_Next PageGenerally I really don't make too many mistakes. However, usually in the average project, mostly the very complex ones, there will be a few. Mistakes aren't just caused by carelessness. Sometimes there's a measurement problem, or sometimes it is something completely out of your control.
Sometimes, if you're using a piece of glass that happens to be thicker then the rest a measurement can be off. Armstrong is a good example of this. It's slightly thicker than other glasses, and may widen a box. Or glass may be warped in a spot (something you couldn't predict could happen to you) so a drawer may not work right. Usually it's hard to predict how every step of the project is going to come out. Or there might be a small measurement change somewhere in the pattern, and that size wasn't relocated to all the pieces.
When making a panel, it's pretty easy to hide a mistake. Large gaps can be filled in with solder, cracks can have foil overlays on them, and there are still more ways to hide (if not fix) a mistake. I'm going to try to explain the few mistakes that I made here and there on the projects that I have on my pages. Along with that there will be explanations of what happened, and how I fixed them.
THE HEART OF ATLANTIS
One of the larger mistakes is at the top of the base where the lid meets the decorative soldering. When I built the sides of the box on the forms, the glass rested on the table, giving me a perfectly even bottom. On the top, however, it wasn't at all level. Instead one side was almost 3/8" off from the front. This would have looked horrible if I left it alone.
The first thing I tried was to grind the high spots. That helped a little, but the high spots were still too high, and the low spots were still too low. If I had kept grinding, I wouldn't have had any trim border at all.
Then I covered the edge in 3/8" foil to see if I could put a bead on the edges (sometimes that works). However, this time it didn't because I couldn't get a bead to balance that high.
Then I took the highest point and set my depth gauge to that height. Using really short pieces (about 1" length) of brass came, I soldered the end of one piece to the highest section of the side. Then I connected each of the ends of came like a cartoon teetering bridge, using the height gauge to make sure I had a level surface. I kept doing this until all the pieces were in. I soldered it the best I could. Then, because it looked like garbage, I re-foiled the area with 1/2" foil and tinned everything. Now I had a level surface, but the red trim waved in and out from 1/4" to 1/2" and the soldered part did the same, wide then narrow.
That's when I decided to use the grapevine soldering technique (explained on the Heart of Atlantis page). I was able to fool the eye into thinking the trim was cut perfectly even. I put more solder where there was more glass and put less solder where there was less glass. Because of the level surface, there was a straight guide to work with.
When I installed the little room dividers (not pictured), I took a rough estimate of what the curve looked like on the inside. The first piece I made fit fine, but I forgot that the curvature is different from point to point. So when I put the other walls in, the top of the wall had a very large gap that was clearly visible. So I took a bunch of little brass corners, and soldered them over the gaps. They look pretty good, plus they help to keep the walls sturdy.
The last little error had to do with the jewel on the tray (also not pictured). Originally I had a neat looking purple gem. It was interesting because when you looked down on it, the gem was purple, but when you looked at its edge, it was clear.. Well anyway, after I soldered it all in place, I tried to fit the tray inside of the box. The tray fit fine, but the lid kept hitting the jewel and not closing all the way. When I tried to move the gem down a bit by re-soldering, thermal shock set in and the thing cracked down the middle. The only thing I could do is to find another nice looking gem, which I did.
This project came out pretty much like clock work . There really wasn't any serious flubs, or surprises. The first slight mistake (more of a visual thing than mechanical), was one of the sides bowed slightly. I think the middle shelf may have been a hair to long, so it pushed out the side a little there.
The other was the roof. When making my plans I must have forgotten to change one of the measurements. I found out too late that the mirror was an 1/8" too high. And since I used the mirror to act as a template for the roof, when I put the roof on, the angle was an 1/8" to high also. So now there's a slope in it. It's not a big thing, though it is annoying. Then of course when I put the back on, I had a huge gap to fill. I used a lot of solder to fill the gap which of course meant using a lot of flux to fix the mistake. However, the amount of flux I had to use to make the bead, is now making the mirror dissolve. The moral is check all your measurements more than twice because one false measurement can cause a chain reaction of other mistakes which may not be able to be easily corrected.
Aphrodite's Treasure (Fish Lamp)
The project doesn't really have any flaws. I was able to catch just about all the mistakes before I built it. The only few things that were wrong were these: the form I built wasn't perfectly even or flat, so some of the panels sink in slightly in the middle. Also, because it isn't perfectly even, the corners aren't identical on each side. But that gives it a hand built look...right? :)
Another was when the sides of the base went together, the trim pieces didn't line up right (they overlapped instead of coming together neatly). Then I tried to trim the angle of one of the pieces to match the other side by estimating the angle. Instead of having an overlap, I had a gap at the bottom of the two trim pieces. Then I decided to cut off the angles completely so that now they were at a 90 degree angle, and put a marble in the open corner. Although you can't see it, it's a very dark purple with an iridescent coating and I like this effect even better. After soldering in place I put some decorative soldering to give it a claw foot look.
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Started on 9-22-98