This beautiful, coated copper Baptismal Ewer from the 1950s came from a church in West Vancouver. The president of the Altar Guild brought it to us, hoping we could repair it. It had a broken cross and a severely scratched front face. Though it had been repaired once before with soft-solder by a jeweller, the repair had not held.
Materials
Processes
Assessing the Damages
My objective was to design and build a base to secure the cross and eliminate the original repair's weak points. To that end, I planned to create a strengthening shoulder pad for the cross.
However, I couldn't remove the deep scratches without damaging the finish on the ewer, which had been coated. It was not worth the risk, and the scratches did not detract from the ewer's copper patina and overall look.
FABRICATION AND MODIFICATIONS
I did the fabrication on my 1939 (83-year-old!) lathe, including turning to make the contour of the base. I used a specialized slot-screw blade in the tool rest of my lathe until I had the right groove to accept the cross.
Then, I modified a tiny brass screw to attach the cross's base to the lid, drilled and threaded the base for the modified brass screw.
I silver-soldered the cross to the base and screwed the cross to the lid with a brass screw and washer.
The baptismal ewer now had a very stable cross on its lid. Once polished, it was ready to be handed back to the church.
To our surprise and great delight, we received an unsolicited review from the church. You can read it below.
As a volunteer at my church, I was responsible for getting a baptismal ewer repaired. A year ago, a jeweler fixed it, but the repair didn't last and the cross on the lid came off again. This ewer is very important to the church because it has been there since 1956. I searched and searched and I felt that there had to be someone in the whole of Vancouver who could do this repair and then I found Donald's Innovations and Repairs on Google.
He was very methodical in examining the baptismal ewer to see if he could do the repairs before he accepted the job. He then kept in touch via e-mail
with photos of the progress he was making and the whole job was finished in one week. We are very satisfied with the finished product - it looks great and will now continue to be of service to the church for many years.
Thank you Donald.