three giant steps

After grumbling all morning about another consecutive cold wet overcast day of winter yesterday (and today made 7 in a row) I finally got my butt over to the shop and worked out on my make shift flat lap. I say worked out because my arms were pretty sore when I finally quit for the day. I took a little more off one of the botanicas, ground off all the excess glass on the peach box, finished grinding off the excess glass on the flower sculpture that will be positioned on the top for the box, and started to flatten the back side of the peach inlay piece.

After all that work on the cluster of peach flowers, I may start over with a new one as I've never been completely happy with this one. A couple of the leaves didn't cast completely and the color came out too dark to suit me. We'll see.

I did finally get the wax peach pits cast in bronze (thank you John Kurman) and they look great and I think will look great as the feet to this box. The previously obtained peach logs are in the hands of a guy who is going to mill down a piece for me for the top.

None of the pieces in this image, except the bronze pits, has had any finish work done on them beyond the basic grinding. Now the box no longer has the flange at the bottom that stuck out about 1/4” all around the bottom and the flower sculpture was reduced in a similar way. The peach looks flat but it is actually more rounded especially around the edges, so now it has a nice wide flat spot underneath. I'll probably work on it some more before I fit it into it's spot on the box.

Looks like I may actually get the peach box finished before too much longer. 'May' being the operative word here but I have overcome a considerable hurdle or two.