When your husband retired from the navy five years ago, you never dreamt that he would be spending so much of his time helping you with you craft, but after creating one metal sign for your She Shed he was hooked. You now host guest who want to come and spend the afternoon making handmade metal jewelry and he spends as much time as he can filling a growing list of orders for his now very popular custom metal signs.
You have been drawn to creative play forever, but you are your husband have coined the phrase adventurous crafters when you tell friends and family about how you have been spending your time. You first caught the jewelry bug in your mother’s cellar studio and later studied metallurgy in college, where you also received a degree in fashion design. The beauty of handmade jewelry comes from an artist’s own signature hammer blows and torch strokes. You have always loved working with precious metals and soldering is a cathartic step in creating so many of your pieces.
When you decided that you wanted to start offering classes, your husband decided that he would use his welding skills gained in the Navy to help create a sign that would serve as an anniversary gift. He started looking at various products and their steel composition and began talking about grades of steel, examples of alloys, and started having phone conversations about QQ N 286 and other terms that were foreign to you. He has always been the one to go all in on the research part of any project that he works on, so you simply thought he was helping a friend build another trailer hitch for getting a boat to the lake. The look of surprise on your face when that QQ N 286 banter turned into a beautifully crafted sign for your space was priceless. You know this because your husband actually had his camera ready when you unwrapped the gift.
Now that you both are interested in the various uses of alloys, you have a whole new set of conversation topics. He might not really understand the aesthetics of your designs and you do not understand the durability issues that he often talks about, but between the two of you these new adventures have given you a new avenue for both adventure ad creativity since he retired.
Four of the most common metals used in the construction industry include carbon steel, aluminum, copper, and stainless steel, and both you and your husband enjoy repurposing many of these items. You never now where retirement may take you, but if you are open to discussions about QQ N 286 and are willing to moving away from the typical uses of stainless steel in laboratory equipment, jet engine parts, boat fittings, as well as food and pharmaceutical processing equipment, you might find yourself with a new passion for some skills that once served a more mundane career before you retired.
