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After the holidays were over I began to change my studio over to full time metal work. It’s been very hard to put the binding tools away or out of the way as that has been my main work for the past 35 years.

As a part of the new venture I am making a chased cuff  that will hopefully be able to be reproduced in numbers for a new company.  I came up with this griffin design and made a few drawings of what I thought the cuff should look like. Once the first drawing was done, I made a dummy cuff, traced the drawing and put it onto the cuff to see how it would be worn. I saw immediately that the composition had to be changed because the griffin’s head was wrapped around the side of the wrist even though I had centered the animal on the cuff itself. I redrew the griffin with a shortened body so that his head and torso were in the center. This left a lot of empty space in front of the griffin that should have some detail. Another stand of ferns and a sun were added for texture and a little drama. That drawing was traced and put onto the dummy cuff too. Presenting better this time, I went ahead to cut a stencil in order to transfer the drawing to the metal. The first photo shows the drawing series and the stencil attached to the metal with a tape hinge so that I could check and add to the scratched drawing as I worked the design into the format.

The metal was cut about a half inch larger all around than the finished cuff. Here, the design is being chased into the format. After the griffin was in, I made stencils for the sun and ferns and scratched them in adjusting the composition.

All the lines are chased in and I have begun to outline the background.  At this point I decided that the cuff should be worked in the round. Bending a sculptural, chased object would probably create a lot of problems. The copper was lifted from the pitch and annealed before I finished anymore on the outlining.

I shaped the metal on a sandbag and got out a few of my snarling irons and repoussè tols.

I used the snarling irons on the inside of the cuff to raise the animals face, beak, wings, claws and legs. I also raised  some of the minor foliage in the bottom of the drawing.

This was the first bit of repoussè  and was not to even or bold. I planned to do more after some chasing. At this point it also looked like I should trim the cuff to final size.  It had already been trimmed to about 4 mm from the final size but now it looked like that excess metal would get in the way of my working the rest of the cuff.

The shaped, trimmed cuff  is on a short length of closet pole, ready to be worked.

The closet pole is held in a vise so that it can be turned and adjusted as needed while I work on it, It can also be turned and held in the other end of the vise so that I have access to all lines and surfaces in 360 degrees.

These shots were taken after another annealing and some more repousse work.

In the first two sessions the cuff lifted off of the pitch completely as I worked around the design.  So, before I did the final work I soldered a length of copper across the gap to keep the cuff at a constant diameter and not lift from the pitch, it still lifted a little but not so much as to leave the metal unsupported  for working.

The chasing is finished and the cuff is ready for the polishing effects in the tumbler.

The cuff was  tumbled several hours with small mixed  stainless steel shot.  I took this photo before sending it off to Rhode Island.

 

This is the silver cup I’ve been working on for some time now, other projects and dissatisfaction with the progress have delayed my working on it through the summer. I decided to work on this without pitch for the time being until I need to do final sculptural details. It works much better and I am happier with the progress.

If you go to my channel on YouTube,  you’ll find 7 videos that lead up to this one. I’ll make more as the cup comes to its finish.

This video also introduces snarling irons, these are ones that I made, the traditional irons are much longer. I didn’t need them to be so long to work on my cups. The traditional irons are for working on larger vessels and proved awkward for these comparatively shallow cups.

The Yad was finished about 2 weeks ago. It had taken almost 2 weeks to design and execute the chain. I wanted something different and made a variation on a standard loop in loop chain. I made large jump rings, stretched and twisted them into a shape that added texture and interest to the chain itself. Where the chain divided to make a loop was a problem that I solved by adding a medallion. I had a difficult time making the Mogen David and on the third attempt I was successful. The short chain between the Yad and the medallion is seven links, one for each day of creation. The links forming the loop number 28 which is the lunar month. An inscription plate separates the month into two fortnights.  The Yad is in the  Jewish Museum Design Shop on 92nd Street now.

Making the medallion gave me 3 models, 2 of which have been prepared for casting. The first casting is in the chain on the Yad.  I intend to use the other cast medallions as pendants. In making the center  medallion I discovered I could fuse hammered wires together without solder. The one on the right is a cut, pierced and chased star set into a forged ring.

The original dreidels (in my last entry) have been sold and the museum ordered more. I made  these copper ones and have started to pierce the  letters  in some of them.

I am in the process of making more in silver. It took a while to select the stones and for the past few days I have been piercing and trimming the spinner plates. These are still in a rough state. There will be some chasing work before I add the spindles.

I have also made two bracelets based on the Yad chain.  One in 18 gauge  and one that I wanted to be a tighter link in 16 gauge.

