calvin's project - St. Pat's School in Tacoma

This was part of my nephew's eagle scout project.  He refurbished the outdoor recreation space at St. Pat's school in Tacoma.  We were supposed to paint a triangle, circle and a square as targets to kick balls at.  I thought is would be better this way.

Flame Job Wheelbarrow

Yep.

Full Custom Wheelbarrow

First Friday Artwalk show at the 420 Gallery - Downtown Ellensburg Wa

I'm lucky enough to have been invited to show some of my work this February at the 420 Gallery in Ellensburg.

Here are some pictures of me getting set-up.

 

 

This should be fun!

Fire Agate Pendant with Chased Setting

Fire Agate Pendant with Chased Setting

Front View

Back View

I bought this exceedingly good Fire Agate on ebay:

That is an actual picture I took.... wild stone.  I probably should have cleaned the stone first, those specks aren't chips but lint.

So I set about trying to figure out what to do with an abnormally shaped stone with just strong uhmm...  power(?).

I decided to make a pendant with citrines, to complement the stone, and attempt to re-create the stone in sterling on the back of the setting.

So, first some chasing:

That seems about right.

Now a setting:

Little More Better

The chasing is all the way through the metal, so it shows from the inside.  I had to figure out how to keep the base fairly level and still have a lot of depth on the outside.

Now add (set) some citrines:

This was a super fun and fairly successful project.  It probably took about 30 hours, believe it or not.

A few more photos:

my wife goofing off at the art show

centaur midwife

Awesome.

Lucky the Dog - Enamel -refridgerator magnet

This one is me learning to do Champleve enamel.  This is a drawing of the Fisher Price Dog.  His name was originally Fido but since everyone kept calling him Lucky, FP eventually changed his name to Lucky.  I have a huge collection of the Fisher Price Little People and Lucky has always been my favorite.  Mainly because he could ride a motorcycle.  When I was kid I always had him drive the camper with the mom and dad as passengers.   I guess because I thought it was funny.

Anyway, this looks like a painting, but it is kiln fired vitreous enamel on copper.

Red Stones Ring

 

A Bouquet of Red Stones

This is a ring I made for my wife.  The three stones are a rectangular cushion cut Idaho Garnet, a round faceted Montana Sapphire and a cabochon of rubellite.

The stones wouldn't fit on the band, so I decided they didn't have to.  Also I really like things that aren't symmetrical.  But it is really hard to get that right.  The human mind prefers symmetry since nature seems to prefer it.

Here are some pictures of the construction and other views:

Sterling and Chatoyant Sapphire Ring

This is a strange and yet lovely stone.  It is beautiful and has a property called chatoyancy.

This is the construction stage of this, and a few other, rings.

Fire Agate and Sterling Ring

This is a fairly simple sterling Ring.

It is a fire agate from Slaughter Mountain.  

I kind of like the offset, and the band is doubled, but with two different gauges.
There seems to be something about setting stones to sort of look like eyes.  Sort of how a car's headlights look like eyes.  Something subconscious.

I didn't get any construction pictures, other than these when I was goofing off.

 

This close up gives the basic construction:

more pictures including the back:

This is more work and effort than usually go into a sterling ring.  The shank disappears into the back and there is an exposed ring around the outside.

Forged Gold Ring - Reticulated

This is really the first ring I have ever made - for me.

It was a long, laborious and complicated process:

Gold is super expensive.  It always has been, but somehow I decided to become a jeweler at a point that coincided with the 400 year high (adjusted for inflation) price of gold.   Bummer.

But if you have enough patience and learn how to look and judge, you can get gold really cheaply:

This is a clearly labeled 14k gold chain that I bought at a yard sale for a dollar.  The people had a big fancy house and were selling everything to move to a retirement condo in Arizona.  So, I didn't feel too bad.  This was about $450 at melt value that day.

So, the really hard part is that I can't bring myself to melt good stuff.  You can't un-stir the coffee so to speak.  I always think of the craftsman who made it.  I did not melt that chain.

But anything broken, or just of awful design.....gets the torch.

For example:

Extra Special Friend.   Hmm.... who would I give this to?  Really kinda creepy.

But it is marked 14k.  One other important thing, if you melt the clasps, there is a steel spring inside.  Once the gold has melted, you can just push it out of the puddle with tweezers.  Steel has a higher melting point than gold.

The necklace was marked 585 (the percentage of gold in 14k alloy) and 14k.



Here is me figuring out the math to determine what karat the end product will be.  

One other hard part is that sometimes, pretty rare with gold more common with silver, the stuff is either not what it is marked, or is not marked at all.