Every human being is intended to have a character to be what no other is and to do what no other can do.
William Ellery Channing
Hi, my name is David La Plante. I'm the author of Artisanidizing Aluminum, The Sulfuric Acid Process.
At the time that I was writing my book, I felt like a person wearing many hats.
The hat of the teacher, the hat of the human, and the hat of the artist.
I'm not sure which hat I'll have on at what time during this video, but I'm sure you'll figure it out as we go along.
The one thing that frustrated me very much about writing a book as opposed to making art
is the problem of how long does it take you to explain something on a page,
whereas if you did it in a real demonstration, you could probably show it in perhaps a minute or less.
You could pick the object up, you could show it to your audience, but on a page it's much more difficult.
So after thinking about what we had done in the book, it seemed that the most obvious part to move to next was to make this video.
Now this video is made for those of you who have read the book.
It is not necessarily to reiterate everything that we did in the book, but to show you how I am a guy.
Now just like motorcycle riding or anything else that you do, this is the way I work.
This is how it works for me.
I don't know if it'll work the same for you, but I'll give you some chances to see how I work,
and then you can mirror that against what you already are doing, or maybe you're going to change your style
to try to duplicate or to improve on some of the things that I'm showing you how to do.
As you follow along with the video, I would recommend that you refer frequently back to the book.
And certainly to start off with, we want to remember the realistic considerations.
Being careful, being cautious, and being serious.
Of utmost concern is to watch out for the electricity and for the chemicals which may harm you.
Be certain that you are very aware of the safety considerations and that you are wearing the appropriate safety equipment.
I will be during the video, and I hope you will be wearing that every time you do your anodizing.
I'm going to be showing you some of the various pieces of metal that I work with,
and taking you through some of the special techniques that I use.
We'll be talking about the process and some basic setup,
which may help you to improve parts of your anodizing setup.
Some surface pretreatments I'll be covering, such as bead blasting and chiseling or engraving,
I hope will add some spark to your work.
And we'll definitely be spending a little time with the racking.
Talking about jigs, racks, we'll be racking single items, and then multiple items with some commercial racks.
We'll work with the setup and actually anodize some pieces, take them through the dyeing, and eventually the sealing.
Visual artists need visual references, something to look at to see what else other people have done.
And we're going to have a couple of color slideshows for you, so why don't you sit back and relax,
and let's take a look at some examples of what I've done just prior to writing
Artists Anodizing Aluminum, The Sulfuric Acid Process.
I lied. There are more than two slideshows, and we'll start back in 1968.
But first...
Artists Anodizing Aluminum, The Sulfuric Acid Process
Artists Anodizing Aluminum, The Sulfuric Acid Process
This container from 1969 is small, about three and a half inches tall.
I've always enjoyed working with materials that are found, or materials that I work with, that I make,
using iron chain mesh as on these bracelets, or perhaps dealing with the chain mesh and the function of small containers for pocket change.
I like the way the iron mesh can be put together, as in this Pinball Wizard's Dime Bank.
I think the fascination for me has always been with the container and its possible function.
In this case, I have an object that will hold on to cheese, or figs, or small pieces of meat, or an apple,
or whatever you'd like to put the fork through.
And of course, maybe dessert is most important. That's up to you.
After your meal, you should use this toothpick holder and toothpicks inside.
Another bank that's about nine inches in diameter, using a coconut as a matrix,
is covered with aluminum shingles, iron mesh, and accents of gold-filled links.
I like covering things with texture.
Sometimes it's just a small bit of mesh.
In 1980, I started working with the painted aluminum, scribing, engraving, and putting ornamentation onto the surface.
I find that my fascination for surface has increased as I worked with the painted aluminum.
A few lines here or there, or maybe multiple lines, creating a graphic approach or a graphic landscape that the person can get lost in.
I hope the viewer's imagination will be piqued by these forms.
Sometimes I'll use a slight bit of ornamentation, or quite a bit.
In using found objects again, computer ribbon wire has the bands on these two bracelets.
I think that option of taking something that's flat and drawing or working on the surface so that it begins to be three-dimensional is quite a challenge and very pleasurable when it works.
I like prismatic plex, as in this brooch, or behind the aluminum that's been engraved.
Or how about the smiling bracelet?
It would help if we could all look deeper into who we really are to try to find those special images.
I believe I've been successful.
Not all really work, but a few, and if you keep trying, and if one isn't enough, perhaps you do a trio.
But you keep pushing yourself, trying to find out what's possible with your images, trying to find out who you are, who you could be, who you must be.
And now I think it's time for you to take a break, and I'll see you in a few moments.
Fear came knocking, faith opened the door, but no one was there. This from a Chinese proverb.
During the break, I took the opportunity to make some samples. But first, let's go over to the demo table.
Imagination has to have a practical side, a way of translating a dream into reality.
I'm basically a scrounger. I'm always out looking for materials and different types and shapes of aluminum that pique my imagination.
I hope when I'm looking for these things that I can find some ideas. I hope the same thing works for you.
Sometimes it might be the angle that you approach the material from, be it a physical angle or a mental angle.
Perhaps you need to look at it from different perspectives or points of view.
You need to think about what happens when you get really close to it or pull back from it.
Or if you squint, does that give you a special kind of an idea?
Perhaps as with this expanded screen, you'll notice that from some angles, the color is not very vibrant or exciting.
But when you look at it from the most appropriate angle for that best vision, you really get a different view of how you might use this material, this aluminum.
Here are some arrows. Sometimes you'll find in a sporting goods store arrows that are single colors or maybe in a camouflage range.
You should look closely at the potential of what those people are doing to create a specific sort of vision with their arrows.
Perhaps you might want to purchase some arrows just to use their camouflage color.
Or maybe you want to try to do your own marbleizing or camouflage effect.
If you think about some of the products that are around you, like these coasters with the Coca-Cola ad, you can see the use of anodized aluminum practically everywhere.
You see it in the kitchen, in measuring containers.
I always like to look on the inside or the outside or wherever to see if I can figure out how it was racked.
Here's a piece of a ski pole.
And again, go to a sporting goods store. See what sort of technical processes have been used to create specific images, color, or a logo, a name, a number, something that tells you that that's the brand that you want to buy.