Both of these are in my ETSY shop. They are 8 inches, 209 mm, long and can be ordered in shorter or longer lengths.

I have ventured into making some Judaica. It’s an attempt to fill out a line of metal objects around my wine cups. I like all of the ritual objects, especially the spice towers and etrog containers. I’m a little away off from attempting to make those objects, so I have started with Dreidels and a Torah pointer.
There’s a slide show of the finished dreidels on my Tumblr page, Stones and Silver.

I wasn’t planning on making a blog entry about the dreidels so I didn’t take more than a few photos while I was making them. I had to make another couple chasing tools to make the letters on the dreidels. The strokes had to be wider than the lines made with the chasing tool and had to happen the first time around. No second turn to widen the strokes. It’s better seen on the copper pieces later in this entry. The bezels were soldered onto square pieces. This shot was taken after I sawed out the edges to expose a circle within the square.  After this, I filed the edges, drilled the centers, made spinning pins and soldered them in place.

The silver dreidels are finished  and I began to work on another design in copper. I laid the design out on larger squares of copper and chased decorative work into the squares with the intention of folding the corners into the center post.

The next step was to drill the centers and fold the corners partially into position. I used my box brake in the basement to turn the corners up into a position about 90 degrees from the base. Then I used the table top to bend them further. While they were like this I made the center posts by cutting a thick brass rod into the proper lengths.

With the help of a mini lathe, I filed one end of each post into a blunt point on which the dreidel would spin. The posts got brass balls soldered on top and then the finished posts were soldered into the folded squares. I used a small mallet to fold the edges down more which made the corners bend close to the posts.

Here’s a portrait of the finished and polished quartet.

That was the main work for one week, then I began on the Yad. I made two test pieces for the body of the piece out of copper. I have carefully watched Gennady and students all last term working with spiculum shapes. I have had my own tests with the spout for the teapot and knew that I would have to test my skills  before investing in silver. I was amazed at how easily I made the copper bend into a tube. Soldering the things was another story, graphically messy in two colors on the copper, but with a little filing the surface was smoothed even though it remained in two colors.

While I was finishing the dreidels, I carved a hand in wax for the pointing end of the Yad. Roni cast 2 pieces for me and I picked them up on the Monday when I went into the city to buy the silver sheet. By then I had taken time to redraw the tube and knew that I wanted to make two 6 inch tubes. (The 4″x 6″ sheet of 20 gauge silver was  $213. The two hands were $87.)

The final design was not clear. But I needed to keep moving on the project because a deadline was approaching. I cut the silver sheet at the ArtLab in Snug Harbor. They have a sheet metal cutter in their printing room.

The silver was annealed and I began to bend the pieces into the tube shape in a groove on an oak block in the basement. I probably should have used a pointed delrin mallet but all I had was my chasing hammer and the hook hammer.

When the silver hardened It was time to anneal.

Then I was able to close the tube the rest of the way. The tube in the groove has been partially closed, the other one near the hammer is as it came out of the pickle, showing how far I got on the first bending, hammering on the inside.

I continued to hammer on the outside using the broad face of the chasing hammer and closed one end of the tube.

The hammering continued and the tube closed. I closed it even tighter after this photo was taken. It had to be touching for the solder to be effective and this was not quite closed enough.

Soldering the tube was a bit messy. The tubes also had a bit of an arc to them. I was able to straighten the tubes by hammering into the grooved block and on a tinsmith’s stake that has a long end that fit inside most of the tube’s length.

Here are the straightened tubes before filing the excess solder off of them. The copper test pieces are beside them with two cast silver hands.

After doming some copper pieces into half spheres and placing them on the tube, I decided that less of a dome would be more effective.

It also became apparent that the dome should be soldered to a sheet so that it could be seated correctly onto the tube. At this point I had already soldered two rings near the ends of the tube as collars for the design. The intention was to scroll vines and granulated balls onto the tube for a sculptural decoration. Trying that on a copper tube first let me know right away that the vine decoration was way beyond my skills OR that I was going about it in the wrong way. So, as Mad Eye said to Harry during the tri-wizard tournament, ‘Play to your strengths…’,  chasing became my ‘weapon’ of choice. Time was of the essence, I had to complete this in about 4 more days.

Before soldering the dome to its plate, I wanted to chase a Mogen David on it. I found an old broom handle and I set the dome in place on the rounded end with a little pitch. Here it is sketched in before I scratch the guide lines.

I used a strip of plastic post card to guide my scratch lines. Drawing what should appear as a straight line on a dome is very difficult, the card simplified the process enormously.

All the lines chased.

One edge of the chased lines pushed down.

