Well, my friend should be settling on her property tomorrow Dec. 16th! Yea!! But the weather--is definitely not cooperating with the trip. Poor Harry finally got outside in a restricted area for a few hours last Friday, and by Sunday he was able to get out for most of the day. Today we are back to the 'okay, so I have to stay in the barn----again!!' routine.
Well, for his safety and my piece of mind, after I finished cleaning out the barn and putting up pieces of tarp in the eaves, he is happy not to be out in the driving wind and sleet.
I decided to take this opportunity to finish up last minute work for Christmas presents for my sons and my sister and niece. The other day I made some 8 gauge Sterling silver riveted bangles. I was able to find some 8 gauge copper wire at an electrical supply store for the copper ones, and a long piece of hardened brass.
These are the copper and sterling bangles-8 gauge for Silver, 14 ga. for Copper
I have to tell you, working with Silver and Copper, annealing and shaping is involved, in order to get everything lined up and finished, but the Brass is a totally different animal! That stuff is TOUGH and takes a great deal of annealing and hammering and forming to make it work. The end result is beautiful, because it's nice and heavy and shines beautifully, but it will be a long time before I tackle that metal again. The material was 6 gauge brass, and I had to put all of my weight into bending it around the anvil just to get the pieces into the pickle pot after annealing it.
The photos below are of the brass by-pass bangles I made
Two large ones for my sons-smaller one for me.
I stamped stars on both side of the edges and put my mark on them.
I managed to make an over the hand by-pass for each of my sons. Since they are 6'3" and 6'5", and have big hands, I thought this would be the best solution. It's hard to think of things they'd like from their mom, but in all honesty they'd be happy with whatever I made for them, I believe. Such good sons. I'm very blessed.
