S is for Seeing It Through

Blogging for me, right now, is like breaking in a new pair of shoes.  They didn't hurt when I tried them on in the store, prancing in front of the foot mirror while tilting my ankle just so.  In fact, I rushed home and worked to incorporate them into my wardrobe - pants, skirts, dresses - to see just how great they would look with everything.  They didn't even hurt the first time I wore them.  But inevitably, my small toe would feel the pinch that tells me this is going to be work.

That brings me to the subject of today's post, "seeing it through".  The above picture is of a Superman emblem belt buckle I made (for my husband) as a student in the FIT program I mentioned in early post.  Most of my classmates had some kind of metalsmith experience, and all, it seemed, had mastered the art of soldering - one of the techniques I relied on to make said belt buckle.  Though we had to take a basic soldering class in our first semester, I just didn't get it.  Gas, oxygen, flux, solder - it just went over my head.  My instructor was a very accomplished artisan in his own right and didn't have time to wait for me to get it, so I coasted by on my charm and avoided soldering from them on. Then this...
The belt buckle project started as a normal lost wax project. 

A square slab of green carving wax

Finding references for the right shield and "s" shapes to apply to the wax

Because this was for my husband, the shield was imagined (briefly) as a heart!

After seeing my drawing, the instructor who assigned the belt buckle project suggested that, instead of carving one big wax, I should carve the shield and "s" separately and solder them together. What?! I can't do that, I thought. I can't solder this. I knew I could carve and smooth the waxes with some ease, but there was no way I was going to solder those things together.  Thankfully, a classmate offered to help me, and she did (later, to my disappointment, she would reveal herself to be the very definition of "a wolf in sheep's clothing").  In the open studio, She showed me how to place the solder bits, how to get the right flame going, how to heat up the heaviest piece before the lightest piece. 

Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc. After so much heat, the copper begins to show through.

Just when I thought we were all done, I realized I hadn't cut the bar to the size that would allow the buckle to sit comfortably at the waist.  That meant that I would have to reheat the buckle so that the bar would fall off, cut the bar to the right size, and then solder the bar back on.  No problem, right? Wrong.  In reheating the buckle, I not only caused the bar to fall off, but the "s" and the prong fell off as well.  I had to re-solder EVERYTHING! In hindsight, I can say that this all happened for a reason.  I went back to the open studio on my own, and after about 3 hours, finished my belt buckle. While I am grateful to my classmate for leading my soldering crash course, I am more grateful for the opportunity to see it through on my own.  What project or obstacle have you seen through?