Wish List

I'm now hanging out in the Asheville airport, waiting for my flight which hopefully won't be delayed by thunderstorms, and starting to think about my wish list, primarily some additions for working with metals and the other alternative materials we worked with in Metals.

I took this pic of my favorite hammers from the metals studio. From the right, they include a really nice, small ball pein, a "jewelers" (I think) hammer with a huge flat face for such a tiny hammer, a cross pein, and a deadblow. I never used to understand why Joe needed so many different types of hammers. Now I do. I set quite a number of rivets in the past couple of weeks, and the jewelers hammer was perfect - use the ball pin to start the process, especially with the tube rivets, and then finish it off with the flat surface - little tiny taps. If you want to quickly flatten a piece of metal without marring the surface - use the deadblow. While a hammer with a pitted, damaged face it great for texturing metal.

I'll need to see what hammers Joe still has. I believe Joe has a jeweler's saw, so I don't have to worry about that. I also need to check out his files. (Watch out Joe, I'm not so slowly commandeering your tools! )

My other favorite was the 1" belt sander. It was absolutely essential to working with the paper mache pulp. Once the pigmented pulp dries it's rock hard, and ugly. You have to sand it down to get to the beautiful graining hidden within. And if I have to sand it by hand, I won't do it, I'm already admitting it to myself. We used a small, upright belt sander you can get from Harbor Freight.

Harbor Freight has all sorts of other cool stuff too, such as this punch and die set, and these diamond sanding blocks. Penland also had several beautiful, small dishing sets that I coveted. I find it ironic that after ignoring the metals shop in my basement in Missouri for all those years I'm suddenly covetous of all these tools. Finally found a use that excited me. I know I'll be sorting through the tools in the basement with a different focus when I get home!