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The last step in the gift box project was to fix up the product photos by making the backgrounds white and adding other tweaks.  I then uploaded them to my website and posted them on facebook.  I think they turned out nicely and I got a bunch of supportive responses through social media.

The 20th wedding anniversary project is complete!  The metal box goes to the celebrated couple and stand alone bows will be gifts to the couple’s parents.

These photos are taken using a white seamless paper background.  It’s the first time I’ve used it but love how it isolates the objects to completely. 

Since I wasn’t convinced the square knots would work quite right for the napkin rings, I decided to used them to make handles for the box.  I think they are kind of cool and feel neat in your hand.  The debate now is whether to leave the box with a plain top with these cool handles as the only ornamentation, or to add the bow and “K” to the top as originally planned.  Is it sleek and cool enough as is?  Would adding the ornamentation make it too busy and fussy? 

The box project nears completion!  I have now a relatively square box onto which the top fits!  This was the third attempt at a box.  On the first, as I posted about earlier, I learned not to bend the creases too many times back and forth or else the metal will break.  On the second box, I learned the VERY valuable lesson that once you have riveted the corners of the box together, do not, I repeat, do not, put it back into the forge in an attempt to straighten something out.  A previous decent looking box will turn into a warped mess.

Box 3 however, looks pretty good and I am glad that in each iteration I improved and put the lessons of the earlier less than successful attempts to use. 

I plan to put some sort of handles on the side of the box and fix a bow and the letter “K” on the top for decoration (as the last photos demonstrates)

I’ve had in my head for awhile that one ought to be able to forge letters that look swoopy and cool.  Here are a couple of Ws -- the last in several attempts today, the earlier of which were pretty disastrous.  Like the forged box, the thing that takes practice and planning is the order in which you do the forging/bending.  If you do the wrong bend first, it is then hard to get a clear angle to hit and or bend the next portion.  Or, if you forge out the slender parts first, then they are relatively weak and want to disfigure and/or break off when you are trying to bend something larger nearby.  For these, I made the bend in the middle first (the part that points up in the photos), then flattened out the ends that would bend into the swoops at the ends, then bent up the Us on either side.  

I still need to put a band around the middle, but here is a forged bow!  I think they turned our rather nicely.

To make the metal bows I first made a template out of cardboard then cut sheet metal pieces in the shape of the template.  Since it was snowing on Friday, I wasn’t able to forge the bends, but I now have a number of blanks to try out on Monday. 

The other day I tried to forge some knots - which went pretty well but left me thinking (a) I need more practice and (b) I’m not sure they are the right decorative element for my project.  So, I’m going to keep practicing knots to get better at them and try some other variation, but I think I’ll try to forge some  bows!  A quick perusal of pinterest gave me some ideas and I think the simple elements for a paper bow I drew in this photo would be pretty easy to produce in steel.

Yesterday I made a metal box.  It was my first time forging sheet metal, so I learned a lot and will do a number of things differently on my next try.  Cutting the basic shape out of a sheet of metal with the plasma cutter worked great and was quick and easy.  Here were some of the challenges:

1.  Getting the entire seam hot enough on the forge to fold easily.  Next time I will make a “long fire” with the coal forge, meaning that I will have a an active coal fire that is a bit bigger -- but long rather than just big. 

2.  Figuring out the best ordering of the folding up of the sides.  The little corner folds (which were designed to be where I would fasten the sides together) need to be folded up first, but if they stick out 90 degrees they make folding the sides they are attached to difficult. 

3.  Don’t make the seams flex too much.  In order to make the corners square, i folded the sides all the way over (rather than just 90 degrees) and then bent them back up to 90 degrees.  This worked OK for the sides that were only bent once, but I folded the little corner folds a couple of times in and out and that caused the seam to become brittle and 2 of the 4 broke off.

The good news is that it mostly worked!  I made a metal box!  However, more practice will be required to make it an attractive box...

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Below is the only published blog post on my website, I have a number of draft posts that I have been working on the last few days that aren't quite ready for prime time. Mostly I've been working on gathering photos and editing them and sketching out post ideas and concepts. I've learned to link between posts and imbed materials into my blogs and have become reasonably familiar with the the blog creator/editor portion of wordpress.

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