Look closely at how the material was worked. Was some sort of stencil put over the surface? Overdyed? Bleached away?
Look at them closely. See how you might take some of their ideas, more process ideas, and work that into your pieces.
Here are some Christmas cards, some fantastic Christmas cards made of aluminum.
Yes, this is aluminum. These are about six inches square and about a quarter of an inch in thickness.
Wishing all of us happy holidays, a Merry Christmas, a most joyous time of year, and perhaps peace, that thing which we all long for, but in some parts of the world can never seem to find.
My thanks to Mrs. Triti Spinoza from the Aluminum Color Corporation in Ohio for these limited edition Christmas cards.
Besides being special greeting cards, they definitely show some ultimate potentials in the anodizing of aluminum.
And because I'm sure you wanted to see it again, let's take a very close look at the first Christmas card.
A wonderful job of screening and dyeing and ornamenting anodized aluminum.
Another thing to consider as you go to a hardware store or a lumber yard is closely examining all of those aluminum parts that are made for windows or doors, screens,
and the other type of materials, the extruded ware, screen, expanded metal, some of the textured stuff that you might find, go to a junk or scrap metal place and see if you can find any parts from refrigerators that might be made of aluminum, like the containers that hold the eggs.
Now you'll probably notice in this segment many of the objects, if not all of them, have at least one large hole in them and that's because I put all of these on a ring so that when I go to do a workshop I can show people what's possible and they don't get lost.
So please don't get too confused by looking at all of those quarter inch holes. I put them in there, but if a hole or a void is of interest to you, consider using it in your own work.
P.L. Travers said, There are worlds beyond worlds and time beyond times, all of them true, all of them real, and all of them, as children know, penetrating each other. The child in all of us knows this and knows about the givens.
On the subject of givens, whenever I'm looking for materials to make art from, I search for those unique materials that have special givens. Givens to me are those surface textures, perhaps the knot or the grain of a piece of wood. Aluminum has special surface properties and givens.
Some aluminum sheet has a scratch brush finish. Others may be perforated and scratched brushed.
How about some boiler plate? Most of us might look at this only from one side, but let's turn it over and see what's on the backside.
Does this pique your imagination? Sometimes if you're lucky, you may find some extruded plate.
Still another example of extruded plate.
Here are four pieces of aluminum bar stock. On this particular piece you can see the rolling or the line marks that go with the aluminum.
On here we've cleaned off the surface marks by using a scotch brite, as you might use in your kitchen. And on the last two pieces, this would be raw aluminum as you would buy it in the hardware store.
Now you might notice on this one piece that there are a few marks here and there are little scuff and damage marks that took place either in the factory or perhaps in the shipping or the stacking in the hardware store.
But when you pick out your aluminum, I would look for lines or textures or givens, those special things that would help to be springboard ideas for what you would like to do with your art.
Some of you who may be watching this video are probably purists. You use tools in the way you were taught and that's probably the right way.
But I've discovered over the years that there are tangent ways to use the tools. It may look wrong to you, but in my opinion, if you're not hurting yourself, the piece you're working on, the tool, or other people around you, then it must be okay to use the tool a certain way.
If you happen to be underage and you're watching this video and you try some of these special methods, make sure that you have an adult with you so if something goes wrong, you can always blame it on them.
These are some of the tools that we're going to be working with.
Here are a few of my favorite hammers, the rawhide mallet, some cross-beam raising mallets, and down here you'll find some watchmakers rivet hammers.
And of course my favorite is the cross-beam raising hammer that you see here.
Throughout all of the times that I work with aluminum, I try to use as many of these hammers as possible and I hope that you will find with your work variations on the same tools.
Here is a farrier's rasp and a tapered round file. We'll use these in both an orthodox and unorthodox way.
I really enjoy stamping, chasing, chiseling, and engraving.
Here we see some chisels and we're going to be working the chisels with chasing hammers and possibly even putting a few textures on with this small ball peen.
So far you've seen some aluminum with a few gibbons and some tools and now it's time for action.
Let's work with the cross-beam raising hammer first.
I like the way the aluminum flows between the action of the hammer and the anvil.
I know, I know, my anvil is not very polished.
We were concerned that there might be a problem with reflection in the video.
Not really, I was just too lazy to clean it up.
Notice how nicely the aluminum is moving and spreading out.
I think I've always been in love with the implied texture that the hammer provides on the surface of the metal as a sandwich between the anvil and the hammer face.
Here are two samples that I forged earlier.
And this is the one that we just finished.
Now you could leave the texture as it is, planish it out, go back over it and make the texture smaller but being careful not to thin out down the metal too much.
If you notice the difference between the surface finish of the piece on the left more than the right, the piece on the left is anodized stock that's been forged.
So I've actually thinned out the oxide layer.
I might possibly put this in the caustic and strip off some of that initial oxide layer and then see what sort of over-dying I could do with that.
I recommend that you play with this possibility.
Cross-peen raising hammer on perforated sheet or screen.
Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.
Bertold Brecht.
Notice how as the hammer squishes the aluminum there's a wonderful distortion of those round holes and it gives us an opportunity to create a different sort of finish.
And here are your results.
Small cross-peen hammer on aluminum angle.
I'm holding this on a sheet of masonite with Formica over the top and this will leave a nice clean surface on the underside of the aluminum.
First of all it certainly helps a lot if you hit the metal.
I'm upsetting this rather heavily and what I would like to do is to come up with a nice evenly upset edge.
And I'm hoping here that I can come up with something that provides me with a texture that's pleasing and at the same time could give me an interesting effect if I anodize it.
This piece has been anodized and it's anodized clear and that's why you see the lighter surface.
Be certain to take the option of working with both anodized and unanodized aluminum.
Here's the finished sample alongside a similar piece that hasn't really been hammered as much as cut with a jeweler saw to expose the raw aluminum.
Since both pieces are anodized, any areas that have the oxide coating removed would be reanodized if put in the electrolyte and only those areas would take color.
This is a nice way of leaving a background of silvery aluminum versus whatever surface texture and exposed area of aluminum you create that will then be anodized, dyed, and sealed.
Here are those two Watchmakers ribbon hammers I showed you earlier.
One of these is the end with a flat space as you can see that's reflecting the light on the left side of the screen.
