wire in various gauges.  These, again, are to be added as decorative elements to metal shapes, etc.

Maybe sometime around the first of October I will be able to show something.

OLIO 2

Between the first part of August, and now the first part of September, I accomplished very little.  Put together more cold connected elements.  I have a problem.  I like to experiment with different things, and put things together.  But, for some reason,  That is as far s it goes. I must have over two hundred different elements that are wanting to be made into something, and yet I lack the incentive, or inspiration to go ahead and finish.  Below is a pic of a partially finished necklace. 

The rocks are sold as "Maple Turquoise" which is a misnomer.  They are dyed Howlite.  Even so, they are kind of pretty.  The flatten wire drops are common household wiring.  Cut, annealed, flattened, looped and patinated and strung on a piece of copper tubing.  I had to enlarge the holes in the copper beads so the would slide on the tube.  The the ends of the tube were flattened and drilled.  The jump rings are 18 gauge copper, also patinated.

I used Patina Gel for the patina.  It is liquid (sort of syrupy), liver of sulfur.  A lot handier to use than the old chunky los in a can.  I bought it from Cool Tools.

Some more of the Maple Turquoise.

I won't promise anything, but I hope to post a little more often than once a month.

OLIO

As promised, I'm back, first week in August.

I see new followers.  Welcome to the blog!

Olio.  What's with this?  It is a word that means an eclectic collection of art or writings.  There are several other meanings, such as a hodge-podge of items.  The word is used by crossword constructors because of the number of vowels.  Here, I'm using it to indicate this blog entry contains a bunch of different things.

HOT, HOT, HOT! and DRY, here.  Although not quite as hot as some other nearby places.  We need disparately something to break this persistent high pressure dome that is sitting over the middle part of the country.

I've been experimenting with alcohol inks.

Here's a snap of a couple colors.  There's a slew of differ colors available.  You might look a a bottle and say, "Gee, only .5 fluid ounce?"  Ha, ha, these are INTENSE inks, and a little, very little, goes a loooong way!

The above pic shows using common Q-Tips to apply the ink, daubing it on.  The colors are sailboat blue and denim.  Guess what?  I can reactivate the ink on the Q-tips with either Adirondak's Alcohol

Blending Solution, or 91% Isopropyl Alcohol.  You can use regular 70% Rubbing Alcohol, but the 91% is much better.

A pic of the brush used to make drk clouds on a piece called "Witchy Moon."  20/0 is close to the finest you can get. There are finer ones available.

Here's another example:

The three tiny dots of black on the upper left are supposed to simulate birds.  Not very great art!

So what's the material is the ink applied?  Faux bone.  A bit less than 7/8 inch in diameter, 1/8 inch thick.  The finding at the top is 20 gauge copper, patinated with Patina Gel (liver of sulfur) from Cool Tools. This is good stuff.  Recommend it highly.

Made the wrapped loops with Wubbers new looping plier.  Works quite well.  The non-looped end of the wire was screwed into a hole drilled into the faux bone.  If you do something like this, remember to drill the hole prior to shaping the edges.  I used a tiny setting bur to make a little divot for starting the drill.  Otherwise the regular twist drill bit will skate around on the curved edge.  I also use a flex shaft in a drill press and a bit just slightly smaller than normal No. 67 one would use for 20 gauge wire.

After drilling all the holes, the pieces were filed, rounding the edges, with No. 00 and No. 1 half round Hablis files.  Then sanded with the usual schedule of sandpaper  grits, 320, 400, 600.  Wet, always wet sandpaper.  To facilitate sanding the flat front and back of the pieces, I place tabs of tape on one side of a piece to grip it better, and the sandpaper grit side up on a small piece of plexi-glass.  The wet paper will stick to the plastic.  Saves sanding  the fingers. Ouch!

Also, made a small improvement on the bench pin by putting a small bevel on the front edge and corners.

Back first part of September.  Thanks for stopping by!

Apologies

Sorry, folks I accidentally deleted the last post.  My bad.  Anyway, thanks to John de Rosier, and to Sarah (Saturday Sequins) for your kind thoughts.

Be back around the first of August.

More Cold Connecting

These little gems, said fallaciously, are reconstituted turquoise.  Bah!  No more turquoise than I am.  I'm sure these beads are dyed howlite. I bought them sometime back to use in an Autumn theme necklace.  That didn't happen, got shelved for whatever reason. Going through some bead boxes and re-discovering them, decided to use them someway, somehow, and cold connecting to metal was a thought, so in the pic below, you see what happened.  Well, not too bad. I've seen worse.

The micro bolts haven't been swan off.  Leaving them on makes a prop an gives a better picture, I think.  

Had to redrill the holes and used a diamond coated twist drill bit for that.  The material isn't very hard,  and was able to drill without a water bath.   Go slow and don't overheat drill or the material.  Must have been ix or seven workers in the bead factory drilling holes as they were not consistent from bead to bead.  Typical of the beads you get from the Far East.  The beads are also inconsistent in size and shape.  But that's o.k. in some applications.  

Nuts, now I have to make jump rings.  Not one of my favorite things to do.