All's Well That Ends Well

In a week that are filled with family commitments I managed to find a bit of time on Sunday afternoon and earlier today to finish the latch for the bone chest that I made in Bill Robertson's class at Guild school in June. The latch was certainly for me the most difficult part to make and it took four tries to get it right.

From left to right: the first one broke in Castine when I bent it, the second one I just couldn't get the last bend in the right place and eventually the bit where the lock is supposed to fit in broke off, on the third one the hinge barrel broke off. This caused me a bit of frustration as it was my last piece of metal or so I thought in any case until I found a piece on Sunday afternoon between all my left over bits of metal, at first I couldn't figure out why I had this last piece of metal and then I remembered making a new hinge piece after one of mine fell in class and a search proved fruitless. In the end though I am rather glad the third latch lost it's hinge barrel, I tried a bit of silver soldering on Sunday after I borrowed some solder paste and a decent butane torch from a local club member and it wasn't too difficult, although I did lose the tiny piece I was trying to solder, knowing how to solder opens up lots of new possibilities for future projects and this is something I want to practice doing. It was then that I found the leftover piece of metal when I searched to see if I had anything that I could use for the hinge barrel, for the rest of the afternoon everything worked out just perfectly and I had no problems and ended the day with a perfect latch!

This morning I had time to attach the lock and latch to the chest and here it is all finished and locked :-) The original chests dates from the 14th century, here is a link to one that sold in 2011 for $25000, gasp! And another carved little beauty, so much detail in such a tiny piece.

The back of the chest.

The bottom of the chest.

The inside of the chest.

And in case you were wondering how big the chest is, here it is with a small part of my huge blue and white porcelain collection in my kitchen and.......

gosh, are my thumb really that big? ;-)

I really enjoyed the class and learned so much. And oh yes, the broken hinges led to another discovery, a shop 20 minutes drive from me that sells all the tools that I can dream of, burs, escapement files, gravers, decent vices and the list goes on and on. On Friday I phoned around to find out if I could get some silver solder somewhere and one of the art shops referred me to this shop, now I have always kind of assumed that there are no such shops in my area because all my miniaturist friends here normally order from the USA or Cape Town, lesson learned, NEVER assume anything . I quickly stopped there yesterday morning on the way to my mom just to see what they stock and oh my goodness, I was in tool heaven, they have a huge selection of quality tools and they are all displayed on a huge pegboard on one wall and I have to say, it is a much neater and more organized shop than the one in New York, which rather surprised me as the shop is in a part of town where most people think twice about going now, crime is rather rife in the area and you have to watch your back. Fortunately there was a parkade close by, 30 years ago this was the main business area of Pretoria and as a teenager I knew this part of town like the back of my hand as we lived in an apartment in the area for most of my high school years, sad how things change, now I only go there if I have no other choice. I told the shop assistant that I am only having a quick look and will come back another day to buy, he was friendly enough to tell me that they are having a 25% discount sale on most of their stock for seven days from 31 July, well, I have already started to make my list and it is growing by the minute :-)

And just for fun, a few photos of my part of South Africa in midwinter, we have no rain in winter, just lots of sunny, mild days with cool mornings and evenings.

Most mornings my daughter and I take our little mutt, Anakin for a walk.

Passing a garden where the roses are still flowering, this was just after nine in the morning and already too warm for a sweater.

Our street, my house is hiding somewhere towards the back on the right side, our cat Yoda loves to play in the open piece of veld on the right side just after the house with the lions, it goes in quite deep. By the way, I have nothing to do with the animals Star Wars names!

And lastly, the view of my winter garden through my workroom window, almost pruning time as spring officially arrives on 1 September.

Have a great week!
Elga