Wonders will never cease

That's what my grandma would say in a most sarcastic manner, but last night i found i had again accidentally sold a bowl on Etsy. This time it was the "Crow bowl" which i made before the "Raven bowl" The buyer said she has a tough time choosing between hares and crows. I thought the Raven bowl would go first (if i sold any at all and i honestly didn't really expect to sell any). Still waiting for the pewter...

New number two hammer.. how enthraling

I said i lost my number two 'ammer somewhere in the hell of my shed. Well i accidentally sold two bowls, so i ordered four more pewter disks, so i thought i better make another. My big 'ammer is ok for roughing up the shape but too big to get the rim to curve in and up sort of 90 degrees from the table top. Normal people go out and buy a "Bossing Hammer" Like this one, that's a nylon one but traditionally they were made of pear or some hardwood. And they cost a bit of money...

My wife and child, when ever they are let out on their own amuse themselves by trying to buy me a hammer. they think this makes me happy... Anyway this is a small rubber hammer they got me from a cheapo' shop in Falmouth for £2. Little did the poor thing now what i had in mind for it.

This! I used an old "surf form" wood shaving thing i found in the shed. Its well known "Surf form" blades never wear out, they just get harder to use, but rubber is easy to shave off. Finished off with a bit of wet and dry it made a nice rounded non marking hammer face. I didn't bother to make the thin end as i never used that bit...

Yesterday we visited a farm friend of ours and found him belting hell out of a HUGE wooden beam, trying to de-nail it. The nails/bolts were and inch diameter and the beam part of the old Falmouth quay, he had plans to make floor beams out of it once cleaned up. We went to glean some old wood for the stove, we found some lumps of very dense gum tree and yellow pine, but also i picked up the head of one of the bolts.

The head is about two inches and made of very good iron so i thought i'd clean it up as a small anvil that i can put in the vice.

Half an hour with the trusty angle grinder and its fairly bright and all the 1940's hammer dings taken out.

Another half an hour with a small file and wet and dry and it's pretty bright shiny. It has to be fairly shiny so as not to mark the pewter too badly when i hit it. A quick spray of silicone polish to keep it bright and not rusty and i'd done....

Due to Global Warming its dammed brass monkeys here in "subtropical" Cornwall, and due to snow again soon, and people will tell you it never snows in Cornwall, even when standing in the snow...i hope the pewter makes it through, otherwise i have to find something else to do.

Wow!

Well its been quiet for some time now. Mainly because i have run out of pewter and can't afford any more, and its also been so cold here my quenching bucket has been frozen solid for almost two weeks. This is quite a shock in a place that counts its self unlucky to have a sharp frost let alone hard frozen ground.
Anyway luckily yesterday a person bought two bowls off Etsy
http://www.etsy.com/shop/jonofPenryn, so today the wife spent a whole hour buying four discs of Pewter from the Pewter sheet company ( http://pewtersheet.co.uk/ ) They both chatted away happily about everything and all things and eventualy ordered four 30cm X 1mm disks (which have gone up another fiver in price since September) They should arive before Christmas, so i will have things to do over the Holidays. Meanwhile have to think just what i'm going to bash into them.

The wife mentioned my hand bashing to the Pewter sheet guy, and he was surprised and mentioned that they do make machines for such things. To which the wife explained "He's and artist, they do things like this.....)