Teapot (part 3) and saucer continue to grow.
Two Thursdays ago I raised the teapot some more in class. Gennady and I also discussed the handle and how it was to be attached. I will need 8 mm wide bezels into which a wooden plug will be set after the handle has been joined to it. Maybe ebony and now I need to finalize my ideas about the handle as well as a spout.
This is as far as I got before class ended.
Over the weekend I finished raising the pot. Gennady’s sketches of the handle connection are in blue on my concept sketch, my desired profile drawing with measurements is on the right side of the photo.
I was concerned that the pot was closing up more than it should toward the bottom, I made a tombo 120 mm long with a foot to bring it to the right height for the 120 diameter. A tombo is a Japanese tool that potters use to throw pots of a consistent size. They are usually made of bamboo and are suspended from a stick looking much like a dragonfly, tombo. They may have two cross bars, one for height and one for diameter, the tail dipping into the vessel for the depth measurement. When I put it inside the teapot I could see just where the diameter was 120 mm, the foot should touch the bottom of the pot but it is about 8 mm above, floating in the air. Gennady assures me that we will be able to widen the pot after we get as much height as we can out of the metal.
I set the base and began to raise the pot again from a place just above where the tombo was resting. Raising now is toward the vertical as I try to close the top diameter some more.
When I got to class last Thursday, I did a little planishing on the base and then we stopped to see a film on raising a freeform bottle. In the film there was a lot of model making, measuring and template use, but the thing that stuck with me was that the silversmith would often start raising from the top down and then go back to work on the middle section between hardened areas. That seemed to be close to what I needed to do with my teapot. I stopped planishing my way to the top, drew a pencil line where I needed to start raising and after a little mallet work I began to raise above the line leaving the center section shape unchanged.
It didn’t close up very much and I only gained about 2 mm in height.
Gennady said that my hammer strikes were not close together enough, he pointed to dull areas between the shiny strike marks and and indicated that the silver there was not contributing to raising the sides. I was to strike slowly and watch the reflections so that they touched each other raising all of the metal together. It was annealed and pickled before I began raising again, I took a mallet to the lower part of the pot and hammered with force on the bull nose end of the stake to harden the metal and to remove the lumpy parts rounding out the shape a little more. Here’s a look at the second round for this raising, he said the hammering was better and I can see that the top is closing a little more. This is as far as I was able to get before the class ended.
The Saucer
I spent some time last weekend working on the saucer too. A medium sized nail punch was used to put in the textured background around the leafy center. The outlines were done first in an attempt to control the warping.
As I worked my way around, I was sharpening the leaf detail and smoothing out the leaf surfaces. To keep track of where I was with the leaves, I stamped in the background and lowered the outer ring of the chased circle once I had finished a set of leaves.
All finished. I heated the saucer off of the pitch and soaked it in turpentine to remove the pitch that was stuck in the relief on the back side. Then I used a mallet on the back side to remove most of the warp.
In class last Thursday, Gennady said I shouldn’t remove the excess and urged me to do something with the outer rim. I decided that I wanted to arc the rim downward and he told me how I should go about it. I was to take a piece of wood and put two nails in it to control the rotation of the saucer. He said to make a shallow groove above which I would strike the back of the saucer rim with a dapping tool. That Saturday I took one of my oak tree slices and set it up like this with two large brass brads as my nail/guides.
It worked very well, I struck the rim in the groove which had been carved to fit my saucer rim rotating the saucer once the silver was bent. Halfway around, I had to raise the brads a little because the rim was curved upwards and took up more space under their heads. I went around a second time aiming the dapping tool toward the center and outer edge to smooth out the curve.
Then I was looking for a stake so that I could do a little planishing on the top surface. I settled on the ball side of my ball peen hammer, it had been filed down so that it wasn’t round like a ball but has a flattened, slightly domed, slightly rectangular face that seemed to be a good match for the inside of my curved rim. The hammer is in the vise in the lower right of the next photo.
Planishing made the chased and lowered edge of the border look too sharp. I have had to put the saucer back on the pitch so I can work around the border to make the irregular depression tool marks less evident.
Here’s a look at my bench where there are a number of projects taking place. The center is set up to make photos of a cuff I just finished.
And here’s the cuff. It is sterling set with khaki turquoise, jade and carnelian cabochons. I made it for me, I need something new to wear.
