This suit of armor is a copy of a suit of armor made in the early 19th century or late 18th.
It needed cleaning, dent removal and new small parts. Not an easy task but interesting project.

Who would have thought that there were pipes with sterling silver to be repaired.
Well there are. These are repaired now.

My friend Jean came by and took pictures for the article that will be in Silver Magazine. This one is me raising on my steel stakes.
Raising is a technique of hammering that creates form.
I am working on a sculptural form that has no function. First time... I have made something in Silver that has no function.

My 1951 Packard slowly sinking into the earth. I rode this around when I was 18 on the back roads of West Virginia.

One of my favorite places in the world, along the South Branch of the Potomac in WV.

Sterling Silver Peach Box commissioned this last month. Eating the model for the silver peach was delicious. Perfect time for the peaches in California.

The side of an old building in Emeryville. The varations of this wall remind me of a work of Art. But it is only a building that has been repaired over and over and soon will come down to make way for more Condos in Emeryville.

Presentation Bowl for Toby Rose finished end of August 2006

Rhinos dance before they are soldered into place for
Presentation Bowl.

Paul Revere's work has visited my studio two times. I was surprised to learn may years ago that Paul Revere could not make a living as a Silversmith. He supplemented his income with installing copper roofing. I think of the infamous picture of him holding the silver teapot and his engraver close by, that is how I saw him. Now I imagine him a hardworking roofer as well as a Smith.

Inside of Old Sheffield Plate, is the old pitch, the metal rod, and alot of lead solder.
A steel plate covers the bottom, this is removed by heating carefully and removing lead solder. It usually pops out when the heat is just hot enough for the pitch to almost explode and the lead melts. This is a dirty job, so you want strong venting.
I am assuming when these were made the Smiths did not know that the contact of Steel and Copper are a corrosive combination. All of the old candelabra the I have taken apart are usually based with steel, some are wood. But all Old Sheffield Plate were with steel.
When I repack, I use copper to make the base not steel. These were particularly corroded. The base steel was corroded through and the copper in the thinest parts were corroded through. As you can see I had to make a mold of what remained in the rim around base part and cast new parts. These silver pieces were fabricated to make a new round circle and all the parts put back together.
Pitch that was used for packing sometimes is more explosive than others. A full mask is used for unpacking and clothes you do not care about. This includes knife handles as well.
For those of you who do not know what OSP is, it is a layering of copper and silver that was fused together in ovens and then rolled out very thin to make the sheet metal that was used to make, all of the old antique silver called Old Sheffield Plate. It has a thicker amount of silver on the surface of the copper than a piece that has been plated.
It is a great illusion.

This was a puzzle. Why would The Kalo Shop allow this out of the shop when it is so very crooked?
Must have made it past the keen eyes of the Master Smith.
Then over time someone tried to straighten it by pushing the base and in doing so pushed the center of the bowl up.
As you can see the ring under the engraving. I use a mushroom stake with a thin layer of plastic sheeting to push out by hand the ring. (This is something you never want to hammer out, it only makes the ring line stronger and you will lose the engraving)There is no way of getting the line of the base out when there is engraving. When there is no engraving you are saving and the metal is thick enough you can burnish out the line.
To find the old solder joint, it is easy to take a reducing flame and play it over the base, the line of solder will show itself and you can easily see the joint. Cut along the old joint. Be sure and make matching marks before you cut. Otherwise you will lose the placement of bowl and base.
This is a delicate operation, because if you remove too much metal by your filing you will run past the line of the design. Then the stem will not meet and you will end up thinning the walls to make meet. So go slowly, matching and adjusting very slowly.
The re-soldering is not the hard part. Once soldered you have lost the color at that point, because you will have used an easy silver solder. So the color of the bowl and base are different. This takes much hand finishing to match the colors of the old and newly soldered parts.
I go over the new skin with liver of sulphur and then hand rub with one of the old sunshine clothes until it matches bowl. This can take longer than all above.
There is one huge no no, on all antique silver and that is putting them on a wheel. Why, because the color is very important to the collector. I will go further into this another time.

Many years ago I designed this letter opener during the beginning of spring.
Here is what I saw and how I came to the design.
This became a limited edition that sells at Japanesque in S.F.
I will be making the last of this edition this year.