Category: Miscellaneous

I had forgot about posting this piece when I made it. It’s not jewelry, but a Kitchen Tool I guess, and is a handle for a release knob on a pressure cooker pot.

The manufacturer only provides a stub on the knob, and when turned to release pressure the hot steam can sometimes easily get your hand if you’re not careful. Kathy loves her Insta-Pot, but that always annoyed her so I made an “extension” handle out of brass for her to use (keeping her hand a little farther away from the steam and sputtering when the pressure is released).

Made out of 24 ga. sheet, I formed a cradle or pocket that would fit over the stub on the knob, then soldered that onto the tube I created, and capped on the end with a half dome (both also made out of 24 ga. brass sheet). The overall length of the handle is 3.75”, and according to Kathy it does its job very well. 🙂

A pair of overlay medallions I created for my brother, Jeff, of our family’s brand used on the High Mesa Ranch in Alto, NM. Called the “Hip-Rafter ‘S'” brand, the design was reproduced by my nephew Shane in a scalable vector graphic format for other projects of his, but that format also allowed me to shrink it down to fit nicely within a 1/2″ circle.

The medallions are to be inset in a pair of grip panels on a Colt 1911. The craftsman making those panels recommended they be the same size as Colt’s medallions (1/2″), and Jeff suggested to also texture the backs for better adhesion to the epoxy used when inset into the grip panels.

The pierced overlay was cut from 16 ga. sterling sheet with a 6/0 saw blade, and when soldered onto a 20 ga. sterling sheet back, makes for a nice combined stack of about 12 ga. in thickness before the checkering on the back in done. After diamond-checkering the backs of the medallions with a cross-cut file to increase the surface area for better adhesion to the epoxy, the finished medallions came out to about 1.8 mm thick.

Being so small (and because checkering needs carefully repeated and aligned strokes to form the grooves), I set the medallion into shellac on a block, which is then held in a vise. After the filing is done, a little heat from the torch releases it, and a soak in denatured alcohol removes any remaining shellac. That’s also a good way to secure small stuff like earrings, making stone setting a LOT easier to do!

He later sent me a photograph of the 1911 with the grip panels mounted, and it looks just totally awesome. Oh, and the medallions inset in the grip panels look great, too. 😉

My talented wife does beautiful bead-work, and needed some hook & eye clasps for a couple beaded necklaces she had created complete with faux stone pendants (faux Turquoise for the copper necklace, and faux Jade for the black necklace), that she had created from polymer clay… amazing work!

The copper necklace of course needed an antiqued copper clasp, and the black peyote stitch tube necklace was complemented with a brass clasp. The hook on the brass clasp is rotational so the tube necklace won’t bind and will roll freely with the movements of the wearer.

For both clasps, the copper or brass tubing was created from 24 ga. flat sheet, then cut to size and capped. The copper clasp was adorned with domed caps to match the barrel shape of the tubing ends. The hooks and eyelets were made with wire stock.

I had created these clasps 2 or 3 years ago when Kathy created the necklaces, but no photos of them had been taken until now.

Here is the copper-colored bead necklace Kathy made with the faux Turquoise pendant, and with the necklace rotated to show the copper clasp…

And here is the black peyote stitch tube necklace Kathy made with the faux Jade pendant, again with the necklace rotated to show the brass clasp…