Using Brass Filings

My son works in the local hardware store and every once in a while he brings me a supply of brass filings from the stores key cutting machine. Of course, not all keys cut on these machines are of brass, some keys are made of steel. My first task upon receiving a batch of filings is to remove the steel filings from the brass filings. I use a large plastic ice cream container to store my brass filings. I then take a zip lock bag into which I place a powerful magnet. I then draw the bag with magnet inside through the filing mix in the container. The steel filings attach themselves to the outside of the bag next to the magnet. I remove the bag from the container, I remove the magnet and brush off the steel filings from the exterior of the zip lock bag into the garbage. I continue to repeat this process until very few steel filings show up on the exterior of the zip lock bag.

I use the brass filings to fill cracks or voids in burls or timber using either a coloured epoxy or the super thin cyanoacrylate glue. I recently rough turned a small cherry bowl which had a very deep crack in it. Several years ago I would have rejected the piece of wood as being unsuitable for turning. In this particular case, I placed a strip of masking tape over the crack on one side and then filled the crack to overflowing with brass filings. I then saturated the filings along the length of the crack with the super thin cyanoacrylate glue and left it for 24 hours. The following day I completed turning the bowl using a sharp scraper where the filings were applied. What started out as an ugly crack, now became a design feature of the bowl. When using black epoxy as a filler try sprinkling brass filings over the surface before the epoxy dries.

Here's a couple of pictures of the end result: