Rotary Tooling

Quite a while ago we bought a rotary tool. Despite my excitement over now having one at my disposal, I didn't do anything with it. That's recently changed, as I now seem to pull it out all the time! Usually, this randomly occurs to me around 8:30pm on a week night, so I don't have "before" pictures of these projects.

Rotary tool with cutting and sanding attachments.

The first project I attempted was cleaning up this metal moose ornament. I got it in 2011 as a souvenir from Yellowstone, but when I pulled it out the next Christmas, the coating was flaking off and making a mess. I put off dealing with it because I was afraid it would make even more of a mess. For a sanding project, I would definitely recommend a mask, as I ended up with dust up my nose. I used a sandpaper tube attachment, and now all the flakiness is gone. However, while it's clean and smooth, it doesn't look very attractive, so I've still got to figure out what to do with it. A trip to Hobby Lobby is in order.

Next I trimmed about a 1/4" off the top of this pen tube. It was tapered and I wanted both ends to look the same. It's only a 1/4" in diameter, but I was concerned about using the rotary cutting discs because they look like really stiff circles of sandpaper; could they really cut anything? Turns out, they can, but it makes a bit of a mess if you are cutting through plastics, and I definitely recommend safety glasses to avoid getting bits in your eyes.

I've had this pen since I was a kid, and, even when it no longer wrote, I kept it because loved it. However, I still have no idea how I'm going to turn this tube into a useful memento.

Bronze Bouquet

This was one of my metals projects in high school. I don't think the flowers were part of the project. I decided to toss the flowers, which were likely an afterthought since they weren't filed very well at all, and keep the little vase, which for now is holding my favorite pen and pencil.

Blue Ring

I actually picked this stone to coordinate with my favorite t-shirts at the time, which is has now been happily reincarnated into a bag. I didn't do a very good job sizing the ring; it's so big I have to wear it on my thumb, and that was not the intent.

Shooting Stars

I had quite the celestial obsession in high school. The shooting stars medallion was one of my first metals projects. The planet came later on.

Bracelet

This bracelet is another project from my high school metals class. I absolutely love it.

Star Sapphire

This is my most favorite piece that I made in all of my metals classes. My mom had a star sapphire ring that I always loved, so I made one for myself. I love the star sapphire and I love the design. You can see the star a bit better in the second picture.

Enameled Dish

This dish is another project from my high school metals class. This was my first project using enamel, the chairs and tree came later. I use it to hold jewelry.

Enameled Christmas Tree

I made this tree for my mom for Christmas in my high school metals class. It is one of my favorite pieces.

Mini Metal Chairs

I made these little chairs in my high school metals class. I loved metals and spent all my study halls in the auto shop. I do not remember the inspiration for the chairs, but a couple us ended up making chairs and one on the ceramics students made a little room to display them in.