The other hammer has been filed down or worked down to almost a point so it actually almost looks like a cutting tool.
And we're going to use these two things on the next sample.
Watchmakers rivet hammer with sharp edge.
Watchmakers rivet hammer with regular face.
You can tell that there's a real difference in the sound of this hammer over the one that we modified. It's giving a broader flat flaring.
And certainly one of the fun things about tools is being able to modify them to put your signature on top of whatever the original manufacturer made.
And who knows, who's to say that their original tool was correct. It's really fun to be able to change the tool so that your tool gives a type of signature that you would prefer to have.
Each hammer creates its own personal signature. And as you add the creativity of the person wielding the hammer, those signatures can change with the imagination.
Let's use the hammer the wrong way.
Have you ever thought about using the edge instead of hitting it straight on?
Well, it's a possibility. Let's flip the hammer over.
You've probably done this by accident one time or another, and it does provide you with another type of variation on a theme.
Try it. You might enjoy it.
And here are the results.
How about that for misusing the hammer?
The stock Watchmakers rivet hammer.
Let's try the same thing and flip it over.
It seems to be denting the metal quite a bit more.
It pays to experiment and find out what's possible.
After all, we can't make any breakthroughs if we continue to use everything in what's the norm. What is the norm anyway?
Where is norm?
And here are the results of using the hammer that hasn't been modified the wrong way.
The horse shoe rasp and the rawhide mallet.
That's not a bad texture for laying a rasp on a piece of metal, is it?
You're using it the wrong way, but it works.
Here's some real misuse of a file. I have a piece of aluminum tubing that's being supported by a wooden dowel, and by wrapping over the surface of this tubing,
I can come up with an interesting kind of a textural finish very carefully using the file, as I might use a hammer with a texture on it.
And I think you're going to like the results of this.
The results.
And for you purists, we'll use the file in the correct way.
I've got that same large round file, and I'm just going to lay on some texture.
The more you start doing things like this, the more you begin to be maybe really spontaneous to the point of almost feeling like you're going out of control.
Or you can be very deliberate and cautious, and you can make the file marks all go in the same direction.
Here's a tapered square file, and with this one, we might try some different angles and just see what sort of a texture we can build up.
You could, again, be very spontaneous and just kind of work over that surface.
And just let some things happen.
I know you're supposed to pick the file up and file, but if you glide gently over the top of the metal, you can come up with new finishes that you've never made before.
How about with a small needle file?
Long cuts.
Really biting into that aluminum.
And of course, whatever the background finish is that you had on your metal, be it polished or be blasted, the filing is going to give you a very nice contrast.
Consider being more spontaneous with your tools, whether you use them the right way or the wrong way.
But consider spontaneity.
Have you ever wanted to take a couple of knives and do something strange with them?
Well, now is your chance.
So let's go down and put some texture on this piece of metal.
First off, position the knife on top of the metal and let's give it a few hits.
Try some overlapping surface textures if you'd like.
We're just using the very gentle end of the tip.
Get violent if you want, but in a creative way.
Have some fun with this.
Here we see a stainless steel serrated edge knife and we're doing the same kind of an activity where we're giving it a real good hit with a rawhide mallet, doing some overlapping and trying to come up with some textures.
That would be very different from any other kinds of things that you may have worked with.
You may have had these things around and you simply wanted to try them out.
I would recommend a stainless steel knife because there's less chance of it breaking or shattering.
But this is the potential for those of you who would like to have some different kinds of surfaces.
And here's what the craziness with the two knives created.
I would caution you to be very careful if you try this because you don't want your blade to shatter.
But it does provide you with a very, very interesting texture.
Practice is the work one must do to enjoy the process.
Wouldn't you agree?
I hope that from the surface variations that you've just seen that your imagination and the possibilities that you might do with your metal are peaked.
But let's look at a few more possibilities.
While you were away at the break watching the rock thing, I did a little bit of work on one of the samples.
And one of the interesting things about thinning out the aluminum is the potential forming that takes place.
And I hope that you consider that as you're working on your metal.
I'd like to take us to a couple of close-ups of not only the surface you're looking at now, but the back of this piece.
I'm working on a rusty anvil and the back of the metal is picking up the texture of that anvil surface.
And I think one thing to consider is do you want to work your metal on a completely smooth, shiny piece of iron or steel?
Or would you prefer perhaps to stay with something more textural so that the back of the piece has that different type of integrity?
Here you see three different surface finishes on a flat piece of aluminum.
On this area, we worked it with an electric grinder wire brush combination machine as seen on page 85 in my book.
Now the pattern in the book differs from the one that you see here and then we tried some overlapping grinding.
As you come over to the center, you'll see the original scratch brush or wire brush finish of the aluminum.
And then over here we have a surface that's been cleaned up or smoothed out using an everyday scotch brite.
I know what some of you are thinking and you're right.
It's not a good idea to have your metal bouncing around while you're trying to work on it.
And so I'm borrowing an idea from Marilee Tompkins.
I once saw her doing a really interesting demonstration where she just masking taped the piece down so that she could drill some holes.
So here we've connected the aluminum to the anvil.
And there are times when perhaps you'd like to use a hammer and you don't feel comfortable about striking like this and getting the marks to be in just the right position.
So what you would do would be to use the two hammer technique where you place the head of the hammer where you'd like the dent to be.
And then strike with whatever amount of force you have to use with the rawhide.
And I found that this works really well for the exact positioning of the type of texture you might want to have.
Here's that Watchmakers rivet hammer that we modified with a real sharp point.
And let's try using it, say, on an angle like this.
This almost makes little things that look like raindrops.
Or we could lay it down flat.
And we get some kind of cuts which we could then perhaps overlap.
And we could turn it over and gently strike.
And then we'll move to a small cross-peen hammer.
It occurred to me that another interesting texture might come from just a piece of mild steel.
This is some square bar stock about 3 eighths of an inch across and what we might do is kind of hit it on an angle.
And this looks somewhat but not quite as sharp as the Watchmakers rivet hammer.
Perhaps another thing to do would be just to use it as a stamp, stand it up, and give it a real smart hit.
I always wondered why people say a smart hit. You probably wouldn't use a dumb hit.
Now, the end of this piece of bar stock has a texture to it.
