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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.

The bowl got an over all light planishing to even out the surface. I still had some deep hammer marks in a few places but wanted to soften them later.  I was more interested in adding something of interest to the base for  visuals inside the bowl.

I drew a star on the base of the bowl, no chasing, I just started to push the metal down with repoussé tools. In the past I have chased a design on the outside of a vessel meant to be see on the inside and didn’t like the way it worked. Recently I saw a guy on YouTube just go in to the back of a large platter (on black pitch) very deeply with repoussé tools, when the front was exposed, he went in to define the figures with what looked like chasing tools, considerably softer-edged than mine.  The Corwin book talks about ‘running’ tools of different widths and profiles for different effects. That must be what he was doing.  I’m moving just a little way down that road with this element.

While I worked on the sides, the pitch lining was cracking a little.  That was  most likely due to its thinness, if I had filled the bowl or lined it more heavily, it may not have cracked in the same way. As it was, I just heated the inside of the lining, pressed the pitch back together, let it cool and continued to work.

When I put the star in the base, it knocked out a piece of the pitch, metal was pushed farther than the thin layer of pitch would allow.

The pitch was melted out of the bowl and I soaked it in turpentine for about 4 hours (to remove pitch residue without fire), while I had dinner and watched Thursday night TV.

Afterwards I gave the bowl a brass brushing  to remove the turps and cut one of the scallops to see if my shears were the right tool, they worked.

The star had a lumpy appearance inside the bowl. Again, something new from the Corwin book, I took some plasticine that had been lying around the studio for years and put it to work. The base had to be supported while I worked on it but I didn’t want to go through the pitch placing and removal process for this small part of the bowl. We were having a heat wave when I picked up the plasticine, it was more pliable than it had been during winter, still pretty stiff but nothing like it was when I was using it years ago in cooler weather.

I packed an inch thick layer of plasticine onto the base and  worked on a board for mobility and to keep the oily stuff of of my worktable. I worked on defining the edges of the star with a pear shaped repoussé tool.

After I worked on the inside a bit, I made a bigger piece for the inside so I could work on it  from the outside.  The plasticine had to be tall enough to raise the rim of the bowl  above  the board.

Working from the outside I was able to smooth out the star’s surface. It was interesting to note that when I remover the plasticine from the inside the copper and the clay were both blackened. I don’t know if there was some unknown agent acting  because it didn’t happen on the outside of the vessel with plasticine from a different part of my stash.

The whole base outside of the star was still not work hardened,  I began to us a dowel to push the base around the star flatter, the bowl is unsupported, resting on the board.

I spent a lot of time refining the shape of the bowl, widening and making the base circular, and removing the visual break between the base and the curved sides.  It took a combination of different hammers and mallets, short trips to a stake, stump depression and board, and  the use of different shaped wooden dowels.

I cut out all of the scallop dips.

The rim was filed into shape ( #2, #4 half round files) and sanded with 800 grit emery paper.  I gave the whole surface a rubdown with the 8oo grit paper. I think it’s finished now, removing the texture might remove its character.

Colman showed me a drawing in the last week of June and gave me a scanned print of it. I thought it would be interesting to see if I could make  a bowl like the drawing, so I and bought a couple 7 inch copper disks at Metalliferous and on the 27th I began to hammer the bowl into shape.  I sank the disk into a depression as a first raising. Here’s a link to  my ‘raising’ video on YouTube.

After annealing, it was raised on a T stake.

It was annealed again, I began to raise it by rounding the sides on a sand bag.  For this operation, I began my hammering from the rim toward the base. That way the bowl would retain its diameter and the sides would round outward giving the bowl a little height in the process. The bowl is shiny where I have struck the metal with the ball peen hammer and duller where I have yet to work the shape.

The bowl was raised significantly and rounded  nearer the finished profile.

It was annealed again, I used the surface gauge to mark and then trimmed the rim to an even height. The next step was to draw on the ’shield’ shape triangles.

I used the surface gauge to scratch in lines for the height  and depth of the scalloped edge, the bowl was divided into 9 sections and the triangular shapes modified.

I chased in all of the lines after scratching a more definite path with my awl. Cutting the scallops will be one of the last operations, I hear Gennady in the background saying,  ’later, there is always time to cut.’

I have recently purchased this book at Metalliferous. It is a beautiful and thorough work on all aspects of chasing and repoussé. There are sections on tools and toolmaking, the different types of pitch and eastern methods, different from those we learned in the west. The book is illustrated with shots of the various tools and materials interspersed with photos of remarkable works in metal. I recommend this for anyone interested in doing this type of work. The author is Nancy Megan Corwin and the publisher is Brynmorgen in Maine. (It cost $33.00 plus tax)

I had never seen anyone shape the pitch before seeing the illustrations in the book about making a cuff.