The background textured with a small round head chasing tool. I can’t believe it took an entire day to do this little dome.

The tube was filled with pitch and marked and scratched with a spiral design. This is the first line, there will be four to complete the layout.

The lines were chased by clamping the tube in a vise, working and turning each line in sequence from tip to back end. After the first spiral was chased, I divided the space in half, chased the second line and then divided each of the halves in half for the final lines.

Chasing the texture stripes in meant that I needed a different kind of support. I got out my plasticine and a card board so I could support the tube and move it around on the work bench. Chasing pushes the tube into the clay which is easily reformed into a perfect support to continue working. This is the nail punch I used to make the circles.

Beginning with the finer texture.

Chasing the tube took most of a long day to finish.

All done and nearly ready to solder. The base of the hand was filed to fit inside the tube and the dome has a flat sheet soldered to its base. I also had to solder a chain loop onto the dome before final assembly.

This is how I set it up to get the pitch out. The residue pitch was soaked out in turpentine.

All together now. I chased a simple, lined texture on the end of the tube around the wrist of the hand. Next step is a final polishing in the tumbler.

Since I have been making my wine cups, I have had to make a lot of my own tools. The studio snarling irons at FIT, while they have good heads on them, were too long for work on my short cups. Gennady and I made the first one about a year and a half ago, I have made many more since then with different heads for different designs on the cups. I made the  horizontal and vertical liners about 3 weeks ago.

These tools were made of different shaped tool steel that I bought at Metalliferous,  I filed and polished the ends before bending the  steel into the snarling iron shape.  All of the stock was about 12 inches or 30 cm, long.  On some tools I bent the working head up with a neck too long.  It works but I suspect I might be able to get a stronger vibration if the iron has a longer body.  At the base you need a full inch and a half to  two inches for the vise to clamp onto.

Here’s a side view of the collection. The hammer in the photo is the one I use on the irons when I’m working on a cup.

Last week Colman and I were shopping for miniature vise grips at Lowe’s and I found a set of center punches and a set of chisels in their bargain bins. They looked like perfect candidates for repoussè tools.  They were 2 or 3 dollars for each set of three.

I took them to class and Gennady said that they were okay to grind without  relieving  the temper.  In this shot, I have already ground the sharp points off of the center punches and the chisels are  as I bought them.

After grinding the basic shape, I was able to file them down into more usable shapes.  In this photo the round ones have been started with the file and the flat tools are like they were off of the grinding wheel.

The tool on the right show how far I took filing the round shape, the others show grinder marks. After that I polished them with 1200 grit  emery paper.

Here they all are after final polishing, after I use them I will see if I want to reshape them, that can be done on the run.

I had intended to have this finished for a Christmas present. It is to be a silver plated lid for a ceramic soufflè dish. I started it in my usual way on a stump. Here’s my  video on YouTube.
I shaped the rim with a raising hammer on a t-stake and set it onto some plasticine to do chasing and shaping. Then the Holidays arrived and other projects took precedence leaving tis lid to rest for about 10 days. In the next photo I have marked off the divisions and had just begun to chase lines in with a narrow lining tool.

All the dividing lines are in now and I need to push out from the inside.

I was surprised when I took the lid off of the plasticine. The plasticine was black with a slight crust and the inside of the lid looked like  it had been etched. In the future I will not let copper sit on plasticine unless I am working on it. The plasticine is apparently acidic, brushing the inside didn’t remove the slight texture.

I reshaped the plasticine and set the lid into it  to work on the inside.

I started with a dapping tool, trying to push the larger areas out. 

And finished with a few tools that reach the tighter areas of the design.  You can see the etched surface better in this photo.

Here I’m using a nail punch to make circles on the top of the rim,  I use the round flat top stake as a support when using this punch.

This was the set up for chasing the design into the rim,  the wood supports a loose end of the lid and keeps it level for stamping.

I began to fill in a border around the top and found it cumbersome to have to push the lid in order to keep it on the stake.  So I changed the set up.

I got another vise and made a similar set up but with stake on the outside, that way it was easier to keep the lid on the stake by pulling rather than pushing while I used the stamping tools.

I soldered a large silver ball on the center of the lid.

Then it was tumbled with mixed shot for about 6 hours. Next step is a trip to the silver plater’s shop.

The holidays and all the concurrent activities put a stop to my working on the Lion Saucer. I finally finished it yesterday. During the last class at FIT I annealed and pickled it. It was really looking nice all pink after brushing with a brass brush.

Here’s the back.

