November 6

I had worked on my teapot and it was time to trim the top. Gennady had to do it.  We marked it with the surface gauge and gennady got out a large pair of metal shears. One of the handles was locked in a vise, he held the pot in one hand and worked the other part of the scissor-like shear trimming the pot. The uneven thickness of my raising made trimming the edge difficult. Here’s a shot of the trimmed pot and the bits he cut off of it.

After trimming I annealed the pot and planished it from the middle toward the top. I had marked it again with the surface gauge  at a point about 25 mm from the lip where I wanted to close the top a little more. This is as far as I got before class ended.

We were invited to tonight’s opening by another old friend Robin Sherrin. It’s a group show of etchings by the New York Society of Etchers being held at the Art Club in Grammercy Square.

I got there early  so I was able to find  Robin’s print  in the collection of  what looked like about 60 works.  I also saw Steven Fredericks  who runs the society and for whom I have made portfolios in the past.  It was amazing how many people showed up. Here’s a shot of one of the three rooms in which the prints were hung.

Here’s Robin with Colman.

The Art Club is a fascinating place. It’s Old New York like we see in the movies.  Marble, stained glass, heavy woodwork and tiles all in a genteel setting complete with door man and concierge. As we were leaving I took this photo of us in a mirror in the entrance hall, you get an idea of the atmosphere from the things you see around us.

We walked out of Grammercy park toward Fifth Avenue where we were to catch the R train to South Ferry and passed by this doorway. I stopped to look at the decorative work and the unusual iron work railing.

When we got to Fifth Avenue we were near the Met Life Tower fully lit for the evening.

October 15

In class I began to close the top part of the teapot.  We  scratched a line about 50 mm from the base and I  planished a line to harden the pot at that height.  Then I began to raise and close the upper half of the pot. This is as far as I got in class.

At home I worked on the pot and finished the round.  I don’t have a big enough torch to anneal  something this large at home so I have to wait until next class to continue.

At this point it holds 16 ounces of water and I am thinking that I should  redesign the final shape.  I have been looking at a number  of teapots and think a squat pear shape will give me more volume and surface area to chase on.

Here’s a picture of the saucer,  Gennady wants me to work on the rim which means annealing it again. He thought the rim was ‘boring’.  I have come to agree that it does need something to finish it properly.

October 22

Back at FIT, I was to work on the bottom half with a Hook Hammer. I raised and closed the top some more.

Then Gennady set me by a stump with a depression and showed me how to use the hook hammer striking the pot on the inside below the raised and hardened area.  He produced a continuous and regular line of raised surface on the outside of the pot. When I did it, the line looked more like a segmented caterpillar.

You can see some of the first strikes inside the pot here.

Here it is at the end of class, the shape is pushed out at the base, it’s a little lumpy but we can smooth it out in the next rounds.

The sun was setting during the ferry ride home. Here’s the Statue of Liberty  with the Elizabeth port container cranes and the Bayonne Bridge.

October 29

Last week’s class was a lot of work. Work I wasn’t really skilled enough to do.  Gennady wanted me to set the base so that i could planish the lower half of the pot. I set up my flat top stake and tried to sharpen the circle of the pot’s base. It was very hard to find and strike, the base is so wide and was slightly warped, the sides of the pot had been pushed out for the nice round shape of a teapot and were interfering with the face of the hammer.  Luckily, Gennady  came to my aid before I had done too much damage and started to correct out my poorly struck edges. When he saw a particularly bad strike,  he said,  ”That ‘s your last mistake.”  I was in danger of thinning the metal out too much in a very small area. While he worked his way around the pot  he showed me that I could push some of the rounded side wall down in order to get the base circle set.  Something I had been avoiding and in the process of that avoidance, I lost sight and control of the circle I was trying to secure.  Then he chose another stake, in the foreground of the next photo,  with a small stake insert that fit the shape of my pot.  He showed me how I should strike with the planishing hammer  and I began. I spent most of the class time planishing up to the half way mark, slowly  striking, watching reflections connect and build a uniform surface. The planishing, though slow, was something I could do.  Setting the base on a vessel with this shape will take a LOT of practice.

Once I made it up to the mark I switched stakes and began to close the to some more.  This is as far as I got with that

This photo show how Gennady ‘tacked’ the base  with a network of hardened spots rather than hardening and possibly thinning the entire bottom. I intend to sink the center so that there will be a foot to the pot and a depressed area for chasing and hall marks.

November 1

I finished raising the pot today. I also gave the top half a bit of light planishing to even out the surface and marry the curves of the profile.

It  now holds over 22 ounces of water  with about 12mm of air space. We will eventually trim the top edge and solder a bezel in place into which the lid will fit.

Now that the shape is nearing what I want, it’s time to start planning the spout and handle. Usually this would be designed before the disk received the first hammer blow, but this pot has become larger than my original drawing and I would like to take advantage of the extra volume that has been created.  This project has become one that is being designed as we move along. I’m leaning toward one more like the one in the top of the right hand sketch.

Two Thursdays ago I raised the teapot  some more in class.  Gennady and I also discussed the handle and how it was to be attached.  I will need 8 mm wide bezels into which  a wooden plug will be set after the handle has been joined to it.  Maybe ebony and now I need to finalize my ideas about the handle as well as a spout.

This is as far as I got  before class ended.

Over the weekend I finished raising the pot.  Gennady’s sketches of the handle connection are in blue on my concept sketch, my desired profile drawing with measurements is on the right side of the photo.

