Spring

Spring time in Portland is awesome. There are so many beautiful yards and gardens and lots of flowering trees. I love fresh cut flowers in my apartment. It just makes me feel nice.

Fishy

One thing I do like to do is cook. And I like to eat. And I like to do it well. Even with my busy schedule I try to make myself a nice meal at least once a week. This here is lemon and herb broiled cod fillets with caramelized onion and garlic rice pilaf, pineapple salsa and sesame asparagus.

Tim Mckright

Tim Mckright, who literally wrote the text book that most jewelers use as a reference, taught a workshop at my school. He's been working with metal for over 40 years and knows the subject inside and out. However, the workshop he taught was primitive metalsmithing and getting back to the basics. He showed us how to pour an ingot and make our own steel tools using just the objects on hand and with no special equipment. Pretty much just fire and forging. It was really fun and here's the 2 pieces I made out of a single silver ingot I poured and forged.

Hyraulic Pressed Beads

So... it's been a while. Life gets in the way sometimes of things that you'd rather be doing. But then again, if it didn't get in the way, wouldn't life be really boring?
Here's the 1st metal project of the semester. We learned how to use a hand cranked hydraulic press to punch out forms in sheet metal. We first made a form we liked and cut it out of acrylic. The most annoying little job I've done since casting. Then after pressing and annealing and pressing and annealing... you get the point. I came out with good results. We had to make 3 "beads" (art school, everything is relative) with the same initial mold and alter them. Here's mine, and they are pretty cool. Also, I think I finally figured out soldering.