Friday, February 11, 2011

Pierceing and Sawing

A long time ago I made this sweet dog tag for my nephew:

I want to sell custom dogtags like this on my Etsy store, but I need another example piece...so I decided to do one. First I thought of doing a three tag set in old English script but it needed to be done in silver, and no garuntee it would sell. Somehow this morning I was inspired with the idea of a deer...So I found a photo of a stag, sketched it out and transfered it to copper. The process of piercing metal is simple enough, though the saw blade runs the risk of breaking so rather than turn the blade, the metal has to be moved while the blade continutes to go up and down at a 90 degree angle.

Sawing the metal
To start out one drills a hole, places the blade inside the hole, tightens the saw and blade, then cut away! Lets watch to see how my dogtag was created:
First Cut

Second cut, front leg

Third cut, back leg

Fouth, small detail of leg

Five, Ears

Six, Horns


Light polish, not done yet-still can see scratches!

I am happy to say with all that sawing I did not break a single saw blade. Some spots I was abkle to use files to clean up, other spots where too thing for that, so i used sandpaper in a saw frame. Finally, if that didn't work I used thread with tripoli polishing compound on it. I gave it a light polish, but I am hoping to put a green patina on the piece. Copper tends to stain, and isnt suitable to wearing next to the skin. But if i patina it and then seal it, it might be fine. At the very least I'll have one cool ass dogtag.

From humble beginnings
If you where to have a dog tag, what would you want on it? Initials, or an image?

3 comments:

  1. Awesome! I love the idea of having an image on a dog tag. Thanks for showing the interesting process!

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  2. Great blog post on the method of piercing and sawing! It is one of my favorite things to do too!

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  3. That is a really nice image and a very good job of piercing it. The piece is very nice and I think it should sell well.

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