This one was not easy. It is made of an aluminium plate under a brass plate, attached together by handmade rivets (tiny nails, that you hammer down on the pointy side at the back to flatten it and clamp the two plates together).
The big difficulty of this is the rivets, that are already not very easy (for me) to do, but here I had to shape them after bending the curve of the two metal plates. Why? Because if you attach them together, then try to bend them, the outer plate has a flatter curve than the inner one, which misaligns the holes of the rivets. And in the process, starts tearing them and causing damage and other problems.
However, hammering down a tiny nail, while having to make sure that the hammering is done in the proper way, on a non-flat surface, feels a little bit like trying to kill a mosquito with a hammer: it doesn’t feel right, and you know that it’ll probably end in a disaster.
At least, the little problems that appeared in the process are not too visible, but yeah, I’m not so sure I would want to make this one again :')
Why didn’t you solder it instead?
Because I’m not familiar with soldering techniques, mainly because I like to work “cold”, and without machines. The only machine I’m using is a rotary tool, to drill holes and make the polishing less of a chore, and I try to find ways to make everything else with just basic tools.
It is pretty limiting (and I have the tools to solder, and I plan on learning this skill eventually), but in a way it also forces me to be more creative to find out how to do things without soldering.
I mostly picked up on whatever small skills I have purely as a hobby, so I mainly did things that I find fun to do, and that I could do even in a non professional environment.
But yeah, it would have definitely been easier to solder, it is true.