Exhibition piece

This is my exhibition piece- the page from my grandmother's address book which has the Frank O'Hara poem written on it.

Final Outcomes

Just a summary of each plate and its process:

 Hammered text, oxidized with torch, waxed finish

 Photo etched text, oxidized with liver of sulfur, sanded back, heated with torch, waxed finish

 Photo etched image, polished

 Lazer cut text, rolled into plate with rolling mill, oxidized with liver of sulfur, sanded back, waxed finish

 Photo etched image, hammered, oxidized, sanded back, waxed finish

 Hand sawed image, etched with scribe, oxidized, sanded back, wax finish

Photo etched image, hammered with scribe, hammered text, oxidized, sanded back, heated with torch, wax finish

 Front: Photo etched text, heated with torch, wax finish
Sides: Oxidized with liver of sulfer, wax finish
Bottom: Heated with torch, wax finish

Finishing my plates

Heated the Buckingham Palace plate too until it went this gorgeous cherry red. Won't stay like this for very long- probably won't last the exhibition as it will keep oxidizing unless I wax or varnish it so have to get some tonight.

All my plates! Finished!

Postcard

Making the most of my first photoetching attempt which went a bit wrong- did some letter stamping (true the 'C' is the wrong way round and so is the 'D'- stupid backwards letters) and some oxidizing and now looks grand.

Finishing off my box

Began by slowly heating the surface of the box- i wanted to make it look like the original book's red exterior and also heating it would give it an older, more worn effect.
I had to leave it to cool slowly- quenching it in water would make it lose the heated effect

I then had to sand back the middle strip of my box as i wanted to oxidize it and this was really tricky as the metal had to be clean enough for the liver of sulfur to work on but the middle strip was rather difficult to get at.

I bought some black suede at the market to line my box with- decided to do each panel individually just in case one didn't go very well.... turned out to be an excellent idea as my measuring is appalling.

 

Used some crazy araldite glue which takes 24 hours to dry to stick in the lining- looks mighty fine though :)

Frank O'Hara illustration

Had real issues deciding on what to do for this plate.
Began with a drawing of a street and a man waiting on a bench...waaaay to twee though.
bleugh.
After I'd had my tutorial with David we came up with a few ideas on what to do.

I like the man in the corner, although when I looked away and then looked back, my eye was immediately drawn to him (top left to bottom right) so tried it in the bottom left corner and found that when i showed other people, they had to look for longer to find him.

 

I then printed him onto acetate and prepared another plate for photo etching. 

 

unfortunately the tape I'd placed over the back had an air bubble so some of back etched too :( 

Decided to polish this plate to make the silhouette fade into the background more.

 

my two O'Hara plates together! yaaaay!

Frank O' Hara Text

 

Hammered each letter into my plate- so difficult as there was no way of lining them up together and sometimes the hammer slipped so the letter jumped around. gah.

 

Tried some effects with the oxidization- hated it. Definitely too busy for the poem and I wanted the text to really make a statement so it needed to be plain.   Sanded back the effect and then anealed my plate to get it oxidized further.

Owl & PussyCat text...

 

I oxidized the plate and sanded it back to bring out the text more and I really like how the roller press has picked up the texture of the card I used.

 

I then had to cut it down to size with the guillotine (the roller had stretched it) and sand down the edges. Unfortunately the roller had stretched my copper too much on one side so some of the text on the back does not fit onto the other side. Irritating.

 

Owl & the PussyCat text

To roll the text onto my plate I had to make an illustrator file to use for the laser cutter.

I have issues with Illustrator. Could not work out how to adjust the text at all so had to find the exact font I wanted to use.

I decided on Bell MT italic and after I had sized it to fit my plate and spaced it out, I took it to the laser cutter and cut it out on card.

I then annealed my plate (used a flame on it until it went cherry red to soften the metal), and then glued the two pieces of card to either side to roll on the rolling mill.

I had to roll it though quite a few times to get the text deep enough and then i put it into the pickle to clean.

Hinges

I HATE hinges. Had to go to that really dodgy craft shop in the Merrion centre to find some copper rods to make the hinge- they had some but they were too thick and they didnt have the right length of steel to go through the inside. Craft shop my aunt nelly.

