stakes | Eileen Moylan

Well I’m back form London with lots of inspiration and some new tools! As well as going to the Mindful of Silver exhibition I went down to Hatton Garden to pick up metal and tools. I had ordered a bossing mallet and a dome stake from HS Walsh which I collected. I had planned to pick up a sand bag too but they were the wrong size so I’m still on the hunt for a nice leather sandbag. Here are some photos of the bossing mallet and dome stake. The bossing mallet is used with a sandbag to give a bowl it’s initial domed shaped. The dome stake is used like other stakes to form or planish the metal over it. I have other domed stakes but this one is much higher, allowing me to get a deeper curve.

I’m working on some jewellery orders this week so I called down to Holts to buy some pearls. They have an amazing collection of stones. I was like a child in a sweet shop and ended up leaving with much more than I needed!

I had hoped to see some exhibitions for London jewellery week but I was a few days early so instead we went along to the Saatchi gallery. The Saatchi contemporary art gallery occupies a premises near Sloane Square and is made up of fifteen equally sized gallery spaces. I had never been there so it was great to see it for the first time. At the moment they have an amazing exhibition of sculpture ‘The Shape of Things to Come: New Sculpture’ the exhibition is made up of the work of twenty artists working in sculpture. It’s the first time the entire gallery has devoted the space entirely to three dimensional work.

German artist Dirk Skreber has two pieces in the gallery Crash 1 is pictured above. At first I was worried the cars may have come from actual crashes. Having looked him up afterwards I discovered that they were done in a vehicle testing factory where he ‘choreographed’ the accidents. Here’s what he had to say about the work.

“If you pass an accident and see a car like this, it’s occupied by tragic thoughts for the people that would be involved, and you might see blood. This work gives you an opportunity to see the things like in a dream. It’s clean and polished and abstract.”

Below are a few more photos I took at the gallery. There was no problem taking photos and the great thing was the gallery was free so if you find yourself in London I would definitely recommend a visit.

Copper Sulphate Chartes & Copper Sulphate Notre Dame, Roger Hiorns

Beethoven's Trumpet (with ear) Opus #133, John Baldessari

Riesen (Giants), Martin Honert, (and Me)*

*I’m not a tiny as I look in this picture they’re just particularly tall, 2.72 meters to be precise.

Before Christmas I bought a second hand set of stakes that were advertised in the Benchpeg newsletter.

The great thing about getting second hand tools is the price, the only downside is that sometimes they require a little work to get them cleaned up and ready to use. I spent a day over the holidays working on the stakes to bring them back to life.

The spoon stakes I got are nearly perfect and just needed a light clean and polish. The two larger domed and flat stakes and the smaller saddle stake have some rust that needed a bit of extra elbow grease.

In an effort to speed up the process I googled how to remove rust. There were a million and one suggestions but the few logical ones I tried like baking soda and vinegar made very little difference. Here are some photos of my stakes before and after and the restoration process in between.

I began by cleaning the stakes with steel wool and WD40 to remove the rust.

The next step was to use the polishing lathe and roughing out mop. Once the heads of the stakes were clean I gave them a final polish with the softer polishing mop.

To keep my lovely new stakes rust free I gave them a wipe of oil.
and here are my stakes all shiny and clean and ready to use.

London and the Saatchi

My New Stakes