You are most welcome.

It is great to find someone doing metal working and glass working, as well as carpentry. You are well rounded. Isn't it great fun to learn new skills and experiment? Metal working is an ancient skill going back well before 3,000 BC, bringing man out of the stone age.

I did metal sculpture and smaller art pieces, using brazing, silver-solder, arc-welding, gas-welding, oxygen-acetylene torch, benders, etc. (steel, bronze, copper, nickel, gold, silver, aluminum, brass). I was also an apprentice machinist for a year and did some really fun work with milling machines, presses, and lathes. Did you know that if you finish a steel surface smooth enough, it will stick like a magnet to other polished pieces. The atomic structures are so close together that you get cold welding (weak bond). So you can put pieces together without even welding.

I did some glass blowing. If my body hadn't been failing me so badly at the time, I would have pursued it as my passion. I wanted to go the Pilchuck Glass School (WA). The school is open once a year to the public, and it's worth planning (July 13) to visit and watch the glass workers doing their thing, if you are out here at that time of year. I know it is a long way for you to come. I have a large collection of glass art.

I also did some jewelry designing and casting in gold and silver (mostly rings--sand/lost wax molding & vacuum casting). I have done extensive carpentry work, but no wood art or furniture making.

Do you mostly work in shaping soft metals or do you also work in hard metals, and do welding? Do you have access to torches and an arc welder? Welding is not hard to learn for art purposes. Learning how to do it for high pressure vessels is another story. Welding, brazing and silver soldering were things I did all the time as an Engineer on tankers, as well as machining our own parts.

About posting my work, all of my metal work is long gone, although I may be able to find a picture of a piece. I did that kind of work mostly in the late 70's, 80's and early 90's. It was all sold or given away. I went to sea for a living back then and travelled light.

In the most recent years I have been too crippled to produce much. I am seeking permission to post some of my sold digital art. I have thousands of photos and no time yet to sift through them. We are getting a new camera very soon and it will make doing HDRI (High Dynamic Range) photos much easier, so I hope I will have new work to post eventually. So I will be posting stuff slowly, mostly odds and ends for now.

My typesetting for books, layout for advertising, brochures, etc, are things nobody would want to see, plus I would need permission (technically) to post to the general public.

Excuses, excuses, excuses, so much to do, so little usable time.

I am really happy to see guys like you not only keeping metal art alive, but also being a well diversifies artist willing to experiment in multiple media.

The best of luck,

Matthew

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I worship at the altar of creativity.