Wire Wrapping Projects - Batch #6 - (Sep 30, 2019)
Sept 30, 2019 14:41:14 GMT -5
RWA3006, fernwood, and 7 more like this
Post by NevadaBill on Sept 30, 2019 14:41:14 GMT -5
Good day. I had a little time on my hands this morning, so I thought that I would try to get up to date on the practice wraps. I will always call these practice wraps until I get to the point when I can put forth little masterpieces with my eyes closed some day; like many of the masters of RTH!
I got all side tracked, talking treasure hunting, with another RTH in PM's today, but I need to get focussed here. Many of my pictures are close ups, and over exposed. While this gives a good look at all of the minute details of the wrap, it also goes a long way to expose pitted, fractured or otherwise less desireable stones for what they are. But, here goes:
P043 - Orange Tiny Oval
One of the smallest stones I have wrapped yet. This is a cute little red stone from Colorado River, no idea its actual name. The 26 gauge wire is super twisty, and very hard to get the little red guy roped in to a cooperative fashion. Much fumbling is had on these super small ones, and I am being urged to create smaller and smaller all of the time.
It doesn't help that this is the shape of a jelly bean. Real plump.
P044 - China Jade Wrap
This is more difficult than it looks. The Jade is shaped (carved in to a shape, and hung from a small threaded piece of string (or something) which went through a hole near the very top. This can be seen. It was a small trinket my wife bought from Beijing (Peking) a couple years ago.
So the challenge is that one of the wires has to go through the hole a the top, to secure it, and the others at the top (front and back), need to hug tightly around the odd shape of the Jade figurine. This is done in 24 gauge, but came off remarkably better than I had hoped. I am not sure exactly what part of China the Jade is sourced from.
P045 - Orance Teardrop Translucent
OK, this one is another small, odd shaped freeform, done with 26 gauge fake silver. Another pain in the butt to get the wrap around, I thought that it looked pretty neat with the light shining through it, so that is how I shot this picture. I could have probably taken a more flattering picture of it though.
P046 - Thulite Teardrop Weave
This is my second attempt at a weave. I used a very similar construct as my first, and deviated a bit on each of the wrap patterns, but I did this mostly because I wanted to get my hands familiar with doing wraps (as it is completely different), and not forget how to do them.
The weave is smaller than the prior one, and only 20 gauge for the frame, and that turned out to be harder than the first. I also learned that a technique I used on the 1st one, when creating the frame, was deviated from on this one, and I paid for it in the end.
The back side however is much neater on this one. No mistakes really, but it was a pain getting the 26 gauge HARD wire to go through all of the loops.
Just putting this out there. I think that half-hard wire is much more difficult to wrap with than, the dead soft stuff. But in the end it creates a frame that is much more resistant to denting, deforming, or taking damage. Just saying. Not knocking all of the dead soft experts out there. But .. just saying.
P047 - Bacon Agate Teardrop
This was a save. I am happy to have gotten this rock in to a wire wrap. You see, this is just the bottom half of a beautiful flame carved out of Agate that took me much time and energy to grind. I had just taken it off the 1200 sander, and had it on the dop stick with my glasses and another thing or to, and dropped the dop stick. The fall broke the work into many many small pieces on the concrete floor.
Here is what it looked like. Well, the two largest pieces. There were dozens of little chunks all over the place too. Ultimately I think that everyone drops one of their finished pieces.
So, it is a save.
P048 - Lavic Jasper Keychain
So, I am making all of these pendants lately, but nothing for me. Like no 'guy' stuff. It occurs to me that I can salvage a too-thin slab of Lavic that was mistakenly fed through the saw, by turning it in to a keychain. I figure as long as I am not too rough with it, it should hold up for some time.
It is much stronger than it was on its own, and I think it looks pretty cool up against the brushed aluminum background of an old laptop case I had it sitting on. It was not quite as obvious as it looks to create the wrap.
P049 - Stromatolite Turtle shell
OK, this one was a pain and did not want to get in the wrap. I had a hard time photographing it also, because it was so shiny, it kept not focussing. I have like 15 pictures out of focus. This is my best. My wife wore this to work today. Happy.
What made it hard was that it is practically a half circle ball, cut in half. Plus I wanted to keep the wire off the face. So it had to be very tightly wrapped to the rock in order to keep it in place. I used 24 gauge, and in the end it came out OK I think.
I was going to document another wrap project but won't have the time now, as I have been pulled off by an emergency work project or two which will demand my time and attention. It will just have to be a separate post.
Thanks for stopping by to have a look.
