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I started this new copper vessel about three weeks ago in class at FIT. I started with a 12 inch square of 20 gauge copper from which I cut a 12 inch diameter circle. Having made a vessel with 18 gauge, I knew I needed to have something slightly thinner raising a larger vessel. I started in my usual way which is to sink a shallow bowl before beginning to raise the shape. These large vessels are really difficult to control. I got a pretty good height on the first half of the first round. Then I had to change angles because I couldn’t continue hammering on metal that was gathering too quickly.

On the second round I planished a band of the first round before the break  and then raised it the rest of the way.

Starting the Third round,  I had decided that the bottom part was about where I wanted it, I planished another time just below half way before I began to raise the pot. Gennady stopped me working on the t-stake and suggested I use a mushroom stake instead for the large diameter, saying I would be more comfortable. We searched the stake closet and I found this one, it was more comfortable and I was able to use it on the following rounds.

Almost there One more round to go.

Last round.

In my studio today, I began to work the shapes into the vessel this afternoon.  I began by dividing the surface.

Some of my divisions were off and I had to draw an equator where I could measure with dividers to make the corrections. I attached a sharpie to my surface gauge.

The drawing behind the vessel is one Colman is working on. He calls it Night Scribe, it is the idea behind this vessel. I intend to chase feathers onto raised ribs in this copper pot.

With the  lines corrected, I made a stencil of a feather silhouette to trace around the pot.

Then I took a dapping punch and hammered the beginning dimples at the bottom of the pot. I did this because I was going to hammer the feathers out from the inside and I needed some reference inside to help me strike in the right places.

Lines were drawn inside the vessel so I could manage the sculpture in stages rising from the bottom.

The sand bag was set on my bench and I used the hook hammer to start pushing the feather shapes out.

After working the feathers up about two thirds of the height I wanted to push the grooves between them deeper from the outside. It became apparent that I couldn’t go too high with this activity, some wrinkles started in two places and I knew that I had to complete the feathers before going any further. I used the ball peen end of the chasing hammer to do this work on the outside.

I finished pushing the feathers out to their tops (this isn’t the end of that). At this point I decided to trim the pot. The uneven edge was going to be a problem to cut if I continued to scallop the top edge. So I marked the rim, trimmed it and brought a preliminary groove up to the rim.

While the pot was resting (I wasn’t willing to put it down), I looked to see if I could make the drawing survive the next annealing.  I thought it would be a good idea to scratch the sharpie lines in with a scribe. While I was doing that, it occurred to me that I could do some chasing at the base to start the feather’s pin end. I chased and I saw that I needed to push that part out more, nothing like drawing all over the surface to bring details into focus. I got out a snarling iron and was able to raise the pinions and raise the ends of the feathers that the hook hammer hadn’t been able to reach. It has to be annealed before I can do much more.

It’s taking me a long time to tell about the trip to Canada. In the meantime, since that trip there was also a week in Santa Fe with our friends David and Mary Jane, there’s a backlog of photos and I want to talk about current activities.

I have registered for school at FIT, finished the Lion Cups (and am beginning to market them) and am working on two small candy bowls. The whole perspective of metal work has changed from making one piece that I want as a single object into making the model of the piece that I want for reproduction. I even look at jewelry pieces as modular, to use the castings in necklaces and bracelets, as pendants and brooches. The drawings I have made in my sketch books over the past three years are coming to life as pieces of a collection of similar pieces, adaptable to different stones and mechanical connections.

First, photos of the Lion Cups; I made special boxes for them treating them like the treasures they are. The copies are in pure silver with 24 karat gold inside. They weigh just under 5 ounces each.

Here they are in the boxes,  paste paper covered and lined with green velvet.

I have also finished another small bowl based on Colman’s Drawing.  It’s got a smaller diameter so that the sides are taller which lets the ‘Shields’  be seem more easily.  The first bowl was wider with an impressive inside, the out side was more difficult to see below eye level.  The new bowl has a deeper scalloped edge.  The first bowl is in the works to be produced as a silver plated copper bowl, when that one is done satisfactorily we will have a mold made for this one too.

Over the weekend I started to raise two 5″ disks of copper. I have the urge to make a sugar bowl and creamer.  As it turned out the disks were too small for the shape and size I had in mind and I decided to turn the small disks into candy/nut dishes.  Here are some progress shots to the point where I am about to start the chasing phase of the work.

I sank the disks into a depression to start and this shot was taken after the second raising.  At this point I began to push the bowl on the right out with the hook hammer on a sand bag.  The bowl on the left had been intended to be a kind of pedestal saucer before I decided that it too was too small for the intended purpose, so I shifted course and raised it as a bowl.  Each of the disks have different diameter bases, it’s just a little behind the bowl that was on a surer path to its final shape.

I’m about half way up from the base of the small diameter bowl in this shot.

The large bowl was raised again and the pair is almost the same height. The larger bowl holds 8 ounces of liquid.

The large bowl was rounded out and I began to draw the chasing design, it is to be a companion to my first wine cup, I’m using the same stencils and layout.

The bottom design has yet to be drawn onto the bowl.

I intend to design the small bowl as a companion to the Lion Cup, that will involve considerable redrawing as the stencils are too tall for this bowl.

I made a contour guide from one of the plastic post card coupons that come from Staples.  The outside of the bowl was marked  for planishing.  The center parts are the areas to be worked on so I planished the lip and foot  leaving the center part of the bowl soft from annealing.

