Category: Patina

The Blood Orange Dish - AYoR #5

5/26/2014

The fifth project is now done and I am still on track with one project per month but this one was close.

My long term goal is to make vessels with Chasing & Repousse and this was my second project that falls under this category during my AYoR. The first project, the tool canister, in this series was the first chasing on a 3-D form I had done.

This project started with a different name which was The Deco Dish but after the patina was applied, the different chased sections with the red just yelled BLOOD ORANGE.

This project also took several months complete and had many gaps in time due to other projects and workshop sneaking in.

Project Name: The Blood Orange Dish.
Material: Copper Sheet, Sterling Silver Rim with a Sculpt Nouveau Brown Solvent Dye under coat and the Red Dye-Oxide overcoat.

Major Points:
The dish was sunk by me back in December of 2013. The chasing & repousse was done in January and February of 2014, the rim and patina applied in May 2014. Yes a project can take months!

Related Posts: Tray Good, Counting and Planishing, New Vessel Planished, Deco Bowl, Deco Dish - Chasing Done, Rim, The Patina Predicament

Lessons Learned:
Soldering the rim - make sure the rim is large enough in diameter to be centered on the edge of the dish, you can make it smaller but not bigger.
Patina - If working with a new patina, don't learn how to "make it" just before you want to apply it. Set aside several weekends to practice the technique.

The Patina Predicament

5/26/2014

Having put the rim on the Deco Dish yesterday; today I set myself the goal of applying a patina.

I love David Huang's burgundy red/brown and he has explained how he does it and has said it can be hard to learn and quite finicky.

And after 3 hours of working with scrap copper, I got a SPOT of it on one test piece and decided that I would be spending all day just learning how to do it and still not get it correct on the dish (see image below).

I really want to master this patina but I decided that this patina needs more practice time and today was not going to be that day so I moved on to some other patinas I was considering.

I decided to try a few other red or red/browns.. and came to like the red oxide with a solvent dye brown under coat. Open/Click the images to see a bigger version and sorry about the focus I realized afterwards my camera is acting up.

sculpt nouveau - universal "rust"

sculpt nouveau - universal burgundy sprayed on. Half coated

sculpt nouveau - red oxide brushed on. Half coated

sculpt nouveau - brown solvent dye brushed on and red oxide brushed on top of that. Half coated

sculpt nouveau - brown solvent dye under a red oxide - spray on, no coating

Here is the dish with the patina after it is applied

And after applying the Clear Guard Spray.
oh, the dish has spoken to me and it does not like the name Deco Dish so the name is being changed.

Deco Dish - Chasing Done

3/23/2014

2 Comments

I know I called this the Deco bowl but I have settled on the title of Deco Dish - I like alliteration.

This week the chasing was finished and while I was putting the finishing touches on the dish I started to think about how I wanted to finish the dish.

Having taken a class with David Huang, I thought that putting a silver wire rim on the dish would take it to the next level.

BUT before I do that I should determine what the patina should be. In this case I do not think LOS will be enough, I want something that POPs. I have pondered a verdigris patina (i.e. Tiffany green as it is sometimes called) but if you don't know what that is, just look at the patina on the Statue of Liberty - that's the color we are talking about.

I like the green but the more I thought about it, I did not think it would be dramatic enough. Again from the workshop from David he discussed some of his patina's. And when I saw this picture, I knew it has to be THAT red.

[David was kind enough to let me take many pictures of his vessels. If you use the link above, you will see all the pictures I took]

I am now working on sample pieces of copper to learn how to get the red. Soon the Deco dish will be done and then I will have a few more process pictures to show you.

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The Star & Comet Bowl

7/29/2012

It truly was patina day. It has taken all day to do this. It was slow and there was quite a bit of waiting in between the layering of the colors, pondering, letting it dry and such. And I have one step left - I have to seal it which will not only protect the applied patina but it will darken the colors just a bit.

I will start you off with the process pictures and the patina pictures.