And the texture is being imparted very nicely onto the surface.
Well, I'm sure from watching this that you can come up with many variations and I hope you will.
And here are the results of the work we've just completed.
Notice the nice reflection that you get from those nicely polished tools.
The duller finish tool, that piece of square bar stock that we worked on, is much more matte in appearance.
I really like chasing and stamping and I thought we'd set up a little demonstration
so that you could see what would happen if you were using some stamps on a piece of aluminum that has a polished surface
and a couple of different matte surfaces.
Now, one thing to think about with the chasing tools or your stamps is that why do the faces of the tools have to be perfectly polished?
One of the really interesting contrasts that you can create is when, for instance,
you have a polished surface using matte stamps or matte chasing tools.
Or how about having a shiny tool being pressed or stamped into a matte surface?
Remember that when you're anodizing, the more texture you have, the darker the value of the color.
So let's say that you've got a high polished surface and you use a matte stamp over some section of the piece.
After it's anodized and dyed, you will find that the high polished areas will be very bright in value
while the matte areas will be a little bit darker and it will look like a different value of, let's say, red or blue.
So what we've got is a contrast that happens automatically without having to use two different strengths of dyes
or leaving the piece and the dye a little bit longer.
Here we have two pieces of aluminum.
One that has a surface finish that's been worked with a sander grinder or the grinding machine,
high polished in the middle, and over here worked with the Scotch-Brite.
The other piece is simply worked with Scotch-Brite and is matte in surface.
Have you ever considered, if you wanted a slightly more gentle blow to the tool,
that you would use the rawhide mallet as opposed to using the chasing hammer
or perhaps the ball peen?
Sometimes it's nice to stamp with one stamp and then come back and put another one right over the top.
Notice the difference in the sound.
And sometimes you may stamp in deeply enough that depending on the shape or the cut of the stamp,
it will actually stand up and hold itself in the metal.
Let's see what it does....
and so on.
Can you feel the texture?
See the depth that some of the stamps went into the aluminum?
The surface that we work it on,
be it polished, matte finished, sanded, filed, etc.,
bead blasted, really makes quite a difference.
Some of the stamps were dull and give a dull stamping.
Some were polished and leave a nice signature of a polished tool.
I know some of you purists are really irritated that I've been working on a rusty anvil.
And so just for you, we have improved the working surface.
When you work with your chasing tools or your stamps,
some of you might think that those tools are only used on a flat, broad surface.
And that the only way that you could put any kind of texture on the edge of a piece of metal,
as in this case a bracelet, would be to use a cross-beam hammer or a hammer whip,
a fairly wide enough face to be able to do the work.
Well, I'm here today to tell you that you could use your chasing tool as a texturing tool
and give you surfaces that you couldn't have imagined with any other tool.
So, let's get started.
I don't know about you folks, but I've been sitting here working at this anvil for a little bit too long.
My muscles are getting to be a little sore and I feel cramped.
So let's get up and walk over and do a little work at the vise.
And because of time limitation, we're going to have to eliminate the engraving segment.
I like textures, textures in the work that I do, the texture of the objects around me,
and the texture of my food.
I like the knurled jaws of the vise.
Some of you have probably had problems with these jaws at one time or another
when they're actually putting a texture on your metal, or you've used the efficiency of this texture
to hold on to objects and keep them from moving around,
like perhaps stakes or pieces of wood that you put in the vise.
I've prepared a piece of aluminum that's polished on one section
and worked with a Scotch-Brite on the other.
And what I would like to do is make one of those mistakes that we probably all made
where we put the metal in the vise and forgotten to have some copper protectors.
And then you take your piece out and you say, oh my gosh, where did that damage come from?
So I'm going to texture a few spots of this piece of aluminum.
Many of the things I've been showing you I've found out from my own rude experience
where I've actually made a mistake and then said, well, it doesn't work on this piece,
but it's a really nice thing that we might show later.
And here are the results.
The matte side panning across to half matte, half shiny, and a little reflection of the camera.
So do you have any new considerations of how you might want to use the knurled faces of your vise jaws?
I've prepared another sample that's half polished.
You can see some of the lines from the original mill finishing on the aluminum on the one side.
And it's been Scotch-Brited on the other side.
We're going to be doing some chiseling.
And I must admit, most of what I've learned about doing the chiseling
comes from my friends Gene and Hiroko Pijanowski.
I thank them very much for all the information and inspiration they have provided for me.
And the tool that I'm going to start out with is a Kibore Tagane.
If you're interested in seeing some really good step-by-step photos of chiseling,
be sure to check in Opie Untrock's new book, The Big Fat Book, for 70 bucks.
And Gene and Hiroko have a nice demonstration in there.
I have a couple of other tools I'd like to work with.
This is just basically a round graver that I made with some nail stock
that has enough carbon in it to be able to harden it.
And instead of having to push, I have the effect of the hammer
driving the chisel through the aluminum.
And I'm just going to do you a few little samples here.
And then we'll go to a detail and you can see what sort of things we've done.
Right now I'm lifting up some fairly large burrs.
And eventually I can come back and hammer them down or I can leave them standing.
And here are the results of some of our chiseling.
One interesting aspect to your work is that once you have some burrs,
like we have in this area here, you could come back with a small hammer
and gently flatten down the sharp edge of the burr.
One last look at this one and another sampler I've just located.
And finally, have you considered taking your chiseling tool or your stamp
and working it close to the edge so that the edge is displaced,
thus creating a variation on an edge?
The art of racking is almost as important as the art you're racking.
The physical connection of the aluminum to the object that's going to carry the current
through the electrolyte is a critical factor for your anodizing.
Here you see two examples of commercial anodizing racks.
The rack on the left is all aluminum, while the rack on the right has a titanium-clad rod
attached to a bronze hook, and on the bottom are titanium notch-tipped fingers
that in this shot are holding onto disks.
This portion of the aluminum rack is a brand new section,
and as we go down to the next piece below, you will see a noticeable difference
between the thickness of the aluminum on this section and on the section that's on the bottom.
Here the aluminum is the standard thickness as you buy it,
and as the pieces are anodized and eventually taken off
and then you would have to strip off the oxide coating on these fingers,
we would eventually lose thickness of aluminum.
