Every year I do Somerset Art Weeks and usually there is a Theme and this year the Theme is Silver.
Although September is several months away I thought I would make something a bit special and decided on an Oak and Pewter Sculpture.
Well it all went wrong .
When it comes to making pieces I am very patient and I am also very fussy and everything has to be perfect.
If it goes wrong I dont cry about it I just start again
The following pictures will show you how I have got on up to now.
This is the original completed but if you look carefully you will notice that there is about six circles on the bottom that are duller than the rest.The reason for this is I ran out of Pewter and I remembered that somebody once told me you can use Plumbers solder.Well you can but this is the result it is not as bright.I never noticed it until it was in daylight.
I decided I would hook out the offending circles and replace them with Pewter and this is Where it all started to go wrong.I managed to hook out all of the circles but in doing so two of the circles joined up because the wood split.You can see this on top left of the picture.Anyway I decided to shorten the Sculpture by a few inches to remove the two circles that were wrong.
This did not work because making it that bit shorter spoilt the proportions.
As I was now unhappy with the whole thing I decided to bite the Bullet and start again.
Getting this far had taken most of two days because sanding Pewter is a long winded job and in doing it I burnt out one Belt sander and had to buy a new one.
So here we go starting again and I have recorded the whole process.
I took a thin slice of the Sculpture with the Band saw so that I could remove the Pewter circles remelt and use them again
With a bit of brute force and ignorance I managed to separate the circles from the Oak.
Having now salvaged all the Pewter I am ready to start again and the first thing is to replace the Oak.
The original was twenty eight inches by seven inches by two and the new piece is ten by three and about six inches too long.
My Band saw will cut twelve inches of Oak comfortably so this is not a problem.
A lovely piece of Oak almost seems a shame to scorch it later.
Next I put it through the thicknesser.
This a router Table one of two that my Brother Chris and I made one weekend many years ago.It has an Axminster rise and fall mechanism and is very easy to adjust.
I decided to add a bit extra to this one by putting two groove one each side to be filled with Pewter.
That is the two grooves added.
Now I drill random sized recesses with forsener bits and pillar drill.
Really taking shape now.
Using the salvaged Pewter I have started filling the recesses then I ran out of Pewter.
I have ordered more of the Internet and it should be here in a couple of days.
When it arrives I will Finnish it of and hopefully it will look good.
Please look in again and you will see how I get on.
This is all quite new to me so there is a learning curve.
One thing that is noticeable is that you cannot fill the recesses dead level with the wood it is quite a bit higher.The other thing is as the Pewter cools it shrinks so I gave had to remove the Pewter and glue them in as they don't stick to the wood.
