A Lid.....Finally

Today, I finally embarked on the tricky job of cutting to form the lid of the tea pot. You may notice the addition of the mounting tubes for the handle which I did during the week.

The first part of the process is to mark out the lid using a combination of a scribe and saw.

and from head on;

With the shape scored out, the process becomes a long laborious process of going round and round the outline of the lid to gradually cut through.... This takes a long, long time....but here is the result;

Time to tidy up the ragged edges and work on the internal besel.

Back to Square One

I posted about this box some weeks back particularly about the hinges and getting them properly aligned. Then I decided to enamel the inside... This led to a few problems....with the hinge. Cutting a long story short, I had to rebuild the stand-off hinge from scratch and here is the result....

Tidying Up

I started the day with the intention of doing some enameling work on the copper box I made a few weeks back and I did indeed do some tests with enamel flux and a couple of candidate colours, but I realised that the sheer messiness of the workshop was stopping me from getting on with things. So...I've spent quite a bit of today tidying. As a result, this is probably not the most interesting post I've ever put online, but you can now see what the workshop looks like and probably ponder just how messy it must have been if this is tidy... :)

Sneak Preview

I've been asked to put more in this blog about the various stages of construction so here is the first in a series of 'Under Construction' posts....

This is the beginning of one side of a new piece. I started with a basic raised bowl, then took off the bottom third, inverted it and soldered it into place to give an indented look...

Assembly

Here are the most recent pictures of the new box. I've now hinged the internal lid and these shots show the box assembled ready for he next steps in the build;

 

 

 

 

Inside the Box

Here are a couple of shots of the inside of the box. I've switched to a domed interior to keep with the overall curved theme of the box.

...and to give an impression of what the finished internal structure might look like, I placed the internal lid on top. It will also need a hings, but that will come later.

Hinging the Box

After a lot of psyching myself up, I took a deep breath, sent up a prayer to the god of soldering and started working on the hinge for the new copper box.....

This photograph shows one of the knuckles held in place with a small pallion of solder on top of it ready for soldering. The photo below shows this repeated along the length of one side of the hinge;

The following photo shows the other side of the hinge after soldering;

Now, with both sides soldered, the moment of truth...will they fit together? Well, here's the finished product...What do you think?

  

So...now I can start work on tidying it up and then, on to the insides...