So that's one basic problem for working with aluminum racks.
On the used rack section, you'll notice how some of the notch-tipped fingers are very bent
or have lost their springiness, they're unsprung in other words,
and they're also less than half as thick as the notch-tipped fingers on the top.
The titanium rack on the right would last for almost forever.
We find that the color of the titanium would change as the electricity goes through,
much like in the anodizing of titanium for jewelry,
and what we have here is again a thought about whether you want to use an aluminum rack
or a titanium rack, the cost of one versus the wearing out of the other
might be considered in your eventual purchase.
One of the really fun things about going to visit aluminum anodizing companies
is when you get down to sitting and talking about the kind of work that you do
and I show some of my jewelry, I find the anodizers always looking very carefully
to find out if they can figure out just exactly how the parts were racked.
They look for those telltale markings, and I always chuckle and smile a bit
when I find that they can't find them, and it makes me feel real good
because I kind of fooled them, and I suppose it's like potters trying to fool someone
so that you can't figure out how they racked it up
when they put the piece in the kiln to fire it.
So one of the joys of my life is trying to figure out how to rack each piece
so that I can get the current to flow properly, so I can handle the object,
and so that if I have to do a special kind of dying, I have all the options open to me.
Now one thing about those commercial racks that we just looked at
is that to a certain extent they're limited,
so I'd like to show you now a more custom type rack that you can make.
Here's a custom rack in the perpendicular position
because you would see it if it would be clamped or somehow attached to the bus bar.
Earlier in the presentation you saw this aluminum cookie cutter.
This is the type of rack structure that would hold on to it.
The rack is compressed, slipped inside of the cookie cutter,
or whatever the shape happens to be,
and the tension of the rack holds the object in position.
Here's a titanium spring clip, you can see it opening and closing,
and now we'll grasp onto this piece of aluminum.
Same type of connection, only slightly smaller.
It's a titanium wire that has a kind of a springy quality to it.
Another variation on the titanium wire with a kind of a springy quality to it.
Here's another example of a kind of a sprung connection.
Here's a page from the Volcanium Corporation catalog on titanium racks.
Notice the wonderful insertions of materials that they're holding onto,
allowing your imagination to show you how these parts would be used to rack your special items.
Here are two aluminum bracelets
that have already been anodized,
but what I've done is to recreate the exact way the single rack wires were connected to each bracelet.
The rack wires were made from knitting needles, aluminum knitting needles obviously,
and I put them in the approximate position that we had when I first anodized these.
For this particular bracelet, I brought the pointed part of the rack wire in through from the back of the hole on top.
On this bracelet, the rack wire came in from the backside of the hole again on this hole at the top.
The rack wire is pushed through from the backside of the hole,
and you kind of wiggle or ram or ream you choose the wire into the hole
so that you have a firm connection and that the piece can be held by the rack wire.
The same is true for this bracelet.
Again, showing the very firm connection so that you can hold onto it, hang it around a little bit, swing it,
and the rack is connected firmly to the bracelet.
With a long taper on the end of the rack wire,
you'll be able to assure that the dye will penetrate the hole, since this is the front of the piece,
and there will be consistent color in the areas that are seen by the viewers.
Simply stated, the process of anodizing aluminum is an electrochemical treatment that converts the aluminum surface to an aluminum oxide.
Anodizing provides a protective and abrasion-resistant film, or porous oxide layer, that may be left clear or dyed for decorative effects.
The two principal types of anodic oxide films are seen in this illustration. This is the barrier type coating,
and the porous type coating that we're doing in our aluminum anodizing.
I'll be showing you a slide of this same view of an aluminum oxide in a later slideshow.
For you chemistry fans, I thought you'd enjoy reading the anode, cathode and complete cell reaction.
The schematic diagram of an anodizing cell.
This is the organization of my tanks.
I like working left to right, thus the arrangement of the tanks.
Here's my anodizing outfit. I have all of my tanks mounted on a stainless steel countertop.
It's attached to some legs and some casters so I can roll it around.
The arrangement is exactly like the illustration you've just seen.
I have my power supply directly behind the electrolyte, an ammeter,
and as you work your way across the top of the bench, you can see all of the tanks.
I have plenty of storage underneath, and we'll come in on some detail shots just to bring everything into focus.
Degreaser, degreaser rinse.
I could be using caustic etch, going to the caustic rinse, into the nitric etch or desmutter,
down into the nitric rinse, coming up again with another water rinse before we put the piece into the electrolyte,
which is underneath that plastic lid. The objects would then be anodized.
Afterward, coming out and going into first one water rinse, and then a baking soda rinse, baking soda and water,
one more water rinse to take care of the baking soda, and an additional water rinse after that.
In case you're curious up here, I've got some east-west DICOM fiery red and yellow dye in a couple of containers.
And this handy little item that you've seen in the book is just a really great idea for squirting water
into those areas to remove all of that dye or might have electrolyte that you'd like to get rid of.
Well, that's the setup.
And we'll be doing some anodizing next.
Be careful. Be cautious.
Be serious.
Wear the proper protective foot gear.
Rubber boots with steel toes will keep you from getting electrocuted and will protect your toes in case you drop something on your foot.
Wear the proper protective apron, something that will keep acids and other chemicals and dyes from getting on your clothing and on your skin.
Wear the proper protective gloves.
Keep the chemicals and other acids and dyes from affecting your skin and becoming part of your body.
I don't usually do product endorsements, but I've found this brand of gloves to be very good.
Wear the proper protective splash impact goggles. Make sure they fit your face very well. This will keep chemicals and other liquids from harming your eyesight.
My friend and I are both wearing protective goggles.
I recommend you wear these whenever you're working.
There is a difference between mine and my friends. My goggles have no holes in them.
My friend's goggles have holes, thus allowing chemicals and other liquids to come near your eyes.
How important is your eyesight?
Wear the splash impact goggles. Your safety counts.
Sometimes you may have a piece of aluminum and you're not quite sure if it's anodized or not.
You could use the multimeter to test the surfaces to find out if it's anodized, because remember when a piece of aluminum is anodized, it is in fact an insulator.
The red segment on the screen has been anodized and dyed red. The portion in the middle is not anodized, and the section in the upper right is anodized clear but not dyed.
