Sisyphus shops at Target?

Sisyphus must have been shopping Sunday, leaving his boulder parked in the Target lot.  Alas, the guys don't posses the strength of the Greek gods required to move it, but they gave it a valiant effort anyway.

In other news, I've been experimenting again, this time with  electro-etching, which is using electricity to move metal ions from one electrode to another.  If you use something to mask part of the donor electrode surface, it is possible to etch a pattern in the metal.  I believe print-makers sometimes use this technique to create metal plates for a printing press.  Electroetching can also be used to make printed circuit boards as an alternative to the more traditional chemical (Ferric Chloride) etch method.  In my case, I am interested in trying this out to to create patterned metal for jewelry components.

A really great gentleman I know from work is an electronics whiz and is quite an experimentalist himself. I should mention that he built his very own pipe organ, BY HAND, every single metal and wooden piece he carefully designed, fabricated and assembled in his workshop.  So I was thrilled when he agreed to help me put together a "proof of concept" experiment to try electro-etching at home.  This is him using a portable, butane fueled, soldering iron to make the connections to his flea market sourced power source.

While he was working on the power source, I was prepping the etch bath and copper blank.

I had a few pieces of flat  copper sheet shapes left over from the patina experiment (Laura was kind enough to leave a few pieces for me to play with).  I measured the thickness as 1mm, which equates to 18 gauge sheet metal.  The piece I wanted to etch was then scrubbed with a green sponge scrubbie and soaked in a hot vineagar and salt solution for about 10 minutes.  After carefully drying and being sure not to get any skin oil on the piece I applied a couple of press and stick vinyl stencils to the copper as a mask.

There are many and arguably better ways to apply a pattern mask for this type of application, however I already had these on hand and haven't found a good use for them for at least a year now, they just sit on my desk taunting my muse with the smell of unused potential.

The etch bath was simply a salt saturated vinegar solution.  This is not the best recommended solution, but this was just proof of concept and again, I had the ingredients on hand (are you sensing a theme yet?, it's "what I had on hand")

  and now the fun begins, yippee!  We connected the positive side of the power supply DC output to the "donor" piece of pattern masked copper (the crescent shaped piece in the container photo above).  The other, negative, side of the power supply was connected to a scrap piece of stainless steel (the thing that looks like a small ladder in the container photo below).

 We also put Andy's fabulous vintage ammeter in the circuit to measure how much current the circuit was producing, just about 2amps.  By adjusting the power supply voltage output, we could get it to about 1amp, but not much lower.

 

and now the magic begins, there was immediate evidence of electro-etching as the donor piece fizzed away and greenish goo started to collect on the recipient piece (the stainless steel piece connected to the negative side).

we left it going for about 45 minutes or so, then pulled the plug.  Definitely a successful proof of concept.  It didn't produce a deep etch, or "bite", however it clearly worked.  One of the stencils came loose about halfway, so only one pattern is apparent.

A very promising technique.  Next time I will use a copper sulfate solution and take better notes about amperage and time to try to dial in an optimal set up.

New stuff

An eclectic variety of stuff I have just completed for custom orders and some other new stuff.

Woo Hoo! First actual sale through the new store site to a wonderful lady who used to work with me at ALZA. 

another friend from work wanted a long, fun pair of earrings

and then a dear friend commissioned a "Tree of Life"

Spring with just flower buds and blossoms
Summer in full bloom and just starting to fruit green apples
Fall with ripe red apple

Winter with bare branches

I had a lot of fun making this and added in a tiny nest and robin just for kicks.

 

 I've also been messing around with making fish.  It took me a few tries to get the fin placement worked out and I am pretty happy with these last 3.

finally, another custom order for a friend, it's a beach theme bracelet with all handmade beads and silver links

 thank you for looking :)

Bodega Bay - Doran Park

It was another great day in paradise.  After a leisurely drive through Cotati, Sebastapol and Petaluma we stopped at wonderful beach on Bodega Bay, Doran Park.

No suits, so Aidan made do with his skivvies, he really didn't seem to care a whit!

lots of running to and fro, with short breaks to create a sand fort (you know, most people build sand castles, but with Grandpa it's sand forts).

another encounter with alien aquatic life (actually, a small horseshoe crab)

 shoring up the fort (and yes, pun intended, I couldn't resist)

yup, it's a bit cold

the boy is looking to start a new trend, "Ocean Yoga", I think it's going to be a big hit!

Family Fun Day

On Saturday we went to my company's annual Family Fun Day at Marine World.  We had a great time, played hard, saw some cool animals, got wet, rode the roller coaster, ate too much junk food and didn't leave until everyone was really ready to go.

Aidan's favorite food, POPCORN, he actually ate almost all of that giant bag by himself

offering his fish to the dolphin, who seemed pretty interested in both Aidan and the fish

Grandpa helping them see eye to eye

time to get wet!

we all enjoyed a relaxing trip through the Butterfly House

and lastly, Grandpa teaching his little helper how to shuck corn (Aidan loves corn in all it's forms)

Took the plunge

Well, I finally took the plunge and opened a shop on the Handmade Artists site.  My little shop is named Amorphous Designs and so far features 5 pairs of handmade earrings. 

