Electroforming Experimentation



Yes, these beads are ugly.  They are just test beads.

  My latest experiments have been in electroforming.  If you're not familiar with the concept, it is a process that allows a layer of metal (copper in this case) to be "grown" on an object.  I have electroformed a variety of things in the past, but my main focus at the moment is successfully electroforming on some of my glass beads.  In a nutshell, it involves painting a design onto the bead with conductive paint, anodes, cathodes, a special electroforming solution, and hooking the whole thing up to a rectifier and doing actual science, baby.  (Yes, that was the most non-scientific explanation ever.  Sorry, this is not a tutorial.)

The picture above shows some of the electroformed pieces, nice and shiny as intended.  Sometimes things do go horribly wrong and they do not come out this way...and it gets frustrating.  The entire process is very fiddly, in my experience so far.  I've been playing with this off and on for over a year, and still haven't mastered it completely.  The beads in the photos here are deliberately chosen from my "ugly bead" pile as experiments.  I realize that some folks don't realize that people are willing to show the ugly things that we make, but here they are!  It's all part of the learning process.  No way was I going to sacrifice my nicer beads just yet.



With an added patina experiment.  Still ugly.

Part two of this experiment was to add a patina.  I have done other patinas, but hadn't yet tried a verdigris patina on the copper.  I had an actual patina solution somewhere around here, but it has grown legs and walked away, so I made my own.  (Thank you, google.)  Overall, even though the beads really are not aesthetically pleasing at all, I am very happy with the results.  (Remember, this was an experiment in techniques, not in attractiveness.) 

Next up will be testing the durability of the copper and the patina...

P.S.-- In case anyone feels the need to say, "Hey, you can't do it that way, it won't work," I'm aware of some of the design flaws of how some of this copper is applied.  (If you've done electroforming, you know exactly what I mean.)  It was done intentionally to test something.  Please don't yell at me through cyberspace. Thanks.  :)