tributesinwood

A Little Metal-Work

It was time to bring out the tinsmith in me if we were going to get any decent looking newspaper for the beach-bound-hound to read.  A quick trip to the hobby shop did the trick and I came home with a good sized piece of 0.005″ brass.  I could have bought some thinner stock as they had anywhere from two thousands to five thousands of an inch but the five thou felt about right to me for stiffness.

I actually started by taking some aluminum tape and doubling it up.  I then bent ( easily ) the tape into the size and shape that I wanted for the newspaper…wrinkles and creases included…and used this as a mock-up for the stiffer and more difficult to shape brass.

Here’s what it looked like at that point.  You’ll notice that each of the four corners have an additional layer of brass to give the paper the impression that there are several pages.  I did this by just cutting little triangles and soldering the triangles in place and later curling the two layers away from each other.  I actually was quite surprised that the brass took soldering but the joints are very strong.

I was able to sand and file the soldered marks smooth and then added a light coat of epoxy as a filler to do any final sanding.  Automotive spray paint primer was also added with some final sanding of those soldered seams in between coats.  And then, finally, I mixed up some white gesso with an ivory coloured acrylic and painted the primed surface with several coats leaving just a bit of the grey primer showing very slightly through.  The whole procedure ended up looking pretty close to newsprint to me.

Well that was a lot of fun.  I’ll have to find reasons to add brass to the rest of my carvings.  Next step…add some printed sections.

Now that I see this picture that I just added…I should mention that I decided to replace the yellow stripes on his bathing suit with a darker blue stripe.  I think the darker suit looks better than the original blue and yellow.