I make an ornament every year now and hand them out at Thanksgiving to friends and family. And mail some off too. If you haven’t, you should look up Chris Bathgate. He makes these futuristic machined sculptures that are extremely intricate. Even his prints are artwork. So he inspired me to take the ornament thing a little farther. In this one, the globe is 360 brass, caps and pintel are 304 stainless, and the ball ornament is 642 alum silicon bronze. The bronze colors up nicely in the oven after about 45 minutes. I stayed with a burnt orange and a bluish purple. Both look great. Cap and pintel are threaded and a pin locates the ball ornament. The ball ornament is actually round to within .0015". Could have done better but it’s an ornament. After milling the holes in the globe, the length shrunk by .003", I’ll have to factor that in next time. I used a mandrel I made to turn the globe.
The stainless steel pintel had to be done in two sections as it is 2.5" long. SS is tough, but bends somewhat easily when thin and trying to come up from center at the tip. Polished the reflection chamber and left the outside kind of a brushed finish. It’s fairly heavy so I’ll make a stand so it can be displayed on a shelf or table. Titanium globe next time?