It led me to line the bowl with pitch rather than try to fill it completely or use some wood to solidify a layer of pitch. I don’t have a piece of wood that would work for this job and the lining allows me to constantly shift the bowl on the end of a sandbag while I work on it. I raised the sandbag on a short plank of wood because, in some positions, the bowl’s lower edge was against the table.

Pitch removed and annealed again, it was ready to receive a little more relief.

I carved a depression in one of my  tree slices and used the ball peen hammer to push the ’shields’ out from the inside. I also used a pear shaped repuossé tool in the points of the triangle.

Once the shields were pushed out, I hammered the base all around on the inside to push a little more volume into the bowl. Then I lined it with pitch so I could work on the narrower triangles from the outside of the bowl adding some contrast to the relief. I will probably push the narrower triangles out from the inside once their edges are more defined. I’ve had to stop work on this bowl momentarily because I am involved with the VanDuzer Saturdays here on Staten Island, there’s also some pressing work in the graphic part of my studio. So, this is where I leave the bowl for now.

I am working on a new silver wine cup and have decided to take people along with me as I begin to chase the surface. The first 7 parts have been posted on you tube. You can get to my channel by clicking in this LINK to see the series so far. I will try to post something every few days after I complete work at each stage of  working the design into the cup’s surface.

Here is a ‘preview’ in the form of Parts 3 and 4 where I sketch in the design to see the it in place before making final adjustments. I intend to take you along with these videos using real time where it isn’t boring and showing all the steps it takes to finish a cup, even when I misstep. I am still a student but I have been doing this long enough to know that I can correct or improvise when necessary to complete the project, even if it goes awry or veers from the original plan.

I feel like I passed a milestone last night, there are now over 200 people subscribing to my YouTube Channel.  It’s been gratifying to have such a positive response to my work on line. I enjoy making the videos, they and the response to them, give me as much satisfaction as teaching a class or workshop.

We had a mixed bag of weather this weekend. A beautiful Saturday and torrential downpour on Sunday. There’s water in the basement. It rained Monday too and I stayed inside to finish work I wanted to deliver and show today. The Lion Cup is done, I intend to have a mold made so that we can have it electro formed in a variety of metals and finishes.
Her are two shots.

I went into the city today to buy gold leverbacks for a pair of earrings to go along with the necklace I finished yesterday.  The beads are carnelian, they alternate in a chain with 9-10 mm freshwater pearls. The necklace is just under 20″ long, all the wire and findings are 14kt gold, I soldered and forged the hook clasp.  It’ll be available on my website soon, as a set for $350. Or you can email me at colsage@earthlink.net

The Azaleas are blooming out of sequence this year because of the little heat wave we had a few weeks ago and the prolonged cool weather we are having now.

My cross between an Exbury and  a Ghent hybrid  azalea is having a banner year. I love the color which is more subtle than here in the photograph. You’ll see the whole bush in the pans of the garden at the bottom of this entry.

The Ken Janek Rhododendrons are also blooming in a strange way this year.  In the past the blooms all were together, the bush showing pink buds and then with the flowers opening the intense pink was all gone. This year some flowers are opening  and some buds are delayed so that we have a real splash of mixed color.  Colman thinks it’s because the plants are sensitive to the microclimates around each bush; sunny branch, cool pocket, warm draft.

In the front the Sekidera Azalea in blooming. The flowers are very nice and large, but the bush itself looks wretched most of the year. I cut it back severely last year and it started to look better, I’ll do the same this year after it finishes blooming, that is if it doesn’t continue to rain like it has the past few weeks.

Here are two pan shots of the back yard, one dappled with sunlight when I got home today around 4:30 and then again a little later as the sun got behind clouds. You can see my glowing, orange azalea in front of the greenhouse. The red azalea on the left in the shade pan is Girard’s Scarlet, the one in the center is Silver Sword, called that because the leaves are variegated with white edges.

The first pair of beakers I made  are  for me chase designs that are influenced by cylinder seals. I cut stencils from sheets of mylar for two motifs from a seal’s impression, one of a lion with a goat and one of a large boar with a leaf form. The stencils allow me to place, repeat and reverse directions of the designs around the cup.

Designs were drawn onto the beaker with a sharpie and then scratched  in with an awl. I cleaned the sharpie ink off and set the supporting dowel into a vise so I could begin chasing the designs into the copper. In the next photo, I have already chased lines on the lip and foot of the cup, the scratches are where I will begin to chase the animals onto the cup.

