It's Hinge Time Again

I won't go into the intensely frustrating time I had in fabricating the hinge. All I'll say is that once again appealing to the 'God of Soldering' pays dividends...

Here's a montage of the steps in pulling the hinge together;

Initial alignment

Opening the Egg

I've finally got back around to working on the copper egg I made a couple of months back.

Today, I split the egg in two to form the lid and base of a box;

I marked out the split with a scribe then used a fine saw blade to progressively move around the circumference, cutting deeper on each orbit. Finally separating the two parts.

The next stage is to add the supports for the hinge. A piece of metal is needed to space the hinge away from the body of the box to allow it to open.
Here are pictures showing the fitting of these parts to the lid and base;

One side of the spacer is cut to fit the curve of the box, the other is flat to accommodate the hinge knuckles.

To ensure both parts of the box close firmly, a Besel Strip is added. This inner ring provides a tight mechanical fit to keep both halves together.

And now, both sides placed together. At this point the Besel Strip is too big, so will have to be filed down a little to allow the box to close properly.

Since the box is not 'closed' firmly, the spacers look wide apert, once properly in place, they will come together.

Next step......the hings knuckles.....!

OrganoCup External Finish

I've spent quite a lot of time trying to apply a finish to the outside of the cup. I've been using Platinol to try to oxidize the surface to give it a grey metallic finish. Unfortunately, for some reason, despite a lot of cleaning and sanding of the outer surface, I've been unable to get full coverage of the cup. I got a lof of flaking and uneven coloring of the surface. I the end, I decided to make a virtue of the blotchiness of the surface and here are the results.

 

The inside of the Cup needs another sanding with Scotchbrite...however, this is what it looks like at the moment;