Mainly,if i'm total honest, i've been injuring myself on hot small bits of metal and grinding my finger tips off with a stupidly large angle grinder, absolutely unsuited to working small...ok This is the full kit, bits of copper my "real tool" hammer, some quite posh round nosed pliers and two punches one specially shaped and refered to a a "breast punch" For reasons that will become clear soon. Oh and some copper wire that i flattened in the wife's dear etching press. Wire i got out of a flex meant for connecting a cooker to the electricity supply. Good way of finding solid copper wire that!.
Here me blasting the cut out bits with my trusty cheepo propane torch. I got 'em red hot to make them soft. Immediately after that pic i picked up the coil of wire, with my bare fingers, somehow thinking they would be cold as i wasn't trying to heat that bit up...ouch!
After hoping round and swearing a bit i managed to do some metal bending, the circles are now crinkled the other bits folded up and the flattened wire folded into bows....can you guess what it is yet?
Becoming clearer?. Between the last pic and this i have hard soldered the tops on the bottoms. I use Benzomatic brazing rods. Good cost they are hard, and require no flux , just a lot of heat.
Here i've also soldered on the bows, more crispy fingers, also i cut some rings to solder on, just twisted the copper wire round a round thing and snipped them off. Of course all this soldering has effected the copper so its all 'orribel and nasty which can be solved latter. I find the benzonmatic is good at not melting much when you solder bits nearby, usually anyway, some days though... well it just all falls to bits.A stupidly big gas torch does not help really...
Rings on! After a bit of fiddling at least... I hope now you can see they are miniature dresses, maybe a bit droopy to be described as Tutu's but almost, i guess.
Seem the cower in the face of Mr Angle grinder! See how i said it wasn't really a precision tool? Its what i have though so i use it quite a lot. I notice to from this pic i've put in a "Stone cutting" disk totally unsuited to metal at all. Silly me! That grinder cost me a tenner many many years ago, i really do wonder how it keeps going in my careless hands, i think it just likes the taste of my blood!. A bit of a lick with the grinder and on to the next stage. And yes i ground bit of my fingers off too.
Oh, more expensive equipment.I know it looks like its got zero to do with metal things but it has. I once made ten of those mini dresses all at once, last stage is to polish them, i was using a polishing pad in a drill held in the vice. I ended up with seven mini dresses, three pinged of a high velocity across the shed never to be seen again. I wanted a way of polishing them without the risk of high velocity jewellery. Research told me tumbling with stainless steel shot (actually, bits of stainless steel in varying shapes and water and soap) So i dug up this tiny tumbler (bought from a charity shop for £4) loaded some shot and a dash of Fairy Liquid, result, nothing, i'd used the wrong soap, for some reason detergents like Fairly liquid don't work, so i broke a bit off a bit of a bar of soap and it's sort of worked. Generally i have to used the drill and polishing wheel but this thing gets a lot of grunge off first.... so i've gained an extra stage for a small gain, like i said no one said i was sensible.
This is how they come out. Well if im honest that's how the best ones come out. Some of the others need abit of fileing to fettle before polish. Oh now can you see what use the "breast punch" was?
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