Besides finishing the little books the past few weeks, I have not done any other metal work not even planning the next project.
That changed late Friday night, while I was trying to fall asleep! I thought I would do another cuff but then I thought, I really should be working on a vessel.
Why dragon scales? Hey, why not! It gets me doing chasing on a vessel and even though I will do some "deep" chasing to get the scales to layered; it should not be too difficult.
Saturday morning I set out to make a template for the beakers I had spun (thank you Nechamkin Silver Studio!). I have 4 each of copper, red brass and silver; thus making a template and the time it took, will save me time for the various designs. The beakers are 3.5" tall, 2" diameter at the bottom and 3" diameter at the top. The template needs to be a truncated cone which is also called a FRUSTRUM.
That is an odd word, which you might think is a portmanteau of FRUSTRATION and Uhhhh.....
How do I make one? Google it; there are lots of various calculations but it really is just geometry; there are even online calculators that will it for you.
For me, I used my CAD program. This took an hour or so only because I have not used it at least a year. After saving the file, I then imported the saved template layout into Adobe Illustrator. I then drew 4 scales of varying heights and widths which I then cloned for each row. Remember, the scales on a dragon get smaller the closer you get to its tail!
I have printed the design out and verified that it fits the beaker. Over the next few weeks I will anneal a copper beaker, fill it with pitch, transfer the design and chase it.
Enjoy these pictures
That changed late Friday night, while I was trying to fall asleep! I thought I would do another cuff but then I thought, I really should be working on a vessel.
Why dragon scales? Hey, why not! It gets me doing chasing on a vessel and even though I will do some "deep" chasing to get the scales to layered; it should not be too difficult.
Saturday morning I set out to make a template for the beakers I had spun (thank you Nechamkin Silver Studio!). I have 4 each of copper, red brass and silver; thus making a template and the time it took, will save me time for the various designs. The beakers are 3.5" tall, 2" diameter at the bottom and 3" diameter at the top. The template needs to be a truncated cone which is also called a FRUSTRUM.
That is an odd word, which you might think is a portmanteau of FRUSTRATION and Uhhhh.....
How do I make one? Google it; there are lots of various calculations but it really is just geometry; there are even online calculators that will it for you.
For me, I used my CAD program. This took an hour or so only because I have not used it at least a year. After saving the file, I then imported the saved template layout into Adobe Illustrator. I then drew 4 scales of varying heights and widths which I then cloned for each row. Remember, the scales on a dragon get smaller the closer you get to its tail!
I have printed the design out and verified that it fits the beaker. Over the next few weeks I will anneal a copper beaker, fill it with pitch, transfer the design and chase it.
Enjoy these pictures
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