Made this stylish “M” cog head badge for a customer. Nickel Cog with a Copper M, the copper is treated with liver of sulfur to give it a deep dark finish.
I have occasionally in my goofing around with torch and flux turned a piece of copper bright red. I had no idea how I had accomplished it, and chocked it up to a fluke of chemistry. The color however was gorgeous, and I was sad I couldn’t recreate it….that was until I stumbled upon the hidden knowledge of the Borax Red Patina.
It’s super simple, you just take some water, dissolve as much Borax (20 mule team Borax from the store works just fine), heat your copper up till its bright red, and dunk it in the water. The finish is very rugged and wont wear off, but it is heat sensitive, so make sure you only do cold forming after the treatment, if you need to solder anything on its going to be a little tricky.
I played around with the technique for a while and found it rather fun to just make the copper red, you can lightly polish it after to bring out the redness and make it more interesting.
I ended up making an earring and pendant set. Its all pretty rough, as I was just sort of playing around, but I am glad I figured out the technique and will use it again in the future.
A friend in the bakery business wanted to be able to brand her bread to give it a little more flair. So I whipped up this quick and dirty bread brand.
Cut out the T from 16 gauge brass, it was the thickest I had, if I could have found thicker I would, but turned out ok.
Solder on some hollow copper pipe, again what I had on hand, with a nice strong joint using high temp solder.
Looking good so far, now for a handle.
Drilled a hole in a hard wood dowel and used a mix of friction fit and CA glue to hold it in place.
Getting ready to try it.
Get yourself a nice slice of home made sour dough bread.
Heat that bad boy up for 30-50 seconds till the end of the pipe near the handle is too hot to touch. Make sure you keep the flame moving around the whole time.
You will know its hot enough if the bread smokes when you touch it to the bread.
Gets pretty gross, but doesn’t affect how it works, just burn off all the gross and go again!
No bread is safe!
Here are some process shots from the latest group of earrings I made.
First I print out the design, and then cut and rubber cement it to the copper plate.
the design is cut out using a jewelers saw, then you file and polish the burs off.
The feathers ready and prepped for soldering. Silver ear posts are also soldered on during this stage.
After the brass wire is soldered down the middle, tiny feather marks are made using a small hand made chisel.
Liver of sulfur is used to patina the feathers and give them a nice dark color.
All done! You can buy a pair here.
This thing came out so nice! I used paint marker masks, acid etching, and a dark black patina to really bring out the look on this. I really enjoyed making this, each step was slow and deliberate, from cutting the masks with a razor blade, to painting on the paint marker, to acid etching, to patina, each step was oddly satisfying. The final results are really nice.