something simple in silver

[ptree]

Coleen, My shop is tin roofed and walled. The rafters are 4" diameter Boiler tube. I used ISO board insulation, recycled that was from a re-roof job on a comercial building. 1.5" (40mm) thick, and rigid. My tin is nailed down to wood nailers, so the insulation is nailed up between the steel boiler tube from the bottom. I don't know if the same type insulation is used in England, but this is the insulation that is used under rubber membrane roofing. I still need about 8 to 10 boards to complete. In my area, we see 98F and 98% relative humidity often in the summer, and often 20F in the winter with the odd drop to -20F.

Don't know if it made the News in your area, but we had a serious outbreak of Tornados last Friday, with the nearest about 12-15 kilometers north. That one leveled towns and was a killer, with 11 dead and hundreds injuried. We here at the house got extremely heavy rain, and strong wind, but nothing like the 175 Mile an hour of the tornados.

My house is a Techno-rustic, that I built. Creekstone up to the window bottoms, red brick to the top of the windows and red cedar board and batten above that. All shed style roofs with clestory walls and windows on the south to grab the sun. Set on a small holding of about 1.4 hectacres. The house sits in the forrest, with no other house to be seen in the summer. In the winter we get glimspes of the neighbors through the leafless woods. Often deer and turkeys on the lawn. In fact the deer here are a pest, as they eat anything like a veggie garden and many shrubs. But they can be tasty:) We are so overpopulated with Whitetail deer that we can only legaly take 13 or so a year!

If you were to look at a map of the US, and find Louisville Kentucky, home of the KY Derby, and look just to the north across the Ohio River you would see New Albany Indiana, I am in the only hills in Indiana in tiny Floyds Knobs just North of New Albany. Been here in this house since 1985. Had to add more bedrooms since my wife who stated firmly that she "would have one child, professional childcare and a career" found she rather liked children and gave me 4.
The baby is now 20. 3 still at home as they attend college locally.

[azurefire]

personally in my experience hot working sterling silver can be a bit iffy. its a hot short alloy so it can have a tendency to crack if overheated and can even due to the difference in its liquidus and solidus point it can break easily. fine silver( and 97% up) as well as the eutectic alloy of 72% forge quite nice as well as copper and some brass bronze alloys depending on the composition. also the copper content in silver makes it very liable to firescale so even annealing should be done with great care to prevent the need for depletion guilding later.so cold working was the best bet for a piece like this. if you want to finish it up to a shine you could get a matte finish by brass brushing or sand though 1200 grit on sand paper(3m's rocks) or my favorite tumble in steel shoot for a few hours and it will just shine