What's Been Happening

It's been fairly quiet lately, but these did go out in the last month.

Quite some years ago I did a couple of initials, so a new oldy, as well as a couple of my standard offerings, being the Taranaki Sun & Koru.

Each piece takes time and focus at the grinder and soldering bench, but seeing them caught in clear Wellington sunlight makes every hour worth it.

Oh dear… a year between updates is a bit slack on my part!! Although, we have had a lot going on over the past year and very little of that was working with glass.

This did flip around recently though and have enjoyed getting back to the grind, especially since I’ve had a few made-to-order pieces, which have required kicking the brain into gear to come up with designs and make patterns.

The first was what seemed like a simple job to make an 'A', which is the logo for Affiliated Insurance Brokers, where I’ve been working for the last 30+ years, since I’m sort of retiring. This was really odd though as the logo colours are black & white and black isn’t a colour one tends to use on light catchers. It turned out pretty good though and the white certainly pops with the sun on it.

Next was a Sunflower made-to-order gift, after mentioning that 'I vowed I’d never to make birds, boats or butterflies … but I’ll let this slip through the cracks!' It was a pretty quick and easy job though, requiring minimal grinding which most of my work needs.

Lastly, Lightning McQueen — another made-to-order gift for a young lady with two young boys. Turned out rather technical with having to drill and grind out the spaces for the lights and mouth using a 1/8" grinding bit adapted for an electric drill.

In all the years I've been making light catchers, I don't think I've ever made two identical pieces one after the other, but this just happened!

To make the situation even more unusual was that the pieces are the same item and colour as that used for the website logo!!??

The first piece was made as a gift for someone and the second came from a request. The manaia would be one of the more popular pieces I make, but this was quite special.

Another made to order piece that's a bit different to what I normally do, but once again, these things take me out of my comfort zone and can be quite fulfilling, going through the design process then finding out if the idea worked ...or not?

In this case I was pretty satisfied with the outcome as it's quite simple, yet makes an effective connection featuring the iconic red, blue and white colours intertwined with a Taekwondo Black Belt in the initial stage of a kick.

*Sigh*....almost a year between updates!!?? I have been doing bits and pieces but I guess I've been a bit remiss in updating the action.

Below are a few of the recent items, the first being a repeat from one of the 'one hit wonders' that wasn't supposed to be resurrected! It is based on the Ulysses Motorcycle Club Logo, but in this case, wearing a Santa hat.

This came about because the Wellington Branch have been involved in running a Muscular Dystrophy run for the best part of the last 30yrs, delivering presents. Our Santa turned 80 recently so this seemed a most fitting project!

The others are recent repeats of my standard offerings made in recent months: Taranaki Sun, Double Manaia, and Yin Yang.

Having been a bit busy with other things in recent times, I haven't done any glass work for about 8 months, so there's been a bit of a flurry of activity over the last week or two.

Primarily making this Tree Trio to order, plus completing a Double Manaia & 'Naki Sun.

The Tree Trio was sort of interesting, in that I was surprised at how quick and easy they were to make, but then discovering that the free standing 3-D items provided their own unique set of issues with the foiling.

Making free-standing trees with few supporting components, the width of foil is crucial for joint strength. I passed the items on with a caveat: 'Be gentle and if anything happens, bring them back'!!

After saying I never wanted to make 'birds, boats or butterflies', I was asked to make this piece, but since it's a moth, I'll take solace in the fact that I have yet to cross the line?!!

As usual, something new is always a good thing and I made a couple of changes to the design, then encountered a couple of old 'beginner' issues when making it. In hindsight there were things I would do differently, but I was quite happy with the end result.

One of the more popular pieces, a Double-Manaia, was also made and both items presented to the recipients.

I've just finished this new variant of the tiki today. The design was done about a year ago when I was making a piece to order and this variant was offered as an option, but I never got around to making it until now.

I really liked the new tiki design at the time and now I'm quite pleased with this outcome as well. There's quite a lot of work in these tikis, but the results are great.

Even before I started the two repair jobs, I realised this was obviously going to require more work than the Koru piece, and so it got relegated to 2nd.

The adhesive bonds of the copper foil were too tight to allow an easy separation, so I figured I might as well strip all the lower half pieces back to glass, suck up excess solder using copper braid, and refoil them.

Once I’d done that and made the new pieces, it was just like making a new one and all went quite smoothly. Job done and I'm quite happy with the result!

I started on the Koru piece since that looked like the easier fix. Soon had the foil off the outside, but found the adhesive was maintaining a firm grip and the surrounding curves left zero wiggle room.

I decided to strip it back, remake the broken piece, then refoil and resolder the whole thing. Made a classic newby mistake of running the glass cutter when half-on and half-off a newspaper step, which snapped the glass! Reached for the stock, reshaped the piece, and got it finished.