Finished Coronet

Well my investiture is now over, and I can get around to updating my blog. The making of the coronet hit a couple of bumps which took a bit to overcome. Initially I cut all the pieces out of the brass. That was about as far as I could go by myself. I turned to Ygraine of Kellswood and Anton LaFlamme de Saint Aubin for help. Most of the rest of the work was completed by them, and I was given pictures of it as them moved through the steps of assembly. Next they joined the front piece to the back. Ygraine and I had tried to blacken the back piece, but unfortunately the black finish was not stable, and rubbed off easily. The resultant flat piece didn't look anything like I was expecting. At this point I was really getting worried that it was never going to be done on time, and I was really worried about what it was going to look like in the end. The next report I got on the progress of the coronet had it now connected to become a circle. They had put a small tub of brass along the top and bottom edges to hold the two halves together. I was beginning to be a little more hopeful about it at this point. At least it looked like a coronet now. There was still the area between the original panels that needed something to cover the joints, and obviously the color was not quite what we were hoping for. The next picture I saw of it showed it with the final piece of tube added across the joints and the pins on the top to hold the beads. It then went off with Anton to be polished. the next time I saw it, Ygraine and I put the smokey quartz beads on the top and it was as ready as it was going to be for the investiture. As you can see the coronet really came out looking quite good in the end. We may go back and try to get some sort of blackening in the background still. The beads are not put on permanently yet, but I don't expect that part to be too hard. Anton thinks we will have an easier time working on the second coronet. I only need one for now, but eventually the Barony will have both a baron and baroness and will need both coronets. The part that really surprised me is how comfortable the coronet is. I wore it all day in the hot sun and never got a headache, though I did get quite a sunburn on the part in my hair. I will have to remember to put sunblock on it in the future. I would never had gotten this far without Anton and Ygraine helping me, and I owe them a real dept of gratitude.

Test of scroll saw

I have not done any work on the coronet since before Christmas. Since I am beginning to get worried about finishing them before June, I thought it was about time I got back to work. My eldest son got a scroll saw for his birthday last November. I decided I would try to do the cut out work on it to try and speed up the metal work. Now I have never used a scroll saw, so I was a little "out to sea" when it came to what kind of blades I needed or how this would work. Anyway, I found some information on line on the Olsen saw blade site that seemed to imply it would not be a problem to use the scroll saw on non-ferrous metal. I ordered a set of blades (size 2/0 and 2). I got blades without pegs because they came much smaller and I was worried about the tiny points in my pattern. My son then told me his saw only took blades that had a pin. ok, I ordered another set with pins. They were much bigger, and I was unsure about whether I would be able to make the sharper corners. since he owned the saw, I thought I would invite him along for the trial run. As we were looking through the instruction manual, I noticed it said this brand of saw could be used with blades that had pins, but also blades without them. Yay! Now I could use the much smaller blades.

I started by covering the sheet of 22 gauge brass with masking tape and drawing the pattern on that. Then I had to drill some holes in the metal to get access for the blade in the closed patterns. The center of the pattern had a small hole, and I thought I could drill that without making a starter hole and cutting around the hole. Well, as it turns out, I couldn't. The drill badly distorted the metal around the hole and left a couple large shards of metal sticking out. I tried to flatten out the distortion a bit with a hammer so it would not scratch the table of the scroll saw. You can see a couple of the hammer marks. I made the rest of the holes with a much smaller drill bit, and there was very little distortion, all of which was cut off. The top picture shows the cut out piece with the masking tape still attached. The lower picture has the tape removed. These have not been filed or sanded to remove the sharp edges yet. However, I am happy withe the way it came out. I did break 5 saw blades. According to one youtube video I was watching breaking lots of blades while cutting metal is inevitable so I am not going to worry about it. I do have to buy more blades though before I start on the big piece. this is only one repeat of the pattern. There are 6 on the final coronet. So 5 broken blades times 6 repeats. I could break as many as 30 blades if I stay like this. It is exciting to see it working out though.

I finished another day of working on the medallions for the coronets. Today I started putting the color on. Black for the whales and green for the leaves. The first picture is of the medallion with a coat of glass particles on it. there is white covering everything except the whale. In the second picture you can see the same medallion after it has been fired. If you look really closely you can see some spots of white that have bubbled up from underneath in the whale. that should get covered by subsequent layers of glass.

In the next two pictures you can see the green going into the leaves. At this point you are seeing the medallion after we had spent a fair amount of time with a tiny paint brush getting all the green out of the white. To get the glass onto the medallion I put a couple drops of water on the surface of the piece and then floated clumps of damp glass particles into the water. It spreads our quite nicely, but sometimes it slops over the walls of the wires. then the small amount of glass particles have to be removed. I have to go back and put one more layer of colored glass. Then we will grind the surface and put a couple layers of clear glass on top of the while thing. So far I am pleased with the way things are going.

enameling

A totally new project for me. You may be thinking that I am never going to finish any of the projects I already have going, but I assure you some of them may get done eventually. Anyway, our barony is going to have elections soon for a new baron and/or baroness. We have been working for the last 5 years without baronial coronets which can be passed down with the office. The current Baron and Baroness own their coronets. We needed to have a symbol of our barony which would outlast any specific officeholder. So I volunteered to make enameled medallions for the front of two coronets. I started working on them yesterday.

My laurel Ygraine, has been doing enamelling for quite a while now, and she does awesome work so I am leaning quite heavily on her tutelage. I spent about 4 hours working on the medallions yesterday which was just long enough to learn two things: 1. that I do not want to make a living making these things; 2. Ygraine has a great deal of patience. I suppose I also learned quite a bit about how to actually make a cloisonned piece of enameling.

We started by cleaning 3 small domed copper circles. then we applied some sticky stuff I cannot remember the name off to the back. After sifting some black powdered glass onto it, we turned them over and put some white on the front. The front did not need the sticky stuff since it was not going to be upside down. This is a picture of the copper discs with the powdered glass on them. They have not gone into the kiln yet. They only stay in the kiln for 2 minutes, during which time I was constantly keeping an eye on the temperature and adjusting the opening of the door to keep it steady.

This next picture shows the discs after they came out of the kiln. You can see the disc on the left is still hot. That gives it that brownish color. We let them cool down for a while. I don't quite remember how long, but then we get to talking anyway so it might have been a little longer than necessary. They were given 2 coats of white on the top.

Next I started to bend the little wire pieces which will keep the colors from mixing together on the final piece. Here is a picture of the disc after I have placed all the wires on it. There was probably about 1 and 1/2 hours between these two pictures. Bending all those little tiny leaves took quite a while. I believe I might have said some naughty words near the ends as yet another leave escaped from me to bounce around on the floor, or disappear in my lap. In the end I made 30 little tiny leaves. The heraldry of our barony is now visible on the front. A sperm whale surrounded by a laurel wreath. Oh yeah, that third copper disc we cleaned at the beginning was used at this point to press down on the top and make the wires of the whale conform to the shape of the dome.

Then I very carefully carried them back down stairs to put on one more coat of clear glass to hold all those little wires in place. I really breathed a sigh of relief (or releaf, ha ha) when they were all fastened down.

I am going to go back next week and start applying the colors. Eventually the wires will only be visible as tiny silver lines between the various colors. The whale will be black, the leaves green and the background white. I hope to get most of it done next week.