Finally finished my piece and I am happily surprised with the finished product. My last class, I had finished soldering all the pieces, but the bracelet still needed a lot of clean-up. There was a lot of solder around all the joins that needed to be filed down. The clean-up process involved using a fine moore's disk attached to a flexible shaft with a foot pedal that controls the speed of the disk rotation...makes for a quick efficient way to file edges and clean up pieces. It is important to apply an upward motion when using the Moores' disk, otherwise you can end up with multiple uneven grooves. I probably went through about 10 moore's disks s I removed the solder that had flowed in and around the joins and also smoothed out the edges and angles.
After using the moore's disk I then switched to a rubber buff that removed additional sharp edges. This tool was able to get me inside the smaller angles and remove some of the imperfections caused by joins that were not perfect matched...with perfectly flat angles. The next step was to then take the piece and apply a finishing buff on a polishing motor machine. This last step was combined with a polishing compound that I would apply to the buff itself every 30 seconds or so...and created a nice sheen, which while not overly shiny gives the piece a somewhat relaxed, sexy luster.
I then took the polished piece and using a raw-hide mallet hammered around a cuff mandrel rotating it up and down as I hammered it to keep it even.
The final piece looks nothing like I imagined...its funky and kind of hippie chic, as opposed to the symmetrical, structured composition I was drawing inspiration from. Once I took the shape and formed it into a cuff, it took on an entirely different look from what I had expected. But I love it. It is precisely that element of surprise that is so satisfying for me..to think a piece will look a certain way and have it come out so differently, yet still beautiful and unique. After so many hours invested truly gives me both pride and happiness.
