Where There's a Will There's a Way

Click on the picture to see it largerCobalt blue beach glass inspired suncatcher with handmade copper chimes
For more information or to see other copper chimes, Click Here.

I'm a believer in that saying, 'where there's a will, there's a way.' The trouble is, it's easy to be lazy and not even try, specially when 'trying' takes a lot of effort.

For years I had access to inexpensive silver-colored chimes. I have sold a ton of suncatchers with those. But it always bothered me. The silver color struck me as out of synch with the copper. It was okay with the cobalt blue, but, I mean, my thing is copper! It also bothered me to use something no doubt mass produced in China. That's not my bag.

It was so easy! Just buy a bunch of the little chimes and have my son tie them onto my handmade copper hangers. Too easy; not good enough.

Several times I did take some initiative and cut my own chimes. First from stainless steel. Such hard metal! It was a real pain to cut and drill, and in the end they really were not much better looking than the cheap aluminum chimes. Then I tried copper tubing. Although I thought those looked pretty good, they didn't sound all that great.

I never really tried. Lazy.

The other day I finally gave this a lot of thought and arrived at what I hoped would be a solution. Where there is a will, there is a way!

Using small diameter rolled copper, I succeeded. A ton of work, but worth it! Here are the steps involved:

Cut the copper

Straighten it

Bore it with a drill

Re-straighten

Cut holes for hanging

Re-bore

Heat each chime to a very high temperature, and quickly submerge in ice water to harden the copper (so it can't bend easily, and primarily to produce a sharper, sweeter sound)

Double brush each chime

Polish each chime

Make the copper hangers

Wait for son to tie the chimes

Is it worth all that work? Yes.