Death's-head moth and the Thylacine.

Yay! I'm back to working :D I really hope I won't have to get back to physio again, and won't have another such a loooong break in making stuff. This remains to be seen, but fingers crossed! (Or, as we say it: thumbs held ;P).
The bad news is, I still didn't manage to make two pendants I really wish to be able to finish, because I keep running in technical issues with them. I'm after two attempts, and had to scraped both. But third time's a charm, right? I also have to finish a hinge bracelet I hoped to have made by now, but I run in a problem with one hinge and have to figure out the best way to approach this. In the worst case scenario I'll just redo the hinge, so this shouldn't take much longer.

And now for the stuff I did finish:
Death's-head moth( Acherontia atropos) cuff:

Etched copper cuff featuring Acherontia atropos

 I really like that cuff! While I also (surprise, surprise!) really like the pictures I took of it (and for the most part, all the pictures I took during that photo shoot), it looks better in person. Apart from the moth and the scrolls, there are also mu customary crescent moons on either end of the cuff.

Continuing with Acherontia-theme, there are also two pairs of earrings:

Etched copper A. atropos earrings with silver details.

 This pair is really delicate by my standards: while they're quite long, being 5.1cm in total, the moths themselves are only 1.3cm long (counting the element attaching them to the chain) and have wingspan of 2.1cm. They're small. And were a bit of a challenge to cut out, I must say. Especially the bits close to antennae. And painting the patterns before etching was also a bit tricky, but they turned out pretty nice. The elements with the moons are about 0.9cm in diameter. Again, small, for me.
The chain and moons are sterling silver, as are ear wires.

Etched copper A.atropos earrings with an ear cuff.

 In these pair, the moths are slightly bigger: they're about the same length as previous ones, but their wingspan is about 2mm larger. They were much easier to cut out, mostly because their shape is much simpler.The ear cuff is 0.6cm wide, and it's engraved. I did the engraving with hand gravers, and, let me tell you, there was a lot of sanding afterwards to remove all those accidental nicks and scratches... Hand engraving is... tricky. And unfortunately, there are no courses anywhere in my area I could take to get better at it, which is frustrating.

As I already mentioned, I planned to make two pendants as well, but they proved trickier than I anticipated. I'm still determined to make them work, so hopefully at some point I'll actually manage to make them.
Moving on to Thylacine- theme, there's a cuff:

Thylacinus cynocephalus on an engraved copper cuff.

I love this one as well, even though I realised only when I was processing the photos, that I didn't give it the second front leg... Oh, well, it's still pretty as it is ;). There are, of course, crescent moons on the ends of the cuff.

Then there are two pairs of earrings:

Etched copper Thylacine earrings with sterling silver details and tiger eye cabochons.

And these look somewhat weird on those pictures... They're actually rather shiny in person... I did retake some of the picture today, so I'll see if I have any better ones. Thylacines are famous for how wide they could open their mouths (up to 80 degrees!) so it would be a shame if I didn't show them with open mouth on any of the pieces... That being said, I might have overdone it...

Here the stones are unakite, and the pictures even weirder.

I swear, these are shiny. Those pictures are weird. I'm actually wondering if I shouldn't try to profile the head of the Thylacine on the right hand side a bit better, but I'm not sure how to do this (I'm thinking about using graver for that) but I'm not certain I won't end up with a bungled earring I'll then have to etch another blank for... These are the first earrings with a stone set as a part of the ear wire (for the lack of better term), and I really like how those turned out(aside from that one issue). I'll probably make more in this style.
 And finally there are two pendants (there were supposed to be three, but I've ran into some issues with the last one. It's not scraped yet, because I think I may be able to salvage it. We'll see.)

Thylacine on an etched copper pendant with a hematite cabochon.

 I must say, this one is probably my favourite piece among all this lot.  It has two bails at the back, and if you look closely, you can actually see in this picture where the chain is coming from, so to speak. Originally, I wanted to attach the chain to the Thylacine's snout an tail, but these are so small I wasn't sure I wouldn't melt the chain while attempting to do that. I really love this little guy :)

Etched copper and silver thylacine pendant

 Another gaping tassie tiger. Tricky to photograph, as it's difficult to prop in such a way so it doesn't slip. To take this picture I had to actually trap the chain under the stone. But it worked! I had to make the upper part of the pendant twice, as at my first I actually melted the silver moon. Generally speaking, soldering silver to copper is tricky, at least for me. I either end up with melted silver, or, after pickling, find out that the metals didn't solder together. I have problems getting to the point where everything gets nicely together, and nothing melts.
But I'm carefully optimistic I'm on to something, because the second moon soldered perfectly at the first try. And that, by the way, gives me hope for those pendants I'm yet to make successfully.

