practice cube

[thughes]

Made this little cube of stainless (1.25") kind of to be a sampler to show people. The one with all the background removed was a real shocker when I looked at the photo taken outside on a cloudy day. My background didn't look near that uneven , even under the scope. It seems that when I use my tiny flat inside the scrolls and things I can keed it pretty flat, but when I get out in the wide open with the bigger flat, I guess the flat not held perfectly flat was a lot worse than I realized. More practice I rekon. Any way, any critique is welcome.

Thanks
Todd

 

[Beladran]

That's pretty cool!

 

[Gun Nut]

Overall, very nice.

 

[Andrew Biggs]

Hi Todd

Good idea and looks good. It would be worth fixing that background up.

If you have large areas of background, before stippling, you can even up the surface with a punch made out of old burs or beading tools. After the flats, just hammer the surface even. Then stipple.

Cheers
Andrew

 

[monk]

i'm thinkin maybe the roughness sort of adds to the overall appeal of the piece.

 

[thughes]

Thank ya'll for the comments. That's a good idea Andrew, thanks, I never thought of that.

It's kind of funny, I got this foot long square bar of stainless basically for free cause it was left over from a job. So I was wondering what I could do with it. So I cut it up into cubes and started doing these, well what amounts to doodles really, that I thought I could show to people kind of like a sampler. Now everybody that sees it says "I don't know what it is, but I want one, how much". Who'd a thunk it? Next time I would not take out the background in the middle, but it sure showed me something I need to work on, a lot.

 

[dlilazteca]

Could be a very nice paper weight, I would not mind one, to also matching stainless steel envelope opener.

Thanks for sharing

Carlos De La O III

 

[Eric Olson]

Your background is fine in the smaller areas -
You could scale the design up a bit, add some more leaves or even a geometric border so there is less background next time.
In the square piece you have a lot of room to add leaves coming off the back of the scrolls.
This will fill the space better and anchor your design to the edges.
Also remember the "thumbs" and to shade the large ends of your scrolls. You might even add thumbs to some of your smaller elements.

I think it looks pretty darn good over all though.

 

[LVVP]

Todd,

Looks very nice for me, and thanks to Andrew for the advice

 

[Marrinan]

Some time ago Ray Cover made similar pieces with each of his most common styles. He carefully measured the time required in each stage: design, layout, scribing, border, initial cuts, background removal, leveling, stippling, inlay/overlay, shading (in various degrees of fineness etc. Each of these beautiful pieces serve several purposes. They are exactly 1 sq inch. They provide samples of his "standard" work. They demonstrate the styles he commonly does. Most importantly he knows exactly how much time each style take per sq inch. This provides a fairly accurate method of estimating job costs. Still have to factor in material hardness, odd contours and obstacles to work around. But for flat or nearly flat work like a knife bolster he simple calculates a cost per sq inch factors in shop expense, hourly rate, benefits, and PROFIT. and he can give a bid he wont loose the farm on. His specialty bulino work and very unusual design require years of experience to estimate. Search for his thread in how much to charge treads. He explains it much better. Fred

 

[thughes]

I'll do that Fred, thanks.

Todd