dragon-breath

Stolen Art No.6 Nest, an interactive wall sculpture.

The Art piece was stolen from Shurgard Maastricht Noord whilst in their safe area.
Made of laminated African jade , Sugalite, Red Jasper, Black Onyx and Lapis Lazuli.
480 hours of work.
All for nothing.
Here is the only video I have of it running.

Home

Video of it running

More Jewelry Tutorials

The base and upright is made of laminated African jade , Sugalite, Red Jasper, Black Onyx and Lapis Lazuli.
I laminate these and all other laminations in this project with HXTAL, a resin that takes five days to harden and is impervious to UV and moisture.

This is the upright, trimmed on my diamond saw and in the first stage of carving.
A wobbler works on two flat surfaces sliding against each other like the gif.
So I carve it with some flat surfaces.

I use various Mizzy heatless wheels and also water cooled diamond wheels to form and carve my pieces.
I fill the ashtray with water and the dip my flex shaft motor tip in the water.
Sounds bad, I know, but the hand pieces last a long time and don't get clogged up, like I thought they would initially.

The fly wheel. I drill a hole and then I made a custom dop for my gem cutting machine.
Then I made it round, and after I had finished, I figured that it would be to light so I eventually laminated a silver section on it to give it more weight.

Sort of seeing how the thing will look with the flywheel reversed.

Dark side of the moon.

Laminating the silver disk onto the back of the fly wheel stones.
I had to add some silver, because otherwise the fly wheel would be too light.
I cannot for the life of me remember why I left that little triangle on the silver, but I know it must have had some purpose.

Making the crankshaft.
This was made out of Glossularite Garnet and Sugalite and a silver lamination to be able to attach the small end and center shaft.

I use a bulldog clip that I have weakened at the back to hold everything in place while the resin hardens.
The masking tape is there because if the resin bonds to the metal of the clip, it breaks the stone away.

I ground and bored the cylinder out of some clear Brazilian quartz. This was my second attempt. Lots of patience and a light touch was necessary.
I polished the inside with emery paper and water until it was smooth and clear and then I polished it with 50,000 grit diamond.

Then I also carved some designs on the cylinder because why not.

The 'cylinder head' was actually a amethyst laminated to a quartz top with a small fine gold ball inside.

I made a whole range of these stones, some faceted and some cabochon.
So I had this one lying around, so I thought why not?
Definitely the classiest cylinder head around.

Here the main components are ready for polishing.

Just stuck them together with office putty to see what it would all look like.

Front view.

Then I started carving the baby dragon.

Carve through the jasper into the Lapis lazuli.

Getting there.

Anyway, then I got hung up on other things and I forgot to take pictures until I started to do the dragon silver work. So basically, I made four dragon cut outs of 3 mm and then I grooved a channel into the body. So when the two bodies were soldered together, there was a 'tube' running through them to supply steam/air to power the motor.

Because the body was made of two separate pieces, I could also bend the wings outwards. I also made the piston and con rod into a dragon face.
The small end goes through the dragon's eye, if you look carefully.

The mommy and daddy dragons with the air supply pipes coming out of their mouths and also connected to the silver base.

I took a 2 mm ball frazer and grooved out a 'leather' look on the silver.

Then I covered it with gold foil, in the traditional gilding method.

It looked very cool, but it was to pale for my taste.

So I used some Liver of Sulfur to darken everything a bit.
The I polished it slightly back and stabilized it with resin a bit later in the build.

This was the bottom of the build.
The bent tube was this high pressure input and the small tube is the exhaust side. Makers stamp in the middle.

Then I forgot to take a whole truck load of pictures, but here are most of the components of the base.

Schpeckles, my cockatiel, just checking out my work.
He later told me it sucks.

The rest are just boutique pictures.

This is a close up of the bottom end.

The baby dragon has a Australian sapphire that I custom cut for this project.
The dragon legs are set with rubies and emeralds.

Close up of the base.
I think that this was a really cool technique that I will use in other projects.

Building the display box.

I use a UV resin.