Anyway, Liz had some so switched my too-big rod for hers and away we went. Had to cut the copper rod into 3 equal lengths and then I had to clean 2 of them for each side of the box, with the middle one left to be soldered onto the top part of my box.

This was sooo difficult! Had to bind these two fiddly bits of rod onto the edge of my box but you can't handle them too much as they need to be uber clean for the soldering process. This meant wearing very fetching rubber gloves which kept getting wrapped up in the binding wire and it took me several attempts to get this right.

When I had finally bound the rods into position (sort of) i then lined up the solder and started torching it. As soon as I had got one on, the other fell off so had to quench the whole thing and start all over again. More sanding down.. more filing...more sanding....more binding with the wire...more anger.
gahhh

Tried it again...to no avail.
Decided to not use the binding wire but to ledge the rods onto the bricks and squish them onto the rim of the box at the last minute with the tweezers. Tricky, very tricky.

Only had one tiny bit of hinge for ages.

Second bit of hinge went on and then, after several attempts to solder on the middle bit to the top of the box whilst it was all together, decided to take it apart, mark where it was meant to be, and just hope for the best.
turned out b.e.a.utiful but unfortunately, because i had to keep cleaning and sanding down each hinge every time it went wrong, by the time they were on, they were getting rather thin and worn in places...
N.B- be careful with copper rod and gently sand it no matter how much longer that will take.

Once I had all rods in place, I then threaded through the steel wire and hammered the ends so to split the metal and keep it in place.

After the steel went in, I could no longer put it into the pickle to clean and so got out the wet and dry paper again...gotta love that stuff.

Trip to Sheffield

Making my Box

 once I had cut all the pieces of the box to size, I then scored into the middle section each measurement- making sure that the solder line was in the middle of one side (this would make it easier to solder)

Unfortunately as the strip had been bent before i started sanding it down, i had to straighten it out and that meant that each corner started to crack and break. this then meant that i had to solder each corner individually so to strengthen it.

 

 I then soldered the strip together and cleaned the base to then solder it onto that. i used binding wire which was really tricky to use

 

I created the top of the box by photo etching the text onto it. I scanned in the front of the original address book to recreate the exact writing on there. I really like how this has come out.

Photo Etching Copper

Photo etching paper- £3 for A3

• clean plate thoroughly with 1200 wet & dry paper
• spray with water
• cut etching paper to size
• peel off back sheet of acetate so paper sticks to copper plate
• roll away bubbles and excess water
• leave to cure in light-proof box

 When copper has cured:

• get image (printed onto acetate) and place onto light box
• arrange copper face down over image
• set the light box for 12 units
• put back into light-proof box

When etching:

• 1 litre of warm water
• 1 tablespoon of sodium bicarbonate (do not get any water into s.b tub)
• leave in for approx. 9 minutes (keep in dark), gently rub off image
• stop with white vinegar
• expose in light box to harden film for 30 units
• put stop-out varnish over places you do not want etched (edges etc)- use white spirit to thin down varnish if too thick
• place into ferric chloride containers for 40 minutes- attach tape to back so can use as handle to lever out 

To remove the blue film:

• place in 1 litre of warm water and 9 tablespoons of sodium bicarbonate
• use white spirit to remove the varnish
• place back into the bicarbonate solution to remove the under layer of blue film 

 

This was my first attempt at photo etching and because the first sodium bicarbonate solution had not removed all of the blue film, it meant that some areas did not etch at all.

 

I then redid this plate and it turned out much better!

After the photo etching process was done, I used a scribe and hammer to punch marks into the soldier's helmets and into their belts. I then used liver of sulfur to oxidize my plate and then sanded it back.

Oxidizing the Owl and the Pussycat Plate

Before the Oxidizing process: had to use 1200 wet and dry to clean the plate so it looked like this front and back, making sure the silver solder running along the bottom of the boat was filed right down. I then used liver of sulphur to paint onto my plate and the metal turned immediately darker which, as I put more sulphur on, turned to a dark greyish black.

 

After...

 

I then used the 1200 wet and dry to gently sand down parts of the plate I wanted brighter than others.

 

I used a needle file to bring some texture into the animals.