Material things

Once again I find myself rather an energy free zone. My break from translation related work today was a trip back to the school again for more plaster and bits of glass and soldering up the other glass shapes the boys made. I completely forgot about taking pictures, otherwise you might have been treated to some of the kids doings.
No time to play in the shop today. It struck me yesterday after I clicked the "post it" button that there is something in the nature of playing about with different materials that makes it similar to travel. The clanger did not quite reach the bell at first, but then I thought about Gulliver and remembered how things kept getting turned on their head in that book. In travelling between the states of material properties you start to gain a sense of how all these things can be turned on their head to be used for good purposes and the little revelations of change bring ideas with them. Today I was telling the boys to watch the molten solder to try and spot the point where the surface freezes. They thought I was kidding about freezing, but they got the idea that some things are frozen at our normal room temperature and only thaw into liquids when it gets pretty warmish. It is a shame we do not have the facilities to melt and heat treat glass as well, then they might start to see windows as sheets of frozen liquid, too.
Anyway, back to the recent playtime fun. The twisty bar at the bottom here is just for reference. You heat a section of bar and twist it one way, then allow that section to cool a bit and twist it the other way a bit further along. The next bar up is a square one that has had twists applied intermittently in one direction. After that it was heated to soften it up and then knocked back to square on the anvil, leaving some of the twist marks where the hammer could not reach. Then heated and twisted in the reverse direction to the original twists to take its current jittery shape. I think this has potential for my twiggy parts, so I have made a few lengths like this. Above that is the punched hole I was talking about yesterday.
I am looking forward to getting some of the bits figured out and up together.
Click on pics to get a better view.