In these photos, I have started to push the bowl out from the bottom, you can seethe bulge in its contour. The contour guide shows the space into which I will hammer to bowl’s sides.

I marked the inside of the top with  my dividers so that there would be a guide for pushing the sides out a little.  No contour guide here.

I wanted to set the shoulder an didn’t have a stake or a way to hold the top to do that.  I went to the basement with a hammer and wood chisel and carved a curved notch into a side of one of my little stumps.  I made the curve larger than I would need it to be and carved the groove to accommodate the  domed part of the lid.  Then I used the hook hammer to set the shoulder  in the groove like a negative of the stake I use to set the base.  It worked really well allowing me to strike on both sides of the shoulder angle.

In the studio at FIT I found some stakes that I needed to do a little planishing on the bowl, I had to switch a lot for the different parts of the curved side.

The dime was difficult. I couldn’t find a stake to fit anywhere, then I saw the hammers, this long hammer with a polished round face was perfect for the  top of the dome.

Then I found another raising hammer with a broader rectangular face to act as a stake while I evened out the shoulder. It still need s more work but I ran out of time and had to head for home.

Here’s a comparison shot of the shaping before and after, I’ll planish a little more, reshape the top of the bowl for a better fit and then I will be able to start chasing the surfaces.

The pieces were annealed. I worked on the inside of the bowl (bottom part of this container) with the hook hammer, starting at the rim and working my way down to the base with closely spaced hammer strikes.  About a third of the way down I switched to a sand bag and continued working toward the base.

I began to close the top some more.  The hook hammer was used to harden  and round the dome from the inside,  then I used the raising hammer and stake to close it all the way to the rim.

When I finished. the rims of both the bowl and its cover were practically the same diameter, they balanced on each other.  I annealed them again.

I wanted  to  push the sides of the bowl out some more and close the rim so that it would fit inside the cover.  I used the surface gauge to mark the inside with three rings to guide my hammering. I set the base again to work harden the edge.

Then I began to hammer the middle part of the bowl from the inside on the sand bag.

In the left side of the  following photo  I have just started to raise and close the rim. When I finished raising and closing I gave the whole outside a light planishing  to smooth out the sounded surface. Then I began to work on the cover (top part).

I closed the top half of the top with my raising hammer on the T stake and I used the hook hammer to push a shoulder out from the inside starting in the depression on a stump, finishing on the sand bag.  The surface gauge was used to mark a height on the bowl and I used a pair of dividers to mark the rim of the top.  Both pieces were trimmed with shears.

More shaping and regulating has to be done because the symmetry is not regular.  I also want to solder sterling wire rims to both pieces before I can start the decorative chasing and repousse.

Here’s a comparison shot of the coupled piece at the beginning, middle and the end of this entry.  More to follow as this project continues.

Thursday was my last silversmith class for this term. The studio was filled with students getting their evaluations in wax carving and others were hard at work at the back benches finishing projects for their finals. My intentions were to work on regulating the form of my subtly lopsided teapot and to make a hook hammer for my studio. I spent $12 getting a piece of tool steel and picked up another bar of stainless steel just incase one type of metal would be more suitable. We had tried to make one last week but the enormous nail (9″) had a casting flaw and broke in the process. While I waited for Gennady to finish his grading I worked on an end of the tool steel bar that I thought was the most likely choice for my hammer. I also worked on the teapot; while it was in the pickle after annealing, I put a stump with a vise on it close to he torch I knew we would be using. David, one of my classmates, needed a stake on which he was going to tighten the lip of this pot. He had polished a small piece of tool steel and Gennady showed us how to bend it with hammers in the vise. It was a short piece of steel but it had to be bent to match part of the pot’s contour, it also had to have a ‘foot’ that would keep it from working into the vise while it was being used. My steel bar was much thicker but Gennady used some of the same cold forging to give the hammer part of its preliminary shape. After that he put it into the vise and began to heat the bar selectively. He heated the bar in a small place and with pliers clamped on it, bent the bar, he moved the heat along the bar and bent it more. After a while we had a hook and he turned the bar around to make the right angle for the handle part of the hammer. Once that was done, he forged it into alignment and began to forge the handle end into a taper. Here’s a photo of Gennady finishing the handle end on the anvil.

Here’s David with his pot.  I’ve been in three of these beginning classes and I have never seen anyone attempt something so complicated. Watching the progress of this pot taught me about reshaping stakes to the job at hand. Even though he’s not quite satisfied with it, he has also given the pot a nicely planished surface. It’s a remarkable achievement.

Here’s Kim (we were on the Riva tour together) with her pot, it turned out much larger than she intended.

The early really cold weather has forced us to bring in the camellias, some are in the greenhouse and this one is in the kitchen (for now). I decided last year that I would prune them more severely to limit their size and hopefully get them to fill out. I also fed the plants more than I have in the past. This is Tama Electra, a samurai type single camellia with a white edged flower.  In the past it hasn’t had more than one or two flowers,  trimming and feeding it has made it bloom with more flowers than we have ever seen on it. These flowers are from a second flush.  There are lots more buds on the secondary branches.

Here’s the gangly bush in the morning sun by the kitchen door.  I’ll trim it a lot more after it finishes blooming.

This morning the sun was so low that it lit a tile we have hung in a back corner of the kitchen. Here are a couple of photos.