Repair Days

Note: This is the last of my catch up posts. It will make better since if you start with the once called SIMS and work your way back up to this one.

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Hooray! Repair Days 2008! Time to travel 11 to 12 hours in a van to volunteer our time, energy, and skills to repair other people's metal items for 2 days, see an exhibition in the "National Ornimental Metal Musium", get an apron, maybe a new catalogue, spend some money, and then drive the 11 to 12 hour back! Hooray! Repair Days 2008!

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Look it's a portable blacksmith shop! Complete with coal forge, vice, anvil, and other various hammers and tongs.

This is a picture of Bonnie taking a picture of the way cool stair case to nowhere. I didn't even notice that Bonnie was in the picture until later.

Spencer is attempting to fix a huge silver plated punch bowl.
Kylee spent a good 30 minutes to an hour filing a piece of brass down to the right size, just to be told to use steel instead. She was trying to fix an old fashioned door bell. This is when Elloitt was teaching Bonnie and I how to lead solder. We had found this mirrored tray with feet. Well the mirror had been replaced and in the process of replacing the mirror they had bent and broken most of the feet.
Since the tray was only silver plated, we had to use lead solder. Lead solder melts at a much lower temperature than silver solder (which is what I'm used to). But lead soldering was super easy to do and it was kinda fun!
There was an auction that Eric and Elloitt both donated pieces too. Eric's "Little Apple Express" went for around $350-$375 somewhere around there. Elloitt's "Copper bowl" went for something like $600. It was really cool. They also had a raffel. I won twice! Got a hand grinder, and a drill set. Good thing Todd gave me a drill for Christmas 2 years ago! We came back Sunday afternoon/night, rolled into town about 11pm. Whew! I need a nap!

Elizabeth Brim

Stories through pictures! This is 1 of the 4 drawer pulls that I made as my first ever blacksmithing project. Unfortunately in this picture the pull isn't actually finished. I just took it home to make sure it would fit. The next day I sand blasted it, put a black patina on it, and put two coats of butcher's wax on it to keep it from rusting. So the finished piece is actually a shiny black color.

John made a snake hook for his first project, and then brought his snake in to show us that it worked. As you can see it does work and Six (the snake) is actually quite fond of it. This is Eric's reaction to Six. Ha Ha he's not to fond of snakes!
This is Elizabeth Brim. She came as our visiting artist for this semester. She makes these amazing pieces out of iron; flowers, high heels, hats, camisoles, tutus, even iron pillows!
Oxi-acetylene welding!
Leaf making demo!
To make the iron pillows she would weld two flat piece of sheet steel together, attach a tube, heat the whole thing up, and then blow compressed air into it. This process it just a little dangerous (ok maybe it's a lot dangerous) because sometimes the weld seam will pop and then it sounds like a bomb goes off and hot steam can come up and burn you. This is what that looks like. Oops! (Ha! I didn't scream, but someone else did!)
This is the blown up piece after we let it cool off.
Then Eric had to inflate a rocket that was going to be his and Elizabeth's auction piece at Repair Days. This one didn't blow up.
This is the "Little Apple Express" all finished. (Eric didn't have a camera so I have lots of pictures of this thing. Need to make him a CD.)

The next morning after Elizabeth's demo we all loaded up and headed to Memphis, TN for Repair Days. That's in the next post.

SIMS, September 26 & 27, 2008

Ok, so this is the first in a series of me catching up. The last weekend in September I went to Carbondale, IL to attend the Southern Illinois Metalsmithing Conference (SIMS). This year they had three blacksmiths.

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This is Michael Bondi, he's holding up a piece on Aluminum that he forged into this sculptural piece. The piece he started out with was about 1 inch round bar stock about 6 inches in length. By the time he was finished it was about 3 feet long! This is just a way awesome picture of the scale flying off a hot piece of iron when the power hammer hits the metal!
This is Ries Niemi. Yes, he is wearing a utility kilt. Eric (my teacher) told me he watched Niemi demo in a tuxedo once. So that should give you a glimpse into this guys character. This is John Medwedeff. Better known as "Duff" his demo was on scroll making, he also gave a talk about his business. He's done several public commissions. The last picture is on one of his pieces. It's a pretty good sized fountain. The picture isn't the best, because it was dark and I didn't have a tripod to set my camera on so it was really hard to get a clear picture.
Anyway, it was a good trip! Had lots of fun, learned lots of cool stuff. Time to do the next catch up post!