Tune Up

Hope the New Year has started well for everyone.

The steam engine project is progressing and while nothing has been definitely decided on the boiler, I did a little copper work job as a tune up. I started building a live steam locomotive when I was at the other school but had to cancel that project for a variety of reasons. I dug out the plans the other day to check the boiler design. Even though it's a little stinker of a loco, it will pull a guy my size and a few cars around. We could scale the thing up a little and be all set. It's made out of copper, to come back around to the subject at hand. I've never really made a lot of things out of copper, so a little practice couldn't hurt. I've always been a big fan of the Roycroft copper

so after I finish a dozen or so other projects, I'd like to try my hand at a vase like the one in the top photo. It's made from copper with German silver accents. The Roycroft shops used an applied finish on many of the pieces rather than letting the copper develop a patina. The lower photo shows the before and after of the copper sheet I worked with . The sheet has been laying around for a lot of years and was really tarnished up. Lemon juice, salt and a Scotch-Brite pad did the trick. I also annealed the domed piece.

Copper works the opposite of ferrous metals. When you anneal copper, you get it hot and quench it, rather than letting it cool slowly like steel. While I was doing that, Andy, the speeder repairman, had to anneal a piece of spring wire, form it, then reharden and temper it. Lots to this fabrication and restoration stuff once you stray off the beaten path. I told him the other day you have to be able to do everything, if you want to do anything. And since Andy is a lot like me, he understood immediately. "The lyf so short, the trade so long to lerne."