First of all, set the multimeter by turning the switch from off to omega times 1,000.
To test the multimeter to see if it's working, take the black and the red positive and negative leads and touch them together. You should see the meter have movement.
Anodized. Unanodized. Unanodized. Anodized.
Here are a series of pieces that have already been repaired with rack wires and they're hanging in the degreaser.
Rinse well to remove all traces of soap or degreaser.
Let's remove the oxide layer from a previously anodized piece of aluminum.
The bubbling means etching or cleaning is taking place.
Remove the aluminum from the caustic etch. Rinse thoroughly.
The etched area.
And now for the nitric etch or desmutter.
Upon immersion into the nitric etch, you should see the smut fall away. If it doesn't fall away immediately, it will eventually be dissolved away.
As you can see, that grayness has totally disappeared.
And now for the nitric rinse.
Make sure to move the pieces around. Be fluid with this motion to rid yourself of all of the chemical because one of the biggest problems in anodizing is the dragging in or the dragging out of chemicals.
And I'm going to pick up another piece very quickly here to reinforce the thought of if you had an object like the one that we just cleaned off, make sure that you move it around a lot.
If it has a lot of texture on or holes, move it under that surface. Really get some energy movement into it so that you can eliminate any chemicals that might be taken on to the next tank.
My tank setup is exactly like we've shown you in the book. We've got a five gallon bucket filled with sulfuric acid electrolyte.
There are two lead plates. We've got a copper bus bar. And this is the object that we've been showing you so far.
We'll carefully bring it down over the bus bar so you get a nice firm connection.
And for those of you who are wondering, yes, the power is turned off at this point. I always make sure that whenever I'm going in or coming out of the tank that the power supply is turned off.
A spring clamp is attached to the rack wire and bus bar.
Beware of the reaction between the sulfuric acid, the fumes that come from the acid, and the copper because the buildup that you see on the surface of the bus bar will not allow the current to flow.
Here's an alternative to the racking we've shown you already. Instead of having commercial racks that grab on to the piece or the homemade kind that penetrate through, we might actually drill through from the edge.
So there is no hole. Well, there is a hole. It's a blind hole as opposed to being a solid or a complete negative. That's very confusing, isn't it? I know you're all sitting out there chuckling.
Anyway, I think you get the idea.
And now through the magic of video, one item becomes many.
This is a Schumacher brand battery charger.
It's for 12 volt only. It has a small DC amp meter over here, which is not really very reliable, but we'll show you how that works.
It has a setting for 10 amp battery charge, and that's really what we're most concerned with. Parts of the switch would be the off and the 10 amp battery charge. Now as I begin the anodizing, if you look at the meter, you will see it jump as the anodizing begins.
Now in order to show you this on a more realistic amperage, we're going to give you a couple of details.
On the more accurate amp meter, once we turn on the power supply and we're reading the bottom scale, you will see that we're drawing about 2.25 amps with a battery charger that has a capacity of 10. So we're really not overworking this charger at all.
As the power is turned on, we'll look and see if we can see any gassing.
You can see the hydrogen gas being developed from the lead. Current is now flowing through the electrolyte, and the anodizing has begun.
Look very closely, and you can see the reaction of the lead sheet on this side, or the cathode. Remember the lead sheets are the cathode. The pieces that we have hanging from our copper bus bar are the positive. They're anodic, and therefore the term anodizing.
I always find this part of the anodizing rather exciting because you can actually see some kind of motion or movement going on inside of the tank.
Well, we're going to let this happen for about a period of an hour, and I think what we ought to do is go to a slideshow.
Yes, indeed.
The question is, why go bald?
Here you have how I sometimes work, where I'll have an odd shape, cut out one form, and then maybe develop three more from that.
I'm working here to try to get the maximum amount out of one piece of metal, and here you see four pieces, and then magically transformed into the final pieces after they've been anodized and a few other parts have been added.
I find it critical to push my material as far as possible.
Here's a piece of angle that's been flattened out, forged, and polished, and the second piece is already waiting sort of in the wings or still with the connection, and then it is pulled away, and we make another piece.
Here's that shot from the book that shows you the oxide layer and the interface.
I think it helps us to look at very odd things, to find the best possible places to get ideas, to think about color, texture, pattern, to find those things that are out and about, the things that are everywhere that we really don't take the time to look at.
We really don't slow ourselves down to notice the wonderful forms that are everywhere.
Now of course you can't identify with everything that you look at.
Some of you maybe are more organic, so this type of form is not interesting to you.
But it's important to slow down, to look at the shadows, the textures.
See what people have done on a two-dimensional scale to look like 3D, or to make it look like it's 3D.
How about those old Zenith radios, those FlashGuardians RKO things, the textures that are around us, man-made, or perhaps made by wonderful portions of nature, such as dew on a spiderweb with the sunlight shining through.
It adds its own bit of zest and special quality.
Perhaps it's how you focus.
What do you look for in the images around you?
Do you look at the shadows that are cast?
Can you identify with the mechanical nature?
Or the paint that's worn away?
Gives you ideas for how you might dye a piece of anodized aluminum?
Here's that boilerplate, but made of iron.
A big drip sign.
Do you know which direction you're going?
I'm simply fascinated by signs, and often what happens is they paint over a building.
Here's a wonderful sign for the band box cleaners in Toledo, Ohio.
You'll notice how everything is held very firmly within that framework around the gentleman, except for the band box, or the hat box, which actually moves outside of the picture plane, and the box itself is quite three-dimensional.
I think that's kind of an interesting aspect of this sign and many that you might find in your community. And as it moves off to the right, we hope that whatever replaces it is equally as interesting or mentally stimulating.
Oh, I see we have something coming down from above. Well, that's good, too.
And it looks as if it's going to be a dead end? I doubt that. We're probably just going to slide into some other portion of this workshop.
We're not sliding very fast, are we? Well, hang on.
Fairly soon, the anodizing will be completed, and it is time that we start thinking about color. This is the Sandoz dye chart.
The part that I find most exciting is as it gets close to the time when the anodizing is completed, is to begin thinking about the color or colors that I'm going to use.
I could use the dye straight as it is, or I could mix.
One thing I discovered when I started doing the anodizing is that I really didn't know anything about color. I've learned more about color since I've mixed color with the dyes on the aluminum.
