Vine - the end

At last, I'm done with my project about white vine on steel. I can now take some rest.
And to rest, what could be better than a chair ?
Good thing, I've got a new one ;-)

Etched vine

At last, I've finished the vine pattern on my steel plate !

I could then etch it, one hour and 60W in salted water.
A short blowtorch passage to burn the paint and reveal the etching and here we are :

Still have to sand the plate a little bit to remove the paint remnants but I already find it quite nice. I hope I'll be able to keep the blue shade of the etched parts.

Steel vine

I transferred the white vine pattern on a plate of steel (which was a closet shelf in a previous life).
And now I'm scratching the paint to reveal the metal underneath.

As you can see, I use a hightech tool to do that, a sharpened nail with a wood handle.

It's quite long to do, already 8 hours of work...

knitting

Winter is coming. I know spring has just begun but, winter is coming.
I consequently decided to get myself to knitting. As I just can't cope with needles and wool, I opted for steel and copper so as to make myslef a scarf for winter (cos it's coming !!).

I doubt it can keep me warm, but until then, it keeps me busy :-)

Man hole cover

Today, the first item of a serie that I hope to be numerous, a copy of a man hole cover pattern, electroetched on steel.

The cut is 3mm thick and 8cm in diameter, the perfect object to be used as a non breakable beer mat ;-)

electro etching

I recently "met" Marie Fredriksson on facebook and she made me think about electro etching. I decided to give it a try as the mandatory materials are quite easy to find at least for a few tests.
So here is my first try on steel, made with a basic 9V battery.

I will have to find another varnish and to buy a power supply with a stronger amperage if I want to achieve a deeper etching but it looks promising, doesn't it ?

more magnets

Not enough time to work on my current large work, just enough to recycle bits of zinc so : more magnets !

You would have noticed that I stopped to put them on the fridge, I installed a beautiful bar of steel, a bit rusted, and use it as a support for them and as a reminder hanger for me :-)

Cursed be ...

As promised, here are more pics of my latest work on steel. It's a text by Pascal Quignard.
For the first time, I didn't use varnish for the calligraphy but regular tar.

Here is a small video of the action of rust (took about 3 weeks).

And to see the whole work, have a look in the gallery.

Rust - new try

Just to make you wait until I find some time to take other pics, here is a close-up of my latest work on steel, using varnish and letting time and rust doing their job.

Rust

After playing quite a lot with zinc, I'm now experimenting steel as a medium for calligraphy.
Here is my first try almost correct of a cadel letter.

Next time, I'll have to better sand the surface and to adjust the edges as the varnish is too sticky to get clean contours on the first stroke.