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The header's and posts are on now. They are not as straight as I would have liked it. But it's an old building, and columns lean over time. heh, heh, heh.....
These posts were a pain in the neck to make (censored version). Originally, I wanted brass tubes, smooth. Then I wanted them to be tinned and given a light sponge texture. Then I found out that I didn't have enough of the tubing that I wanted. I had one piece, I need three. What to do, what to do. I took brazing wire, 3/32" thick, grouped up 10 or so pieces in a 3' length. I grouped it all together, and taped the ends with electrical tape. Secured one end in a vise, the other in a drill. Hit the trigger (in small pulses), and made a twisted the wire together. This is a good technique to use if you want any find of spiraled wire. The usual method, is to attach a screw eye into the vise, insert a length of wire, fold it over, and stick the other end into the drill. Drill at a slow speed, and voila, twisted wire (too must twisting can cause the whole thing to bend, when drilling pull back on it a little).
Knowing that it needed to be tinned, knowing the solder will not stick to it, and that cutting it apart may make the wire fall apart. Something needed to be done. Solder didn't stick with a soldering iron. The copper had too much dirt on it for it to stick, even after a cleaning. On top of that the wire is steel with a copper coating. I've used this stuff in the past for supports, in single pieces the solder sticks to it just fine. But only when the wire is a single piece. As long as the wire heats up, the solder will stick to the hot surface. My twisted wire was about 1/4" thick, and the solder had no chance of survival sticking with common methods.
I know, use the torch! I mounted the wire in a vise, lit the torch, and started. Guess what, solder doesn't stick any better. I tried using liquid flux, and destroyed the brush, it of course, melted (and that was a good brush too...sniff). Paste flux worked pretty well, though be it messy. After awhile I found that the solder will stick if I heat up a section, then put some solder on, then heat it up again (like sweating a pipe). I had one side soldered, which was very difficult because the copper started burning off. With the combination of the heat and the flux I was dumping on, the steel started to rust, and nothing was going to stick to that.
I was able to cover one whole side, heating it up, brushing the wire with the flux brush, dragging the hot solder further down the wire. It worked pretty well, the brush is now garbage however. Cooled the wire, flipped it over, and heated the back. The solder was now able to wick to the surface, and assured me that everything was now tight and secure. Washed it down with water and thinners, applied patina, Jax - copper, brown and pewter. Polishing it to get the highlights.
At the end I had a wire that looked tree like, it was an interesting look, it would provide a association with the tree base. However, the torch gave it a not so nice melted solder look in some places. 2-3 hours later, looking at it, I thought, "hmmmm... that looks a lot like grounding wire I can buy at Home-Depot". So the next day I went to Home depot and bought the wire. Yes, I just wasted a day making a completely useless thing, that solder will never stick too, that looked too uneven to use. Oh well.
New wire, solid copper, with real copper I can apply green patina and have it turn green. Finally, I get to actually use that stuff (it only works on pure copper). Now that I have a new type of wire, I thought, "you know what, they king of look like little trees; maybe I can make them look like little trees". I pre-cut each piece about 3" long, soldering the very end to keep it from falling apart (the first one did, that's why I soldered the ends now). Soldered each one in place, at the end of each post I placed a screw grommet, gives the appearance of a cap on a post. Each one of those grommets were tinned prior to the attaching the posts.
I soldered the 12 columns on, made them as straight as I could. First side, I unraveled the first 2" of the wire (really only needed about 1-3/4" for the actual column). Problem, after unwinding it, it looked like a hairy mess. The trunk was lost, and I had wire sticking out in all directions. It looked good in my head. Pooh, I had to not only remove these things and cut new ones, but trim all the other posts. Since I pre-measured and pre-cut and pre-soldered everything. I now had to trim the wire down and get them to be all level. If you do something like this, take my advice, do one side, and see if it comes out, before doing the other sides.
This wonderful tree idea I had, took about an hour to do, more time wasted. Trimming it with a cable cutter took some time to do, but it had to be done. The header's were cut out, and pre-soldered it just needed to be attached.
When I thought of the great tree idea, I pre-foiled the bottom of the header's, this now gave me an advantage due to all the places to solder to. The glass I used was a clear red with a matt iridescent finish. The foil, on the bottom of the glass, now reflects a little more texture and color into the glass, purely a bonus. The purple glass is an extremely dense glass. No light can penetrate it, normally this is bad for stained glass work. But in this case it works out just fine. There is no light behind it, this glass looks nice here, and adds a little more contrast. Originally I wanted to cast some kind of stone like relief in the glass, but all the experiments failed. Then I wanted a ripple like texture, but didn't have any. This glass I had (but not when I started the project), and I like it.
Getting back to soldering, I knew that, if I soldered the posts directly to the header's, they would rip off. I need the grommets on the header as well (to make it uniform). Soldering the grommets onto the header would be ideal, but I don't know where to place them. So holding head grommet with a hemostat, I soldered each one to the post from the top. Then placed each header on top of the grommets (adjusting here and there to get a good average height and to ensure that they are all level). I placed the header on the bench and added the curved parts. Then placed each header on the posts, centered it, and tacked it. The header's on the left and right went on next (since I knew where it went due to attaching the curved pieces). The header's need to line up with everything since there is another piece that will go on top of the header's, and a mis-alignment wouldn't look so nice.
Everything went pretty smoothly, due to the circumstances. I had to push the header's in place to let them line up more naturally. Twisting one so hard that it broke off the post, and I needed to do an emergency repair on it. Everything is attached, the curved pieces were set and soldered. It doesn't fit in the sink now, the header's are too fragile to do that. Outside with a hose it is.
The purple is a ring mottled glass, made by Bullseye I think. The green on the copper posts should work out, though it may need a clear coat. It took a few days to get it this green, and as it is, it's not as green as I wanted. The run off got onto the solder below it, and is now a white color. Splashes fell onto the glass and solidified. A lot of scraping was able to remove most of it.
All in all, the time estimate was pretty accurate, however I wasted about 3 hours, on the posts.
Total Time: 9 hours 30 minutes
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Started on 7-9-2001