A Faire Warning to Those Whom Might These Wordes Reade
Herein:
Any Who Shalle Forsake A Warning of Suche Plight, Ill
Tidings, and Harrowing LanguageFind They Might,
Speech of Suche Evile Utterance Herein May Lye,
After Being Well Inclined, Do You Foule Not Cry,
Claimest Thou Never More, Virtues’ Right,
Being of a Delicate Disposition, as You in This Light,
View These Villainous Passages Poorly Mined,
Rumpty-Tumpty-Something That Hast Rhymed.
Thou Hast Been Given Good Cause to Proceed Noe Further,
Ande Reade Thee Not Hence!
We have a job to do, in creating a pendant using only
“Period” methods.
For this practical application, we begin with our sheet
metal already milled. Why? Because we already milled the bronze, Silver, and
Copper, that’s why. It was covered in an earlier lesson. Keep up!
Design, and measurements should be steps one and two. Why?
You need to know what you are attempting, and how much material you will need. “Dost
thou even Jewel, Brother?”
First, the design work. What are you making? See it in your
mind, as you work the design as close to clarity as you can. The more you have
resolved the aspects of the final design, the fewer issues you will encounter
trying to bring the finished piece to fruition.
Today we will be doing a very simple pendant, with “Circle”
as the main theme, and detailed further by “Another Circle” on a “Disk”
(circle) with “Crescent” (circle, with circle excised) and “Crown” (pointy
topped circle)
The various steps in this process will be:
11)
Measured!
22)
Cut!
33)
Refined!
44)
Cleaned!
55)
Soldered!
66)
Cleaned MORE!
77)
Polished!
11) Measurements.
Simple idea…you need to know how
much material you will need. Are you making this for a shield? No. You are
making a pendant. And a relatively small one at that, say one and a half index
finger joints?
Not everyone, even in this modern
world uses the same measurement standards. Imperial? Metric?
Every crafter has had a favorite measurement
standard, but, if we were to be honest with ourselves in this modern world the
precursors of modern measurement schema are… Body Parts. The crafter’s own body
parts often enough. Fingers, hands, arms, feet (non standard) what have you.
Other bits… who knows… it’s better not to dwell.
Once you have settled those
burning questions for yourself, go ahead and move on to other ideas. Like,
putting to measurements, newly cemented in the mind and upon the page, ONTO
your metal sheet. A combination of scribes and simple calipers are best for
this task.
CRAFTERS’ NOTE! To make the
scribed lined more visible on the metal sheet, many crafters will first put
down a layer of contrasting color and texture to the metal sheet, making it
much easier to follow your scribed shiny lines on your shiny surfaced metal. A
dip in melted beeswax is the standard used for centuries and across many
cultures.
Scribing!
22)
Cut!
Modern Jewelers and metalsmiths
have all sorts of saws with which to do this kind of work. Period crafters did
not.
Metal was chiseled as means of
cutting and piercing designs into it.
I’ll give you a moment to cogitate
on that…
Good now?
Okay it looks like this:
33) Refined!
The disks and rings produced by the cutting method leaves a bit of roughness on the edges, and these need to be filed down...oh...wait...we don't have access to fancy FILES! We have...rocks. That's right! Those Miracles of Medieval Technology: ROCKS!!
And not just any rocks, but "Dressing Stones" which were usually grades of sand stone, and granite. Lovely, uniform grain stones, like the stone forms used to sharpen a blade of any era.
Now, while you file...hold...nope...Let's drop the term "file" for the time being, and use "sand" and "abrade"...yes...that works. Okay, while you sand and abrade the edges of your circles and disks, use gentle, and equal pressure, and long, gentle strokes across the surface of the abrasive blocks.
NOTE! Always start with the most abrasive, and move on to more fine grits, finally finishing with the finest of abrasive grits.
If you have kept even pressure distribution while cutting, the metal you have cut should not be warped out of true. What does this mean? It's flat. Is it flat? If not, use a mallet and gently persuade it back into "true." Which, in this case, is "flat."
44) Cleaned!
Now, you have your many components cut, trimmed, dressed...and covered with your finger prints...skin oils, and surface oxidation. This is bad. Shame on you. SHAME!!! This will keep you metals from making any kind of real connection while you attempt to solder them together. BUT! There is hope!
How do we remove these? We wash the metal in warm water and soap that will break up grease. Lye is great for that, and very much used in Period. Wiping the metal down with highly refined alcohol works, too.
Put your components together regularly during this process, to ensure fit. No surprises.
55) Soldered!
We will be using the Blow Torch Method for this project. For a more in-depth explanation of blow torches in Period, see the relevant paper on that subject.
The basics of this process are:
Covering the surfaces with flux. (Don't fall asleep...I'll be as brief as I can...) A flux (derived from Latin fluxus meaning “flow”) is a chemical cleaning agent, flowing agent, or purifying agent. Fluxes may have more than one function at a time. They are used in both extractive metallurgy and metal joining. Brazing (sometimes known as silver soldering or hard soldering) requires a much higher temperature than soft soldering, sometimes over 850 °C. As well as removing existing oxides, rapid oxidation of the metal at the elevated temperatures has to be avoided. This means that fluxes need to be more aggressive and to provide a physical barrier.[17] Traditionally borax was used as a flux for brazing, but there are now many different fluxes available, often using active chemicals such as fluorides as well as wetting agents. Many of these chemicals are toxic and due care should be taken during their use.
Adding a minute amount of metal alloy with lower melting temps than any of the metals used for the components you have created in previous steps.)
Adding heat! EXTREME heat, directly to the work by adding extra oxygen to a flame held below the work. To add this stream of oxygen, we will use a blow pipe. (A graduated metal tube, blown through steadily to produce this effect.)
66) Cleaned MORE!
This extreme heating will cause discoloration on the surface,(pretty enough on its own...but not usually appreciated) even with the use of the flux...and the flux itself will need cleaning off. A bath in a mild acid will take all of that right off.
CRAFTER'S NOTE: The warmer the acid, the better it tends to work. DON'T boil it.
Period concoctions include: Skunked beer. Watered down fruit juices high in vitamin C. Vinegar.
77) Polished!
Polishing metals in period is a process that requires patience. You are repeating the the sanding/abrading process from step 3, but with even finer and finer grits. These include fine sands, finer stones (soapstone, alabaster, and marble) mud, and even silt. For the sands, muds and silts, a cloth dipped in each will be needed to save your fingers from abrasion.
No comments:
Post a Comment