Soldering a wire structure

Following a design of the human body drawn on paper previously, I bend the length of copper wire using round headed pliers. Having the round head made it easier to produce tight bends which in turn made it more accurate to the design it was made from. Once all these separate pieces of the design had been formed, i ensured that all areas which were going to be soldered together had been sanded using wet and dry to allow easy attachment of the solder, and made sure that all edges touched with ease. Due to the wire having been bent in so many directions, it was no longer flat, so before i began soldering I flattened the wire again using a hammer. Using the solder seen in the second image along, I squirted three small pieces of solder onto the areas which I intended to join and turned on the blow torch. Slowly, I began heating around the edges of the wire structure until it was all reasonably the same temperature. Then, one by one I heated up each of the joins until the solder melted and formed a solid fixture, joining the two areas together. Once finished, I placed the wire into a pot of cold water to quickly cool it down again to prevent any burns to my skin when touching it.

Creating a design from copper

Masking tape was used to cover the surface of the sheet of copper creating a surface on which pencil would draw onto and would remain as guidelines. I drew the female form onto my sheet of metal as it related to my work which also happened to make quite a nice finishing piece. I took my sheet of copper and sat at my work station where after carefully placing the blade into coping saw, ensuring it was in there securely, I began to cut into the metal, carefully following the guidelines drawn on. I found easier to work with the saw facing vertical as it made it glide through the metal much smoother than it would at any other angle. Once my design had been cut out, I used wet and dry sanding paper to sand down the edges to make it smoother and of a more presentable finish, this also reduced the chances of any sharp edges causing injury to the skin if it happened to get caught.

 

Staining The Metal

Using a paintbrush, Platinol oxidising solution was applied over the surface of the copper which turned it a very deep brown- almost black- colour. According to the tutor, if touched, this solution weakened your nails, so I was very careful to use tweezers rather than my fingers to move this sheet of copper around. Once painted on, I took it over to the sink and washed it off. It had an incredibly strong ammonia smell to it which presented a hazardous environment so we was sure to leave the windows and doors wide open to ventilate the room. Once washed off, the copper had been very obviously stained so I then used wet and dry sanding paper to sand off the stain from any protruding parts of the metal. This left it only on the sunk in parts which really brought out the pattern imprinted into the copper. This stain would eventually rub off due to regular wear and tear so a layer of clear nail polish was added over the top to seal it in.

Metal work – Getting started

First I selected five strips of copper and annealed them using a hand blow torch. This was to soften the metal and make it more malleable. I heated it to a beautiful cherry red colour and then placed it in a tub of cold water to cool down. Due to the heating process, the metal’s face had blackened with dirt so it was then placed into the pickle tank for ten minutes to clean itself up ready for the next stage. Now soft, the metal allowed pattern to be imprinted on the surface using a roller and some patterned materials. I particularly liked the blue sheet of plastic with a series of holes in it as they widened when put through the roller and had more of the appearance of snake skin. I much preferred the more obvious patterns (such as the blue holed sheet) to the subtle ones (soft woven fabrics) as they left a clearer imprint and had more visual impact. I feel the fabrics made the made more textured rather than into an aesthetically pleasing and artist piece of metal work.