I recommend that you buy one of these inexpensive color charts to help you figure out where you can go with your colors.
And in order to give you a few more thoughts about color, we're going to go back for another slideshow.
Nature provides us with such an incredible palette of color, and it gives us a visual directory that we can draw from day after day, no matter what the season.
I suppose spring and summer are my favorites, but the colors that are available to us are just outstanding.
Have you taken the time to look at some of the color in the nature around you?
Have some of these ideas helped spawn ideas for paintings or some anodizing that you've already done, or maybe some future anodizing?
Perhaps the time of day is also important. Early morning light, harsh noon overhead light later in the afternoon, and sunset light.
Perhaps the colors that are in the non-nature area and walk down the aisles of your store.
You get some ideas from looking at some of this stuff, or does it remind you of something you don't really like to do, but you've got to do it occasionally so you can wash your clothes or eat.
No, it's not an Andy Warhol piece. It's just looking at all of those cans, thinking about their color, or fruits, or vegetables.
Some are ripe, some are trying to get ripe.
The next time you're in the store, take a closer look at all of the color.
I think you might be amazed at what's underneath your nose almost all the time.
Or how about this from a very old building, and you can see some of the old signs that have been painted on the brickwork.
From Vienna, the Karlsplatz.
Colors, textures, patterns, images.
If you don't like these colors, imagine them or imagine the shapes in your favorite colors.
It seems like no matter where you turn your head, whether your eyes are open or closed, there should be ideas floating around.
Images, forms. How might you use this color?
What if you put that texture on? Would that help to change the color?
Are we looking close enough at the things around us? Sure, you're getting real tired of hearing that.
But I'll bet the next time you go out, you'll notice things a little bit more than you may have in the past.
Simple pleasures.
The isolation of the eyes on specific forms.
Getting in very close.
Well, it's time for us to find our way out.
Here's a quote from Ernie Watts, a jazz musician on eliminating confusion.
He says, I am a studio musician who plays jazz rather than a frustrated jazz musician who lowers himself to do studio work.
Are you a studio artist who makes jewelry rather than a frustrated jeweler who lowers himself to do production jewelry?
And you'll notice that the amperage is now about 2.5 amps.
It's now time to turn off the power supply and get to some dyeing.
Make sure to leave as much electrolyte in the tank as possible. Drip a little bit before you put it into that first rinse.
Be sure, as I mentioned before, to move the piece around a lot in your rinse waters.
Always stir up your baking soda and water because baking soda has a nasty tendency to settle out.
And you'd like to make sure that it's mixed into the water before you put in your pieces.
Baking soda rinse, water rinse after the baking soda, and our final water rinse before we proceed to the dyeing.
Oops, there's always those darn things that you forget.
And I want to slip this in real quick before we go to do some dyeing.
On this piece that we did all the chiseling on, I'd like to make very certain that there's no electrolyte in any of those chiseled areas.
So I'm using the chemistry wash bottle and squirting water to clean out any of those crevices that might be holding sulfuric acid.
And now it's time to go to dyeing.
During the dyeing, you're probably going to pick up a little bit of sound from my propane heater, so I thought we'd focus on that.
And also to mention, if you time your anodizing and all of your processes the best way possible,
you start your propane heater, giving you just enough lead time so that as you pull your pieces out of the dye, you're ready to go immediately to the ceiling.
This is my propane heater, and I have a stainless steel container with kind of a foil lid, and we'll talk more about this later.
Let's go to some dyeing.
Don't forget to use your chemistry squirt bottle if you have to, to clean out some of the areas where the dye may be sticking on textured surfaces.
This will eliminate contamination as you move from dye to dye.
Let's go into the red dye first.
Now, one thing that you might want to work with, and I'm working these dyes cold,
I like my dyes so that I can use them and get the most color out of them.
As opposed to using them hot, where I have instantly, I'll be going to the color that you see on your color chart.
Now, here's a kind of a pastel.
Actually, if I had left it in there just a little bit shorter period of time, I would have much less color.
But here's one thing we might consider doing is going in here and kind of moving it up and down, or putting only half of it in.
If you want solid color throughout the whole piece, you simply hang it in there over the edge.
Or, depending on the length of the object, you may be able to use the bamboo rod, but you can see that this one is just a little too long.
So I'm just going to hang that over the edge, and we'll leave it in there a little bit longer.
Actually, we'll kind of use this as a stirring stick also.
You can actually stir the dyes with the piece.
And as you probably noticed when you use your knitting needles, there is a different alloy in the knitting needle than the object.
And frequently you get the color you really wanted on the knitting needle and not on the piece that you're anodizing.
Look at how much richer that color is now.
See if we can get the light to bounce off that a little better.
I'm going to leave that one in there and grab another piece that I have ready.
I think this time we'll go into some yellow, and let's just put this in and loop it over the edge.
We've got this piece right here that I showed you earlier that we rinsed off with a wash bottle.
And I think what we ought to do is we'll try a different shade of red that we have over here.
Kind of loop that one over the edge.
And we will come back to this one, rinse it off, and you can see an incredibly darker and richer color.
I think what we'll do is we'll just put that one back in.
I have one more piece, and I think on this one we will create a shade of purple.
Now usually with the purples, I'll go into the red first.
And we could go very pastel.
Let's see if we can get this one back to that pastel tone.
I just surprised myself with the one we're working on.
And if my voice dropped there for a moment, I had forgotten that on this particular piece,
the only exposed areas are the edges and a little portion on top.
And I don't know if I can even hold that to get a detail.
Let's stop.
Let's take the piece we just showed you the detail of, and we'll go back into the red,
we'll hang it on the little bamboo skewer, and we'll build up some more red,
and then we'll go to the blue and create a purple shade.
In the meantime, let's take a look at this yellow one that we started.
And you can see the yellow is somewhat pale.
I think we're going to hang that one back in there a little bit longer.
Let's go back to this guy.
And as you can see, it's getting very, very rich.
And I think what I'd like to do now is to take part of this
and to go into the blue and let's create a purple.
Now I've given myself a very good rinse.
And I think instead of doing the whole piece, I'm just going to play a little bit.
Kind of move it back and forth.
If you move your metal up and down, you'll create much more of an airbrush finish.