The chasing has started.

I remade my small chasing tool. When it was made last year, it was for chasing curves, I never used it because the regular chasing tool made the gentle curves that I needed very well. The curve tool, however, seemed to just dig in to the metal and was difficult to use. This design requires tighter curves than I can make with the main chasing tool. I looked at the curve tool again and decided that it dug in because the arc of its bite was too round. It was annealed and I let it cool slowly between slabs of fire brick, then I filed the high part of the arc off of the tool to make it closely match the gentle arc of  my main tool. The arc is flatter now like the big tool, the curves are a close match, but this one is on a shorter length of bite.  Now the tool works like it should, gliding along without digging into the metal. I’m only chasing outlines at this stage, but I have scratched in some of the future detailling.

Here’s a close-up of some of the chasing.

Between sessions of chasing I was also raising on two new beakers, one slightly larger and one smaller than the pair I finished last week. Placing the design on the first beaker showed me that I would need some different diameters and heights. I bought a 5″ (126 mm) and a 6″ (172 mm) disk, raising one with a 45 MM diameter and the other with a 50 mm diameter,  aiming for  heights over 75 mm.  Here’s what my cache of pots looked like when I got to class last Friday. There’s also a pin in the lower left that I had begun to make for Colman (his birthday was the 21st).  While in class I made another snarling iron with a small tip. I know I will need one for the new designs.

I finished the pin Saturday and made a box out of paste paper and maroon velvet to present his gift.

Here I have begun to push one side of the chased line down, the branch and one side of the lion is done.

I won’t do the detail lines at all right now,  not having done final working drawings I want to think about it some more and look at photos of the impressions that cylinder seals make before committing to tool marks.  here’s a close-up.

I have to put the cup on the back side of the vise to get to some of the lines properly, the tool can only be seen from one side while I am working with it.

Now I am beginning to put the background down with broader polished tools.  The areas are large and I may have to make a pattern to get it all to go down to the same level around the cup.

Another close up, there’s still a lot of work to be done so I am not worried about the small flaws and irregularities.

I used the sharpie to mark in some of the details on the boar’s hind quarter.  Then I scratched in one line, chased it  and then scratched in the next line.  It felt like I had better control if I made one scratched and chased line at a time. Doing it that way allowed me to use the already chased line as a guide in chasing another line near it.  After  chasing I removed the ink for better visibility.

AfterI finish putting the background down I will remove the cup from the pitch and use a snarling iron to push the animals out a little, then it will be time to anneal and put the cup on the pitch ended dowel again for finishing.

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.

I started this project for two reasons. first I need to be more consistent with my hammer work and I wanted to see how closely I could raise a matching pair of vessels. Secondly I need to make some samples of repousse wine cups that embody a new direction in my ideas about decoration on these cups.

One disk has been started the other has only the center point marked with a punch. The disk is hammered in a depression on a stump from the perimeter toward the center.  This stretches the metal. I started with 5″ disks, 126 mm with hopes of raising a 60-70 mm beaker.

This photo shows the first round finished, the second round started where the roundness is restored and the finished second  round.

This is what it looked like after the third round which was struck with a ball peen hammer.  These three rounds were done without annealing but to continue I must now anneal.

I lightly set the bases on the inside so that I would have a reference point from which to begin raising the sides.

I marked the bases at 50 mm and raised the bowls on my pipe stake held in a vise. The bowl on the left is raised  the one on the right is still bowl shaped. The hammering from now on is all on the outside of the vessel. Top and side views below.

I crimped the second bowl  to see if there was any advantage to a more angular raising.

After raising the difference was minimal, only about 5 mm difference between the pieces.

I set the bases on a flat round stake  in my upstairs studio, the light is better there and I can set the stake at a higher position so that Ican see the reflections of my hammer strikes clearly as they are made.  I scratched a 50 mm circle on the base and  set the base by flattening the bottom and striking the sides as I worked my way around the base.  The first cup has been  nearly set in this photo, the next shot shows the flattened base before I struck the sides. 

This is the stake, I only use one small portion of the edge, striking only on that spot to keep the base round.

This is the second piece before any striking has been done.

This is the desk with all my projects, the vise and cups are on the far side under the lamp.

The cups went back downstairs where I began to raise them on the pipe in my vise.

This is the round completed  with the newly set bases before I annealed them.

Next,  I went for another round of raising trying to close the beaker a little faster, this photo shows how much I am trying to move the metal on my pipe stake in the vise.