So these are the new finished pieces, and I have several still at the WIP stages. I already uploaded both cuffs to my shop, ant the rest will follow shortly, once I finished processing the rest of the pictures.

Oh, and one more thing... I also ran into a weird problem, maybe someone will have some ideas what to do about it. I have huge difficulties with getting anything oxidised. Everything is as clean as humanly possible, and yet I can't get LOS to work. The metal either goes crappy brown colour and refuses to darken further, or it goes black, but then everything comes of, and then it gets to crappy brown colour. It's not as if I didn't oxidised anything before, and yet I've got no clue what's wrong. The only thing I found that works is getting gel on an old toothbrush, brushing it, undiluted directly onto metal, running the piece under hot water and brushing it with brass brush. This usually works, even though it doesn't make sense. It should be to concentrated and create nasty, thick black layer that flakes off. But it's the only way I can get anything oxidised lately. I would stick with it, but it's so wasteful! Anyone have any bright ideas on that? Any tips? I would love it if you shared your thoughts, because it's slowly driving me bonkers!

Have a great upcoming week!
Kasia

Drilling through titanium is not so scary, after all!

Remember I've got some titanium and was having loads of fun flame-colouring it, and a bit less fun wearing saw blades down like crazy? Well, I've finished one pendant (the other one is aaaalmost finished).
What I really feared was drilling holes for rivets. I ordered diamond drill bits to do the job, but was still quite apprehensive about the whole process. I even invented a very high-tech cooling set-up for drilling... namely: yoghurt container with thickly folded paper and enough water to keep the piece submerged. Oh and there was also plasticine layer to weight the paper down. High-tech, I tell you!
As it turned out, drilling was pretty easy. I fell in love with diamond drill bits, and would happily use them for anything, if only the weren't so expensive!
I also promptly broke one, but that wasn't titanium fault, it was all me.
Oh, I also bought rotary tool with flexishaft, and I absolutely love it! I makes drilling (and engraving) much easier!
The finished piece looks like this:

Copper and titanium wolf pendant

Placing the rivets was a little tricky, especially on the side with the pierced out moon. That's why the rivets are not evenly spaced.  I first drilled through copper alone, then taped both metals together, and drilled through titanium placing drill bit in holes in copper.

Back

The copper part is of course oxidised, as well as etched. The rivets are a bit chunky on the back of the pendant, because I decided to make balls at the ends of the wire, and them hammer them flat. That was less because of design choice, and more because I wanted to make my life easier, and have just one side of the rivet to worry about ;)

That photo captures colour better

It was a fun piece to make! I'm now (vaguely) planning to make some earrings out of leftover titanium, and maybe one more pendant(if there will be enough of the metal left for that). I also don't know what I did differently the second time I was sawing titanium, but I actually used up one less blade for a slightly bigger piece.
My thoughts on that metal so far: it gives interesting colour options, is very light, so it's great for earrings, and allows to make bigger pieces that will still be light, sawing it is a pain, as probably is forming it ( I didn't try that, but I'm guessing based on its hardness), drilling through it isn't a real challenge when you have diamond drill bits and go slow. You also can't solder it, so you can go creative with cold connections. Guessing by the drilling process, and the fact that the drill doesn't seem dulled or worn, you can probably engrave it with diamond engraving bits. That's one thing I'm going to try!

It's an interesting material to work with, and I'm going to experiment with it a bit more :)

Till the next time!
Kasia Follow my blog with Bloglovin

That weird salt water etching

Ah, salt water etching. A technique I use very often. Just to remind you (or introduce you to, if you've never heard of it) what it is: it's an etching technique, in which the traditional acids or mordants are replaced with salt water an weak electric current. The piece to be etched is submerged in over-saturated saline solution, and attached to positive charge. Scrap piece of metal is submerged as well, attached to negative charge. It's an electrolytic process.

