Samara Texturing

I was doing the final raking of leaves last week when I focused on the abundance of samaras from the Japanese maple in my front yard.

These winged seeds are quite lovely...

and I thought that they might be a good rolling mill candidate.

Because it's inexpensive, I do all texture testing with copper.

Two small pieces of copper were cut and annealed.

I arranged a selection of samaras on one piece...

which was then covered by the other copper piece before using the mill.

I had hoped that the entire samara would be able to pass through the mill, but I learned that a samara seed is just too tough of a nut to crack under pressure.
I couldn't advance the mill while maintaining enough pressure to capture an impression of the wing portion of the samara.
Darn!

A little surgery with my X-acto knife removed the seeds

and I was able to crank the assemblage though the rolling mill with no difficulty.

After cleaning the copper, it was soaked in a liver of sulfur bath, turning the metal black with instant patina.

I'm liking the delicate texture and now think I have to get out and collect more of the samaras before the first hard frost.