The bases were set again and another round after annealing.

Another anneal and round of raising, the vessels are very close  to matching measurements.

At this point the bases are near where I wanted them to be but the tops were still too wide and not tall enough.

I planished the bases to about a 30 mm height  and raised the vessels closing them more the rest of the way.  The beaker on the left is ready to be annealed and the one on the right is almost finished for this round.

At this point I planished a little higher and closed the tops some more.  Another shot of the two pieces in two stages, the one on the left is ahead of the one on the right.

At this point I began to planish lightly after raising and before annealing,  I wanted to lower some of the hammer marks so that later planishing didn’t have to be so heavy. I made one more round to close the tops some more.

Planishing the tops after the final closing round made the beakers more circular. They had been slight ovals before I planished them.

Yesterday was the first day of my Spring classes at FIT, I took the beakers to show Gennady  who said I’d done a good job of raising them.  I told him about planishing lightly after completing a round of raising before annealing. He said that, with copper, light planishing was okay in most circumstances because copper is a pure metal. It is not a good idea to do that with  sterling silver,  which is an alloy.  The sterling surface could get “stretch marks” and there was a danger of causing the metal to layer,  with sterling it is always better to work on soft metal.

I took this short video of me annealing one of the beakers before I trimmed them.  Annealing happens very quickly when you heat from the inside  with a big torch. I also marked that when the green flames turned orange the piece was annealed. I think the flames were telling me the oxidation was finished and the metal had relaxed. You’ll hear the quench near the end of the video.

The beakers had already been marked with my surface gauge to a height of 65 mm which is where I trimmed them.

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.

Yesterday I began to work with 2 copper disks that I bought last Monday. I want to make a container with a separate top, roughly pear shape. I shaped the first disk that was 5″ in diameter the way Gennady showed me to start the teapot. I made three passes, two with my raising hammer and a third with a filed down ball peen hammer.  It was such a success that I started to take photos when I began with the larger 6″ disk. This is the small disk after the first set of hammering.

Here’s picture of one of my small stumps carved with the depression I am using for this first bit of shaping. The stump is about 8″in diameter.

Here’s the 6″ disk before I began to hammer the edges.

I don’t have a broad raising hammer like the one I used in  the FIT studio. The metal really crumpled under the narrow raising hammer. This is just the second or third time around the edge. 

Working in toward the center it gets more wrinkled.

This is what it looked like after hammering it a second time  from the rim to the center.

I used the ball peen hammer because the raising hammer left the surface rougher than it would have been if I had a broader raising hammer, there was still a lot of metal that was not work hardened. All of this happened before I needed to anneal, the ball peen hammer made it smoother and cleaned up the shape. This method gave me a practically instant depth of 36 mm and stretched the diameter 10 mm.

I annealed both pieces.  I took the large disk and hammered  a rough base from the inside. Then I put a steel pipe into my vise and began to raise the vessel by hammering on the outside.

Here it is with the sides hammered flat and up toward the rim, it gained a modest 6.5 mm in depth.

I  tried to stretch the small disk some more by raising it in the depression again.

Here are the pieces just before annealing.

I set the base on the large dish and began the third round of raising on the steel pipe.

I began the third round with the smaller disk on the round end of my stake set at an angle in my vise.  It was very hard to keep everything symmetrical without a set base.

When I finished it and it wasn’t too badly  off center.

After annealing I began the fourth round. Pencil lines were drawn on the the large bowl (bottom part) to help me control the pitch of the sides. I had gotten the symmetry a little skewed.

I found the center on the top part of my project, marked it with a punch and lightly scratched circles with a compass so I could see  where to strike and keep the dome rising and closing evenly.

The bottom after the fourth round.

The top nearing completion of the fourth round.  I had to switch to the flat side of my stake to stabilize the  metal while I worked on it, it moved too much on the rounded end.

Here they are together after the fourth round.

After annealing, I sharpened the base and planished the lower third of the bottom part before raising and closing the top section further.

It was a struggle getting this into an even form.

Fifth round complete.

I used my new hook hammer to reach inside and round out the top. It was too small for the stake which was distorting the dome.

Sixth round fiished on the top, it is still asymmetrical, it will take some more work to straighten it out or find another solution.

I had to be more aggressive with the bottom, it was time to raise the upper portion of the bowl into a parallel position.  The top edge really began to curl in the process.

The open ends of both pieces are about the same diameter now.  I want to close the top of the bowl a little more and  give the dome a bit of a neck. Shaping will be interesting.

Here’s a shot of the last three rounds, the pieces are stacked to show how they changed each round.