Other Works
And there are a lot of other things I have been into at one time or another. So rather than make a new category for each one when you must know by now that I don't have the photos in a scannable form yet, I will just put them here for now.
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Gina and Robin's Silver Vase - For their wedding in 1984, I made this small vase. First I cast a cylinder of wax around an axle and lathed the wax into this shape. Then, I applied a special conductive silver paint to the wax form. I plated the shape for many hours in a copper bath until the entire surface had become thick enough to have strength. Then, after boiling away all the wax, I plated this heavily with pure silver and polished. |
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The Sea Pendant - Electroformed from the surface of a vertical slice of a seashell, the Sea Pendant was first made in copper, and then plated with pure silver. Once the initial film was plated to the shell face, I removed it from the shell and electroformed it under high anode to cathode ratio with heavy agitation to form this unique texture. |
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Amanita - After soaking this mushroom in hot wax, painting with electroconductive paint and plating for several days, I then autoclaved this piece, turning the wax covered mushroom inside to ash. With a specially designed miniature funnel, I then filled the hollow shell with molten lead. Final finish included additional heavy electroforming, buffing and a black patina for the recesses. |
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The Savage River Claw - On our sixth 'Father & Son Adventure' in 1996, Ethan and I camped in the Savage River State Forest on the banks of the Savage River. Every day we would go 'streaming' as we call it, where we hike through whitewater with the aid of long poles. In the middle of the stream, on a boulder, I found this crayfish claw, then once back home, heavily electroplated with silver and gave to Ethan as a momento of our journey. |
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Our Stone Wall - Just off our patio, in our back yard, Ethan and I built this stone wall. I carefully planned out the curves that you see, and laid out stones to guide Ethan at carving the bank behind this wall. Around the time we were doing this, the phone man came to put in some extra lines for us and when he saw our progress he just said "you're going to have a hell of a time getting that wall straight"! I just nodded. It's been a few years now and the moss is starting to grow on the steps, which are mortared onto solid bedrock. | |
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Our Great Fence - More photos to come soon, this is the massive gate to our fence which surround our backyard. The gate is nearly 7 feet tall, 4 inches thick and weighs nearly 200 pounds. The 3 hinges are antique strap hinges which were made from wagon wheel rims in the early part of this century. Found in an open field junkyard, rusted and pitted, I cooked these hinges over a wood fire in the grill, basting now and then with peanut oil. The result is a cured, black-iron skillet finish which is entirely rustproof. |
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My Texas Smoker - This is my heavily customized New Braunfels Smoker. The first thing I did was to remove anything wooden from this grill and toss it in the kindling wood pile. New Braunfels is great with iron - but forget their woodwork! I added the walnut shelves and made the supports underneath with Wenge. I then cut holes in the 'firebox' and added a propane burner to ignite my wood fires. We now use the grill for wood smoking, smoke-cooking, and traditional charcoal grilling. |
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The Door Opener at Beta Theta Pi |
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Scorpion's Prism |
