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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 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.

A visit to Riva was organized by the newly started Jewelry Club at FIT. Our small group went to the factory just after Thanksgiving. I wasn’t able to take pictures inside but here’s a photo of our group. Katie is on the left, Brian our Jewelry Tech at FIT , is next to our guide Maria  and Kim, one of my classmates in the silversmith class, is on the right. 

It was an eye opening tour. I began to see just what it takes to produce quality castings with perfect finish in truly vast numbers.  We saw wax injecting, molds in all different kinds of materials, we saw model making printers that work from computers,  we saw a flask leave the  burn out kiln and be put into a casting machine. There were finishers  working on wheels, a room with tumbling and vibrating polishers, there were machines that made chains, stretched wire  and some that produce ingots of silver in all kinds of shapes. In other rooms heavy machinery fabricated pieces with pressure, cutters or computer controlled machining and shaping. New technology is near traditional methods everywhere in the factory. There are people there using lasers to fill porosity in pieces while other lasers engraved hallmarks inside finished  pieces. It was an intense, interesting and exhausting to see all the steps a piece of jewelry goes through before it is on the retail shelf. The thing that impressed me most was that there is constant inspection and responsibility attached to each piece no matter how small it is. Every piece is catalogued and inspected as it moves through the many steps to completion in its own pigeon hole in a tray of identical pieces. The visit has left me with a lot to think about should I ever need to manufacture in  huge quantities.

The numbers of pieces was the other eye opener. I still saw jewelry as something that is made by hand in reasonable quantities (what ever that means). Riva makes thing in the thousands of pieces, sometimes the tens of thousands. I couldn’t have imagined that the market was that large. But if you stop to think that if a store is a chain or has outlets across the country each store has to be supplied with the same merchandise. If you have 50 stores, which is probably a small number, and each store has to have an inventory of 5 0r 10 pieces of an item, that’s already 250 to 500 pieces of just one item. If that item is a neck chain with 30 or 40 large or decorative links, the number of links becomes near astronomical for just a few stores let alone a hundred or two. Each piece of metal is practically hand made and finished with machine assistance.

We were in a part of  Long Island/Queens I had never seen before. On the eastern horizon I could see the elevated BQE, a place from which I have seen a lone green Citi Bank tower, a tower whose shadow was now very near where we were. Here’s a view of Manhattan  from a road near our subway stop.

The subway station had beautiful stained glass lights all through it. Here are some photos of the windows, that even on this overcast day were glowing brightly.

After looking at these photos I noticed that each light had a letter  somewhere in the composition.  After a while I realized that there must be a whole alphabet at this station.  We were in the middle of the station and the windows are all lettered with the center part of the alphabet, M,N, O, and  P.  If I ever get back there I’ll look for the other letters.

The Teapot , part 6 starting the spout

I redesigned the spout on my first drawing and made a flat pattern for the spout. Gennady had me cut two pieces out of copper foil that  I then annealed.  One of the pieces is to remain flat  so that I will have a pattern to use when it comes time to make the  silver spout.  I began to shape the other piece of foil into a spout shape. I won’t be able to give it the curve  because the foil does not have enough metal to move like the silver spout will.  I used a delrin mallet on a sand bag to begin the shaping.

Even though the metal is thin and flexible  dramatically becomes more difficult to bend after it has been worked on just a little. I had to anneal it a couple of times, which happened very fast, to get it to this nearly closed shape. Gennady told me I would have to remember the way I struck the foil getting it to close as I will have to do the same with the silver later. Closing the seam wasn’t

easy, we found this little bar type of stake in the tool closet and  put it into a vise. It took me a while to figure it out, I found that to  close the bottom part of the seam , I had to use the little crook at the end of the stake, tapping the foil into the concave space.

Once I finish shaping the pot body I will trim the shaped foil model until it fits like I want it to fit on the pot,  I’ll retain the pieces I cut off and subtract them from the flat pattern I have reserved. The spout is much longer than it will be when it is finished on the pot. The length is necessary  because it will be packed with sand when we shape the curve and we need to be able to close the end tightly. I don’t know the procedure or how it will happen, but that’s next term.  Only one more class left this year.

The copper pots have been on the back burner while I finished the chased mirror frame for class. I did get to work on them a little this weekend. Here they are after the sixth raising.

I marked them with a surface gauge, annealed them and trimmed the top edges. 

Here they are just before, and in the second photo, after the 7th trip to the stake; this time mostly for planishing and a little final shaping. They’ll be annealed again and filled with pitch so that I can begin to chase designs into them.  The distortion you see in the photo is the lens, they really are symmetrically round.