I wanted to push the animals out a little more, the little balls and fronds needed to be raised  too, so I put the saucer down on a bed of plasticine clay about 3/4 of an inch thick (20mm) that had been stuck to a piece if binder’s board so that it was movable. In this shot you may be able to see that I have been working on the smaller details pushing on the ball shapes.

Working on the plasticine allows me to take the piece off and inspect it while I’m working, something that can’t be done  if the  metal is on a bed of pitch.

I fit the cup into the saucer and saw that I had made the center a little too generous, if it had been 2-3mm I would have left it as it was but it was closer to 6 mm and I thought it might look like the saucer was for another cup. I marked the saucer’s bottom with a pair of dividers and set it onto the flat top stake to bring the edges in a little with a planishing hammer. Here it is with a new center diameter.

Once the repoussè was finished I set the saucer into my pitch bed. This shot was taken after most of the work was done. The back ground was evened out, all of the figures had their outlines sharpened by using a small screw driver shaped chasing tool and the final decorative punches were applied. I also gave the cup rest a shadow ring under the original chased border.

Here are some comparison photos of  areas of the saucer before and after chasing on the pitch. I used one of the screw driver shaped tools, I have 3 (1mm, 1.5mm and 2mm), for the outlining and to add the shadow ring.

Here’s the saucer in its natural orientation.

Now that it’s Christmas and gifts have been opened, I can show a piece I’ve been working on for the past few weeks without spoiling a surprise. I haven’t worked the whole time on this piece because there were emergency projects in the studio for client’s Christmases to finish first.

Adi has been interested in greek armor and cuirasses and helments have figured in his watercolors and paintings. I wanted to make one for him and picked up a sheet of a brass alloy at metalliferous about three weeks ago.
In discussing the project with Gennady, he advised me to start by doming the sheet first to get some height and volume into the basic shape. I sketched out a outline and domed the piece like this keeping the edges of the sheet close to it original plane. The metal stretched to form a shape over an inch high. Here it is about to be annealed, looking into the concave side,

In the studio at home I began to model the piece, I didn’t want to use pitch so I filled the dome with plasticine an adhered the piece to a piece of binder’s board. My chasing tools are too small to make the soft shapes that I needed to express musculature so I found some wooden dowels and a flat piece of wood to use as chasing tools. They were effective in achieving the shapes I wanted. When I needed to do some pushing from the inside, I was able to remove the piece from the plasticine, tap it out and then replace it to continue modeling the surface. Here’s photo that shows the tools (except for the chasing hammer), the piece attached to the binder’s board and the photo I was using as a guide for proportion followed by another photo close up of the piece. I sketched in the navel and nipples with a sharpie and had begun to chase in the navel when these photos were taken.

Taking the piece off of the plasticine, I used my chasing tool to outline the cuirass in preparation for trimming the sheet metal.

While in class, about ten days ago, I was closing the spout for my silver teapot. That in itself has been another learning experience, figuring out which stake and which hammer let alone the angle at which to strike to get the metal to move has been very hard for me.  I am including this photo because it shows the  cuirass at a different angle. 

Back in the studio this week, I used a rounded dash, sausage shaped chasing tool to outline the cuirass and then used shears to cut it free of the excess sheet metal.  Then I stood the same chasing tool in a vise and used the hammer to close the rounded edge. The flex shaft tool was used to give the edge a uniform depth.  

The edge was still not closing enough so I made another narrower chasing tool to help me do that. This is a narrower version of the ‘sausage shape’ tool I used to mark and start turning the edge.

I held the cuirasse in a position like this and struck with a planishing hammer to bring the edge around.

Once that was done I made brass rings  to represent  the rings on a  full scale cuirasse’s shoulders where leather  straps would have held the armor together when it was worn.  The rings were soldered in place, the piece was pickled and polished with 600 grit  emory paper in preparation for a patina.

I applied a blackening solution with the heat of my torch and then rubbed it down with a cloth which removed some of the black surface.  It looked too ‘dry’ so I applied a little wax to unify the surface.  Here it is finished  before it went into a presentation box.

It’s been a hectic few weeks. I have been working on getting art into the store on Beach Street for the Juried Miniature Show scheduled to open on December 3rd. We are also starting to become a new LLC, ArtHaus NY LLC.
I showed and sold jewelry at the Wearable Art Show which was held on November 6th and am now preparing for a Thanksgiving weekend  and a Christmas show that will take place in about a weeks time.

In the mean time I have finished a few pieces of jewelry and started on the Lion Cup saucer. The first two Lion Cups have been sold to the Jewish Museum in their Celebrations Shop. The first cup was sold to a lady who wants a saucer, so everything is moving faster than it would without a time goal. Robert, who turns wooden bowls for the store made me a pitch box big enough for the saucer, here it is with the prepared disk laid into it. The disk was prepared by annealing and sinking the center  a little to make a depression for the cup. 

