Leaning Willow - Wire Tree Sculpture
10" X 9" X 9" Made with 24 and 26 gauge gold color wire. Planted on a 5 inch round base using sea sand and various size pebbles. The sea sand is painted in yellows and greens using India ink to look like moss covered earth.

I made the maple leaf after Quercus Rubra and one of my sisters suggested adding another brass oak leaf to it, a mixed metal thing, and so I did. See more of my work at: www.photobucket.com/mark-gallo

Ok, so I'm trying to join a few bits of hammered brass together using silver easy solder. The metal is clean (acid bath followed by isopropyl alcohol), plenty of flux in all the right places. the solder is fluxed and positioned, the whole piece is gently warmed then the join site heated. the flux bubbles etc, the metal gets hot to the point of glowing pink. but no movement from the solder. one piece has balled up, the other has not even melted. none of the solder has actually gone anywhere. By this point I am steadily becoming more and more frustrated and grumpy. have applied the same technique to silver a few times before, sometimes it works, sometimes does exactly the same thing. and the same technique applied to silver without the alcohol clean produced the same mixed results as with it.

close up of texture on brass