The Calamari Cuff is DONE

3/25/2012

I am done with the cuff, not *done* but DONE as in completed.

Last Sunday, I trimmed the corners, so the cuff would be easier to put on, and then soldered on the end bars. Then it was finishing the filing and sanding. Afterwards I polished it and applied a liver of sulfur patina. I was not happy with the colors I was getting, it was too gray, so I took the cuff and put it into the pickle to remove some of the patina and reapplied it, I did get some blues but was still not happy so I waited until this weekend to remove it reapply again - that would be application number three.

On Friday, since I was off from work (YEA, THREE DAY WEEKEND) I removed the patina, again, and then prepared my patina and very carefully applied it. Friday night I left the cuff in very cold water to neutralize and to arrest the reaction.

Saturday I had my second class in black smithing, we made a stake turner, and so I had to wait until I returned home to remove the patina from the squid body and tentacles. I used a small polishing wheel in a hand tool and very carefully buffed off the patina. I had a couple of slips and thus removed some patina on the back ground - oops.

There were too many of these dings for me so I went back down stairs, mixed up some more patina and did another application (number 4) but this time I did not remove what I already had. As a result, yes the squid got covered again, but the background went even more blue! And I was happy again. This time when I removed the patina from the squid I used the knife edged polishing disk and used my hand to protect the background from getting dinged.

I now have to take some good pictures. I want to photo stitch them together so you can see all of it at once. But in the mean time, here are some for you to doooooolllllllll over.

My view of LOS on Silver has changed.

11/21/2010

Yesterday, I made a "scrunched fabric" cuff bracelet out of silver. The body of the cuff is made from fine silver and the frame is sterling.

Using fine silver allow the folds to happen without the work hardening and potential cracking to occur. The sterling silver frame adds some rigidity - you could use fine silver too but to prevent the cuff from bending out of shape too easily, so using sterling and its work hardening propensity, keeps the cuff in shape.

I was going to allow the white tarnish from heating and pickling to stay in the folds to give these deeper spots a matt look; and then using a buffing cloth, I was going to polish the frame and hight spots on the fold.

Part of the reason behind this matt/shiny look was that I don't like the 'normal' gray patina look which you get with LOS on silver. Having used LOS on copper, I love the various colors that can be obtained yet on silver you only see gray to black tones.

There has to be something else that can be done!

Doing some reading from my patina book; I came across a recipe that indicated that you can get golds, pink/purples, and blues on silver just like i do on copper. Coooool but how hard was it going to be?

To get this effect, the first thing I had to do was scrub the cuff and remove all the oxides and finger oils. Then set up the LOS bath with the dipping station, running water, steel wool, gloves and safety glasses. I also turned on all the lights so I could see the patina develop.

I went at it very slowly and wow, what amazing results. My view of LOS on silver has just changed. After using the LOS, I went back with my steel wool and rubbed the patina off the frame and the high spots on the folds since wearing the bracelet over the time would wear away the patina on these spots. Secondly doing this allows the white of the silver to shine through and add a great contrast to the colors from the patina

The first picture below is before LOS and the second is after the patina process is over.

And I love my bracelet, it is really, really, really amazing. I have to finish up one more as I promised it to Elisa of Scotland.

Back to the Stake... and a prototype

11/14/2010

A few weeks ago I was demoing sinking on a scrap piece of copper that was square. I ended up with what I thought was a pretty nice little dish.

Today I got back to that design and I made my prototype, I made the dish, planished it, and then added a ring base. I had to go back a planish again since the soldering annealed the piece again (note to self: invent way to solder a base onto a vessel and NOT have the piece get annealed).

My solder job was only so-so, I was afraid of too much solder and ended up not using enough and now I have some gaps. I have to work on this more but for my sample I am ok with there being some gaps in the solder joint between the ring and the bowl.

After a good cleaning I added a patina.

Now I have to make a production piece out of silver and copper and in many sizes...I am calling it 'Dish-J'

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