I plan to list several more earrings over the next week or so.  I'm trying to stretch out the listings as new listings hit the front page of the site, and get more views that way.

Here is what is currently listed:

the photography part is still pretty challenging and I need to spice up the descriptions more. 

So far, I'm really liking the Handmade Artist venue, unlike Etsy, this site ONLY has handmade and not importers and resellers masquerading as handmade or "collectives", which is Etsy speak for big businesses.    The people who run the site are very friendly and make a real effort to welcome newcomers and help them promote their stuff. So, stop on by and check out all the cool stuff made by creative, crafty people all over the world.  Oh yeah, and check out my shop too while you're there.

Making Friends with Anemone

An absolutely perfect day to visit Moss Beach tide pools, aka the Fitzgerald Marine Preserve.

Although it was very windy and quite cold when we arrived at 8am, it warmed up a bit in the bright sun. 
Our normally intrepid little explorer was a bit daunted by the cold and mostly watched from the beach, although even he could not entirely resist the lure of the exposed rocks and critters.

a meeting of the limpets

somethings fishy in this pool

I wonder what critters that make these kinds of marks in the rocks

very interesting pattern on the underside of a limpet shell

sea snails

oh how I love thee Wikipedia! It took <1 minute to identify this creature, the Acanthadoris lutea (aka "Orange-peel doris"), lounging about among the spiny sea urchins

cool Chiton (aka "sea cradle")

and finally, is it a friend? No, it's anemone!

 but we're going to make friends with it

Patina Party

Last weekend I invited a wonderful lady and jewelry artist over for a "Patina Play Day" .  Laura Bracken has been making beautiful jewelry for the last 15 years, really great stuff, check it out at http://www.brackendesigns.com/servlet/StoreFront.

I was delighted when she accepted my invitation to try out some different "recipes" for creating a patina on metal. Patina is just a fancy name for tarnish and oxidation.  It will happen naturally on metals as they are exposed to oxygen in the air, a common example is the Statue of Liberty that has the classic green copper/bronze patina.  Many people who work with metals prefer to speed up the process and by using different combinations of chemicals, heat and time can create varied and really beautiful finishes.

Sulfurated Potash (mostly potassium sulfide), commonly called Liver of Sulfur (LOS) is used by many jewelry makers as it is readily available, simple to use, fast and produces a nice brown to black patina on copper containing metals such as sterling silver, bronze and brass.  There are many additions and variations to the simple LOS bath that I found searching the Internet and many of the variants use common household chemicals.  Additionally, both Laura and I independently came across this collection of chemical recipes for patinas on the The Science Company website. We narrowed the options down to a few recipes we could do at home with reasonable safety. 

We tried out 3 variations on the LOS recipes and a couple of Science Company chemical recipes. Details and more pictures can be found on Laura's blog.

On most of the flat pieces we also made marks with a black Sharpie to test it's ability to act as a resist to create a pattern in the patina.


1. Dilute LOS gel in hot water with a shot of vinegar: 

 

observation: seemed to punch up the red/purple/blues

2. dilute LOS gel in hot water with a shot of ammonia:

 observation: seemed to punch up the blue/greens

3. dilute LOS get substituting hot coffee for the hot water:

observation: we both liked the warm brown tone this produced.

Then we moved our operation out to the garage for the more laboratory type recipes.

don't panic, actually these chemicals are pretty safe, but they all had lots of CYA verbiage on the website and containers, so we made sure we were adequately prepared.  Also, we were heating these up and didn't want to breathe any powders or fumes.


4. LOS patina, followed by dips in Ferric Nitrate and Cupric Nitrate:

observation: somewhat disappointing for round one, but further research makes me think this would work better by heating the piece then brushing or spraying and allowing the patina to form on the surface, built up in layers.

5. Ammonia fume (hanging the metal piece over ammonia solution in a sealed container:

observation: the first round was a major disappointment, we did get a nice yellowish green on the bronze wire in the first 15 minutes, which I quite like and may try to duplicate later.

6. Round 2 with Ammonia fumes, this time I bathed the pieces in vinegar and sprinkled salt on one side:

observation: I could see the reaction starting in 15 minutes, but it took at least an hour to get the nice blues.  The above pictures are after sealing the pieces with Renaissance wax, which did remove a little and dull the colors slightly, but I think is necessary for long term preservation.  Also, I think it might be better to try to dry the pieces as much as possible before starting the fuming.



Lessons learned:

• LOS variants are easy and safe, I will probably stick to them for the majority of my work
• Ammonia fume produces a really nice yellowish green on the bronze wire in the beginning stages, I might try this if I make another wire tree.
• The recipes that produce the thicker green/blue patinas worked much better on the flat copper pieces than the round bronze wire.  I'm not sure if that is due to the layers not adhering as well to the round surface or the lower copper content of bronze vs pure copper.
• The Ammonia Chloride, Ferric Nitrate, Cupric Nitrate recipes would probably work much better with a micro-torch and spray bottle technique.
• I want to play with Laura again, she is fun, knowledgeable and really easy to talk with.