You won't have a straight line where the dye stops,
but you'll have a nice smooth transition between your new color
that you're mixing right on the piece and the red that you put on first.
Now I actually prefer to mix the color on the object, something like this,
than to take a little bit of red dye and a little bit of blue and mix it together.
Let's rinse it off and see what we have.
I hope you can see that there is a little bit of purple.
And it's got a really nice value to it.
We're going to go back in and kind of enrich that color.
I could just hold the very tip in and make it very, very dark or go in much further.
Okay, changed the purple to a little darker.
Let's move over to the rinse.
And here's what we've created.
Let's check that chiseled piece.
And as you can see, the color is really very rich.
Let's rinse it off and maybe give you a little better idea as to what we've done.
Let's take the piece that's only been anodized on the edges
while the rest of it remained silvery in tone.
We'll take it out of the red and we'll go over into the blue and create a purple.
In the meantime, I think we ought to check our yellow one, which is looking quite a bit nicer.
I'll tell you, in real life, these things look a lot better than they do on the camera.
I think what we'll do is we'll go in here and we'll try to create some kind of an orange.
And perhaps what we might do is just loop that over the edge.
Now let's see how the yellow one was doing and creating an orange.
I'll give it a very good rinse.
And there's our orange color.
I believe it's time that we put these in the sealer, so we'll move to that segment.
If you play with the control on your propane heater, you can bring the temperature to about 197 to 200,
keep the water from being a rolling boil, and control the heat so that you have very little evaporation.
Whenever you put your metal into the sealer, make sure that you plunge the piece into the water
and move it around so it gets as consistently hot quickly.
Now some of these pieces are a little bit longer, so I'm going to hook them over the side.
Again, make sure that you move the objects around.
We're going to hang a few of these from the bamboo skewers or hook them over the edge.
Again, as I mentioned in my book, it really helps if you can experiment a bit with the lengths of your wires,
rack wires of the piece, so that you know that you can hang the pieces securely in the sealer.
Now the last piece that we worked on is that purple one.
We've gotten a nice dark purple on the edge. I'll probably better show you this on the detail later.
Now sometimes when you have so many things in the sealer and you have rack wires sticking up,
it would help if you took some aluminum foil and put that down over the top.
That will keep the heat in and stop some of the evaporation.
If you're keeping the control of your propane heater just right, the temperature will remain at 197 to 200
and you'll have very little evaporation.
We're going to seal these pieces for a period of about a half an hour to 45 minutes
and then when we pull them out, they're either ready to wear, to use, or to construct with whatever other parts we've already made.
The final sealed piece.
Notice the two different rack wire connections.
Mineral oil applied to a soft cloth rubbed on the aluminum will enhance the color.
Do you remember this example we showed you earlier?
The piece was not clean and I have a greasy handprint that the dye would not adhere to.
Back view.
This is one of those first forging and texturing samples.
This is the backside showing the texture from the anvil.
This is the sampler with the Watchmakers rivet hammers where we upset the stock, creating a very nice texture.
Wire brush texture.
High polish.
Scotch-Brite finish.
Stamping or chasing on a Scotch-Brite finish, on high polished area, and finally on the wire brush area.
This is one of my favorite samplers that we did. This was the piece that was matte finished and polished and then put in the vise.
It was dyed turquoise and then towards this end I put it into a very dark blue.
This is our chiseled sampler.
Notice the richness of the texture.
This is a sampler you didn't see me work on, but nonetheless it's very similar to what you saw in the slideshow.
Pieces of angle that's been laid out flat.
Because we only exposed the very edges, the original clear anodizing took on just a slight purple shade.
The dark purple dyeing only took place on the exposed areas like the edges.
This was the sample that had the mill finish in the middle was Scotch-Brited over on this side and on the other side we used the wire brush,
which left a little bit of iron on the surface of the aluminum which caused it to dye a little bit darker.
Now if you remember, this was the piece that we put in the yellow dye and then in the red and we created an orange.
The two dyes were incompatible to each other and all of the red came off, saved just a little area right here.
So we've got this strange spotted effect. Now perhaps on a given piece that might be okay. I'm glad this was on a sampler.
In order to make a coil, some of the wire becomes the rack hook.
Have you considered when you're making a coil that a really interesting variation on that would be to flatten the coil out and then perhaps put a little bit of a curve to it?
Sometimes when you're anodizing, you don't use a rack at all, but you clamp the piece to the bus bar.
Let's use the multimeter and check the voltage traveling through the electrolyte.
Set the DC voltage at 50 volts.
Our voltage is 12 volts.
Here's an example of what you can do if you anodize the piece, rinse it, dry it off well, and then add some color or form or texture with felt permanent marking pens.
This piece of aluminum has been anodized and rinsed extremely well and dried off.
Now we're going to take a permanent marking felt tip pen and do some images.
Let's take a look at the results.
Here are two felt pens.
The one on the right side is a regular felt pen, a Magnum, and the one on the left is a smaller version of a Magnum, the one most of you probably work with, but there's been a section cut away, a little V groove.
First the Magnum.
And now the modified pen.
What we should have happening here is a couple of lines paralleling each other.
Additional colors were added, then we over-dyed with a red dye, leaving it in for a short period of time creating a more subdued red background.
And now before I leave on a well-deserved ride, let's go back to the slide room one more time.
I hope you've enjoyed the video, and happy anodizing!
I'd like to finish off with some slides of my work, some of which you may have seen in the book and maybe others that will be new.
The Tombstone series that I've been doing most recently, I feel, are some of the best pieces that I've ever done.
I think they embody the images and color and texture and pattern that I hope are true, and some very good art pieces that show a side of me that has nothing to do with being morbid, but using the tombstone as an image.
I like the colors and the textures and the patterns that I'm developing on the anodized or painted aluminum, and it's my hope that you as viewers will get some ideas from these.
Here's a more current piece.
Yes, art's okay.
I hope that you will defy mediocrity and push all of you into your work.
This has been a color by technicolor presentation,
and it is time to say goodbye and to go out and get on my Norton Fastback and to go for a ride.
So, this is the end. I hope you've enjoyed the entire video. It's been fun putting it together, and I thank you for watching.
When he's work he's done, he rides away.