Next I dunked it in water. That's annealing. Heating and then quenching. Makes the metal malleable once again.
See all that pretty color? I like it. Off it comes!
It came off because I knew there was much more filing and sanding down to be done, which will remove the color unevenly. Also, more annealing may be necessary. Once you get passed the pretty rainbow, heating copper turns it an ugly old-penny brown.
Is it soft enough to bend around a mandrel? Just barely.
Had to anneal some more and use the mallet because it kept wanting to make corners instead of rounds. Does that make sense? It does in my head.
All that pounding for rounding did a few things. It smoothed out all of the fluting and most of the scalloping. It also made the ring all pointy and hurty again.
There was way more Dremel and hand filing action which I will not show boring pictures of since I didn't take boring pictures of more boring sanding and filing. Also no pictures of the ring getting re-painted with fire and quenched again. I do not find fire and quenching boring at all. But my camera did and showed its boredom by running down the batteries and not telling me about it. It let me click away all the while it was totally shut down. It even made clicky noises when I took shots, just to fool me. It's an Olympus camera and we all know what assholes those guys up there can be.
Here's a picture of the ring after its final quenching. All finished except for the sealing. You have to seal it or, just as easily as I rubbed off the color three steps ago, the color will rub off with wearing. I use spray clear coat or lacquer.
Here the ring is ready for spraying:
No comments:
Post a Comment