 

Thursday and Friday were overcast and damp. All the crocus weren’t opening from their night’s sleep closing. It looked like a garden of Q-Tips.

On Saturday we were visited by a new friend of a friend with whom I’ve been messaging on Facebook. Marty arrived mid afternoon and we took a walk to Snug Harbor for a short tour of the neighborhood. While in the harbor we were at the greenhouse when we saw this unusual bush in bloom.  It is very sweetly fragrant.  The outside of the flowers looks and feels like tight felt. The open flowers are a beautiful clear yellow. I had never seen an Edgeworthia before.

The bush is about 4 feet tall and about 5-6 feet wide. 

 

As we were leaving the gardens we met our neighbors Joe and Lorraine walking their dog Casey.

  

We took Marty over to the Art Lab where the the annual kid’s art show is hanging then walked around the front of the Harbor buildings to see if we could get into the main gallery, it was closed.  But we did manage to get into the Noble Collection,  Marty was impressed with the restored artist’s barge that is installed there.  Colman and I found a Noble print that we both like, it’s a bird’s eye view of topsails in a storm, I think we’d like to get a print if it’s available.

It’s been a busy week and a half. Saturday before last, I came down with a violent virus that laid me out for a few days. I lost 6 pounds and wasn’t able to leave the house at all. I did make it to the chasing class where we learned how to make matting tools for our up-coming project. Here’s a shot of a vessel I worked on with our new lining tools. The proper tools really cut into the metal in a different way. These lining tools move as they are tapped with the hammer to give a continuous line. One really has to control the force of the hammer, especially in copper where differences in force show up as different widths in the line.

I am raising two new bowls. Here’s what they looked like after marking the bases, crimping the edges and raising the first round.

Then the second round of raising.

I took this shot part way through the third round.  It shows how the metal is being deformed  and raised.

The third round completed.

Here are the second and third rounds together for comparison of the changes in the form.

For the fourth round, I took them into the city to set and rectify the bases on a stake that I don’t have (yet), planish the lower part of the bowls and mark the level from which I will continue raising the vessels. The lower parts are near the desired finished diameter .  A marking gauge is used to put a scratch in the metal surface as a guide for the continued raising. This is what they looked like after the fifth round.  You’ll notice a definite break in the angle of the sides.  First, a view part way through the round and then the completed fifth round.

Yesterday after the Materials and Properties class, I went to Allcraft to buy  my first stake. The bowls can not continue to be raised on my steel pipe.  The shape of the bowl sides will not allow me to work on the lower portion without changing their shapes on the straight pipe.  Now I have a stake that will facilitate the continued closing of the top edge diameters.

Over the week end I made matting tools with which to chase the cup that is my current testing piece.

In the materials and Properties class, we have been finding out what happens to alloys at various temperatures. As a part of that, I have learned more about hardening tools. I have been able to apply the knowledge to making chasing tools.  In the chasing class we have been heating the finished tools to a very bright orange before we quench them.  This week end I  got my torch and magnet together to harden the matting tools. I wanted to be very careful with these tools because I will use them a lot and  it is necessary for them to produce uniformly textured areas. I made two sets.  One where the texture was made by striking the tool repeatedly with a center punch and another set where I struck the tool blank against a coarse file until it had a sandpaper like surface. I marked one set of tools on their sides with my center punch to keep the textures separate.

When tool steel is heated to the proper hardening temperature, it becomes austinite and is no longer magnetic, when it is quenched at this stage it becomes martensite. Holding the magnet at the ready I heated the end of the tool, I was surprised to see that it lost magnetism as it began to glow cherry red, it wasn’t necessary to heat it to the firey orange like we did in class. The cooled tools were cleaned so that white metal was exposed . The next step is to temper the tool, hard as it is in this state, it is also brittle and there is danger of the tool shattering under hammer blows. In the past,  I had been heating the whole tool to temper  it.  Recent demonstrations in class have shown that it is necessary only to aim the torch at a spot  about 40 mm from the working tip  and watch as the rainbow of color  moves along the shaft. I move the flame toward the tip in short  quick movements so that there is a spread to the colors and I have a better chance to catch the yellow band as it reaches the tip. It is when the yellow reaches the tip that the tool is quenched, finalizing the tempering process. These new matting tools seem harder than the tools I made in class. It was also easier to temper them with my acetylene torch which burns about 1200 degrees cooler than the gas/oxygen torches at school.

Here my test cup is after the triangular areas were matted with the new tools. The top edge has been trimmed to a finished height.