THE LITTLE THINGS - HOMEMADE CHRISTMAS PRESENTS

In general, my family are working professionals and materially well off.  Some years ago we all agreed that we typically had the material posessions we really needed and exchanging gifts at Christmas should be more a matter of the spirit than the object.  What we agreed to do, was take turns each year designating our favorite charity.  We would all donate to that charity in the name of the selected person.  For example, one year we bought an entire heifer for a family in Africa and another a flock of poultry for another family on Poland. Thus we were able to make some substantial gifts to persons and projects that were truly needy.  To keep things personal, we still exchanged small tokens of our affection, often handmade or of special sentimental value.


Although my material circumstances are rather limited this year, I donated to the charity - a bicycle repairing non-profit my brother founded and also produced some interesting presents of three kinds.

BREAD
We had plenty of flour  etc., so first I baked some of my favorite bread, the Rosemary French Bread described earlier.  That was an easy choice.  Then I looked around to see what other resources I had to make gifts of.


ROSEMARIE.


We had a large bush of it in the front yard, and another at my sister's house and both badly needed pruning.  I trimmed them up nice and neatly and saved the clippings.in the loft of the shed where they could dry undisturbed.  First I tackled the smaller batch from the front yard.  Over two evenings I stripped the healthy looking leaves off the branches onto some newspaper.  The leaves were then washed in our salad spinner and spread out on newprint to dry. I noticed that those stripped the first evening while the branches were still fresh looked darker and fuller when dried. This may be good to remember if we do this again. It was actually pleasant work and the kitchen where I worked soon filled with the fragrance of rosemarie.


Later I dried and stripped the larger batch from my sister's house.  It alone was nearly a trunkful of branches and looked quite daunting after spending two evenings on less than half that quantity before.  But on the first batch I had developed a system for separating and stripping the leaves that went quite quickly.  The method is to take the larger, bushier branches and break them apart into smaller clusters of one to four twigs.  Then firmly grip the base of the branch in one hand, and slide the other from base to tip briskly several times, depositing each handful of leaves on the newsprint before me.  I removed dead branches and other matter before stripping the leaves and didn't try to strip off color sections and very strongly attached leaves. In a couple of hours I had stripped about four pounds of dried leaves.  


After rinsing the dried leaves about five or six times in cold water and spin drying them, I spread them to dry overnight on newsprint in a slight breeze.  They didn't absorb much moisture, but did color the water a faint green.  I wondered if they were losing flavor or essential oils during this step, but felt it was important to remove the dirt they had accumulated growing outside.  All told, I harvested about two pounds of dried rosemarie leaves from the front yard and four from my sister's bush.


Once dry, I had to grind them.  I tried grinding by mashing with a spoon in a bowl or rubbing between my hands, but both proved too laborious for such a large quantity.  I relented and ordered a coffee grinder, about $11.  (True to life, I saw a new one a few days later in a resale shop for $2, and bought it also as a gift for someone who was also interested in this - good to ahve a backup.)    Anyway, I had to pulverize the leaves in handfuls in the electric grinder, but it did a good job.  The ground leaves were a little irregular in size, so they had to be sifted and the large pieces reground.


In the end I wound up with about six pounds of high quality spice, a portion if which I kept for myself and the balance I gave away as gifts.  These were much apprecaited given the personal nature of the source and the high retail cost of good spice!


Looking around, I saw another resource for gifts:


SCRAP METAL


Namely I had a fair supply of scrap lead, copper, brass and aluminum that I could smelt.  There was steel also, but I didn't have the means to melt and cast it.  (Steel melts at about 2300 deg. F.) For earlier this year I had built a small smelter from a design I saw in the Internet.  It was simply a blower that forced air into a coffee can filled with charcoal.  A stainless steel camping mug served as the crucible (the ordinary steel can I tried initially was too thin and burned through when it reacted with the molten aluminum).


I gather the scrap metal to supplement the inadequate income from UI.  Either donated by neighbors and friends glad to have me help clean up their property or found abandoned on the local roads, it adds up.  In steel alone, I collect about 250-500 lbs a month which basically covers the water utility and an occasional treat.  Aluminum weighs in about about 50 lbs a week and pays for gas for the car.  I find the other metals in small bits here and there, but over the course of the past year I picked up about 50 lbs or each kind. 


For my first project, I cast a small lead grave marker for Ivy's plot in the garden.  It turned out pretty well when cast in a plaster mold I made, but I learned that the mold must be perfectly dry before casting.  Otherwise, steam from the moisture remaining in the plaster leaves small depressions in the hardened metal.


Lead - melting point: 327.5 °C (600.65 K, 621.5 °F)


Increasing the temperature, I was able to cast a small aluminum cross for a birthday present.


Aluminum - melting point 660.37 °C (933.52 K, 1220.666 °F)


For aluminum I tried sand casting, but had some problems.  The local soil was too fine and crumbly to make greensand. (A mixture of moist sand and clay used in pattern casting.)  I tried sifting sand from the local creek, but it also didn't stick together well and the high iron content in it made it char and fuse to the aluminum.  I did get a couple usable castings, but with only coarse resolution.


Copper - melting point 1083.0 °C (1356.15 K, 1981.4 °F)


Next I decided to attempt casting in copper, and first made a clay model from which to make a wax pattern. I tried a variety of different ways to make a rubber mold for a way pattern from the clay original, none of which were satisfactory.  The RTV compunds commonly found in hardware and automotive stores were too sticky, and the professional impression compound I bought reacted with the oil in the modeling clay and would not cure.  The plaster had to be cast directly on the clay and then broken away from the clay and glued back together. 


Plaster alone is fine for lead, but needs to be fortified with about 1/3 part fine brick dust to take the heat of copper.  The mold should be heated to about 900 deg. F ideally, but 500 is as high as my oven will go.