Etching... see the bubbles? It's a negative terminal

 As with any etching, you need some kind of resist, and from what I read, finding one that works is trickier with this process than with traditional etching. Permanent markers, for example, are useless, as they wear off way to fast. I find nail varnish to be the best resist. Acrylic paint also works, but is more prone to coming off the etched piece. Nail varnish generally last throughout the whole process.

Lately, I've been working on bracelets. And I encountered problems I never had with this technique before. Depth of etching varied not only from piece to piece, but also within one piece alone. The texture of etched parts also varied. It's weird. And I don't get why is this happening. All pieces etched for the same amount of time, 3h. I always etch for this amount of time, as this gives (usually) a really nice, deep etch.

If I ever before had any problems, it was with too shallow etchingt, if I used solution so saturated with copper, that it wasn't as effective as before. But this is to be expected.

I, however, never had a piece that etched through. That is, until recently. I had to discard one project, because there were holes in some places. Again, the same sheet gauge, the same amount of time. Weird.

The first, slightly botched attempt at a cuff

So this was the first in the series of bracelets. Remember I was working on a wolf cuff? I didn't like the result, forgot about it for a while, and then decided to have a second go at it, with a bit different design. I would like this one if it wasn't for the wolf you see here, and another one closer to the end of the cuff.
Anyway, what I really do like about this cuff, is its texture. See here:

Texture of the first wolf cuff.

The texture of the etched parts is gorgeous. The etching is deep, texture is grainy, and just really nice. It looks like this on the whole cuff. This cuff etched for three hours, in freshly mixed saline solution.

Now, after seeing etching results, I decided to have another go, as I felt I can't sell this to anyone. So I made another wolf cuff.

The second wolf cuff, with better etched wolves

Here, I also wasn't 100% happy with the etching, but decided this one is good enough to put up for sale. I guess other people liked it better than me, as it's already sold. Anyway, I liked the image on this one, but the texture wasn't as nice. And uneven to boot. On one end it resembles the texture on the first cuff, on the other end, the etching is shallower, and the texture is... not as interesting.

Texture on the second cuff

This picture shows the texture around the middle of that cuff. You can really see the difference, but it still is somewhat similar to the first cuff. But near the end...

Texture on the second cuff, near one end

 The grain is sparser here, not to mention those... lines? grooves? I have no idea what caused this. As I mentioned, etching here is shallower, but this is not that weird, considering that it etched in already used solution. What is weird, however, is that the etching doesn't have uniform depth: it's deeper on one end than the other. It also etched for 3h.

The next cuff I made was the raven cuff.

Raven cuff

I'm awfully happy with etching on this one. However, that one is weirder that the last. It etched in fresh solution. For three hours, as is the case with all of them. And the etching is a lot shallower than on the first wolf cuff. And it also differs in depth on this one! I don't get it!
Look:

Texture on one end of raven cuff

Here, it's grainy, and of decent depth. Not as nice as on the first wolf cuff, but pretty nice. No grooves, lines, or any other weird stuff ( and yes, I know I use the word weird a lot in this post).
And the other end?

Why is this happening?!?

A lot shallower, not as grainy, but still uniform texture. If anyone have any idea as to why this may be occurring, I sure would like to know!

And that's not all. After the wolf cuff sold, I decided to make another wolf cuff, with different design of course. So I cut the strip out of the same copper sheet I used for all those bracelets, put it in solution, etched it for three hours, cleaned it... and almost had a fit. Why? Because of this:

A hole!!!

Holes! Holes in the metal! Ugh!

And not just one at that!

I didn't bother with cleaning it properly, there was no point. But, what is, again, weird here? Of course, it etched through only on one side! The other one looks like this:

The end without holes

It's etched to about the depth I was expecting, texture is bizarre, true, but overall it's what I thought I would see after removing the nail varnish. Well, that one went to a certain box, and waits there until I finally decide whether I want to try delft clay casting or not. It would be shame to waste all that copper, after all.

Oh, and I also had one more unpleasant surprise. Remember titanium pieces I'm working on? Well, I made copper parts, cut them, painted them, put them into etching... and one etched perfectly, and the other one etched through, and I had to start over. And they both were etching at the same time!
So frustrating!

As I mentioned, I have no idea why this started happening. It doesn't make much sense to me. The set up is the same. The salt I'm using is the same. The source of electricity didn't change, and nor did the voltage. It's just so weird. Anyone has any ideas?

Till the next time!
Kasia

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