The design has been reworked to let the Lions prowl, meeting the bull and chasing the ram. I made stencils of the basic shape to help me get the design onto the border as I designed it.  You’ll see the working drawing in the background of a photo further down in this entry. I still hadn’t completed the drawing as the work began on the  saucer.

Drawing is in place, it is filled in and adjusted. 

Chasing in the motif.

One side of the chased line is put down and I begin to rough push the background away from the figures. 

With the background work hardened I remove the saucer from the pitch bed and clean it with turpentine.

I did the first bit of repoussè on plasticine rather than pitch. This will save me time cleaning pitch off of the front before start the middle portion of the chasing work. It also allows me to check the front as the work progresses. I started by placing slices of plasticine on the saucer and pressing it into the surface.

I rolled the plasticine flat, turned the saucer over and pressed the plasticine onto the binder’s board. The board will allow me to turn the plate as I work depressing the animals and leaves on the back of the saucer.

The plasticine sometimes blackens the copper. It isn’t permanent.

The back of the back and front of the saucer after I finished the repoussè and cleaned the plasticine residue off of it. Now it is ready to be annealed. 

Reset onto the pitch bed, I outlined the figures with a small circle chasing tool and began to texture and press the background for a stronger contrast.

The saucer bends as the background goes down lifting the edges which pops the pitch out of the bed. It loosens the saucer which comes of too, it happened  three times as I worked around the border.

When the saucer popped off of the bed, I took that as an advantage and corrected the saucer distortion with a mallet before replacing it on the bed with a heat gun.

This is one way I corrected the distorted shape of the saucer,  holding the rim on my table edge, turning and striking it with a large mallet.

With the saucer replaced onto the pitch bed and its background work hardened, I began to add detail to the bull and model its surface.  I’ll continue with that process on all of the raised figures in the border.  After that it will be annealed again and I will start on the final design work, evening the background texture and further defining the figures.

About 2 weeks ago I stumbled across this video on YouTube. Hiroshi is working in Fine silver in a Japanese technique called shibori.

I had been looking for information about Japanese metal raising after I saw and collected an article on Wayne Meeten’s work. His spectacular ‘Spiral Dance’ graced the cover of Craft Arts International magazine,  #77. (I came across this while we were in a Santa Fe gallery.) In the article, it spoke of his traveling to Japan to study and showed intriguing photos of him at work on large vessels that he held in his lap. There was no pitch inside. I read the description ‘air chasing’ somewhere else and have just decided that this is probably what was being described. 

Yesterday I finished annealing a number of small pieces and wanted to try some of this technique knowing nothing about it. I had a round bowl about 4 inches tall that was ready for the experiment. I also had 3 snarling irons that I made in the last class for work on my cups. They are shorter than the traditional snarling irons and I have made special ‘heads’ on them to reach into the base of cups and to make very small raised areas.  I set one into my bench after drawing some lines and circles on the bowl.

This is the bowl balancing on the small head iron.

This is the working end of my  ’small head’ snarling iron. After using it for awhile I discovered that I could strike the iron more firmly and the small head could be giuded more like a chasing tool, not making the series of wart like bumps that I made in the beginning. 

It was exciting to see that I had control over where the repoussè was going, I could easily keep to my lines, raising an interesting texture.

I had set up two vises with the irons, one for the lines and a broader headed iron for the circular bumps. 

This is just to show you the atmosphere in which I am working,  The second vise is just out of the photo on the right. I found myself moving between the two, hammer in hand, finishing each area as I worked around the bowl. 

I had figured out that the lines should go in first so that those areas would be work hardened, they should act like a skeleton in the body of the bowl. That way I could  make a dramatic difference when I took larger tools to the wide areas. I worked those areas after I tried to harden and deepen the  areas where lines came together or crossed. 

At first I used this chasing tool to make the whole area go down. It quickly became obvious that all I needed was the ball peen side of my chasing hammer and I could reserve tool using for the areas where design relief was closer together or needed definition.

I began to define the round shapes with a few of my chasing tools, it’s shiny where I have started to round out the bumps. Even as I was working on rounding the edges, I could go back to the broad snarling iron and push from the inside where I needed it.

Instinctively I was working from the center  of the bowl’s sides around the bowl. Then I began to work on the lip and foot sides of the ridges

This is where it is now, there has been no annealing, the edge has to be resolved and I think a few hours in the tumbler will give it a nice finish, it might even get a silver plating.