I was concerned that the pot was closing up more than it should toward the bottom, I made a  tombo 120 mm long with a foot to bring it to the right height for the 120 diameter.  A tombo is a Japanese tool that potters use to throw pots of a consistent size. They are usually made of bamboo and are suspended from a stick looking much like a dragonfly, tombo. They may have two cross bars, one for height and one for diameter, the tail dipping into the vessel for the depth measurement. When I put it inside the teapot I could see just where the diameter was 120 mm,  the foot should touch the bottom of the pot but it is about 8 mm above, floating in the air.  Gennady assures me that we will be able to widen the pot after we get as much height as we can out of the metal.

I set the base and began to raise the pot again from a place just above where the tombo was resting. Raising now is toward the vertical as I try to close the top diameter some more.

When I got to class last Thursday,  I did a little planishing on the base and then we stopped to see a film on raising a freeform bottle. In the film there was a lot of  model making, measuring and template use, but the thing that stuck with me was that  the silversmith would often start raising from the top down and then go back to  work on the middle section between hardened areas.  That seemed to be close to what I needed to do with my teapot.  I stopped planishing my way to the top, drew a pencil line where I needed to start raising and after a little mallet work I began to raise above the line leaving the center section shape unchanged.

It didn’t close up very much and I only gained about 2 mm in height.

Gennady said that my hammer strikes were not close together enough, he pointed to dull areas between the shiny strike marks and  and indicated that the silver there was not contributing to raising the sides. I was to strike slowly and watch the reflections so that they touched each other raising all of the metal together.  It was annealed and pickled before I began raising again, I took a mallet to the lower part of the pot and hammered with force on the bull nose end of the stake to harden the metal and to remove the lumpy parts rounding out the shape a little more. Here’s a look at the second round for this raising, he said the hammering was better and I can see that the top is closing a little more. This is as far as I was able to get before the class ended.

The Saucer

I spent some time last weekend working on the saucer too. A medium sized nail punch was used to put in the textured background around the leafy center.  The outlines were done first in an attempt to control the warping.

As I worked my way around, I was sharpening the leaf detail and smoothing out the leaf surfaces. To keep track of where I was with the leaves, I stamped in the background and  lowered the outer ring of the chased circle once I had finished a set of leaves.

All finished. I heated the saucer off of the pitch and soaked it in turpentine to remove the pitch that was stuck in the relief on the back side.  Then I used a mallet on the back side to remove most of the warp.

In class last Thursday, Gennady said I shouldn’t remove the excess and  urged me to do something with the outer rim. I decided that I wanted  to arc the rim downward and he told me how I should go about it. I was to take a piece of wood and put two nails in it to control the rotation of the saucer.  He said to make a shallow groove  above which I would  strike the back of the saucer rim with a dapping tool. That Saturday I took one of my oak tree slices and set it up like this with two large brass brads as my nail/guides.

It worked very well, I struck the rim in the groove which had been carved to fit my saucer rim rotating the saucer once the silver was bent. Halfway around, I had to raise the brads a little because the rim was curved upwards and took up more space under their heads. I went around a second time aiming the dapping tool toward the center and outer edge to smooth out the curve.

Then I was looking for a stake so that I could do a little planishing on the top surface.  I settled on the ball side of my ball peen hammer, it had been filed down so that it wasn’t round like a ball but has a flattened, slightly domed, slightly rectangular face that seemed to be a good match for the inside of my curved rim. The hammer is in the vise in the lower right of the next photo.

Planishing made the chased and lowered edge of the border look too sharp. I have had to put the saucer back on the pitch so I can work around the border to make the irregular depression tool marks less evident.

Here’s a look at my bench where there are a number of projects taking place.  The center is set up to make photos of a cuff I just finished.

And here’s the cuff. It is sterling set with khaki turquoise, jade and carnelian cabochons.  I made it for me, I need something new to wear.

The saucer was annealed, then I started to lower the center by holding the rim on the wooden dowel I had shaped over the weekend, striking the center edge with the flat head end of my planishing hammer. That put it down a little but not enough to raise the rim so it could be picked up  from a table easily.  I have an oak log that  has a slight depression in it and thought  it would be useful with a large repousse tool.  I hammered that around the depressions edge but it was putting the center down with a curved slope.

Then I realized that I needed something much larger and felt I should have found the flat end of the wooden stake sooner, it was much more effective at moving the silver where I wanted it to go. It was struck with a large rawhide mallet so I wouldn’t damage the shaped end.

The depression wasn’t sharp enough yet. I taped the saucer to a steel block and chose the largest nail punch in my collection. It makes a circle when it is struck like a chasing tool. I set an edge of the punch on the chased line at a slight angle and struck, then I straightened the punch vertically and struck again in the same place, the edge was finally down where I wanted it and the slope up to the leaves was gone.

After completing the circle with the nail punch I took the saucer to the flat top round stake and used the planishing hammer to flatten the center of the depression.  While there, I stamped my mark and a 925. Then I took it back to the log with the depression and used a mallet to even up the raised rim.  It’ll go back into the pitch bowl now so that I can start the detailed (final?) chasing.

The Teapot

I took my new flat top round stake to class to set the base in the teapot. Gennady showed me how to set the base with a mallet. Other times when we set the base, we have always used a hammer. This is the piece right after Gennady finished  demonstrating, the base is being set on the left side of the bottom, you’ll see a shadow where he used the mallet to put a sharper angle against a divider marked circle, on the right side there is no shadow.

Here’s a close up of the inside after I finished the round, there are marks where  the edge of the stake has been hit a  little off  the mark.  We used the mallet to flatten the  bottom too. Eventually I will push the center up to make a foot on the teapot and base will not be flat  or chased.

From here I began to use a hammer and a mushroom stake to raise and close the sides from the break in the angle up to the rim of the bowl.

Finished with that round.

It was time to anneal the piece.

At this point we needed a new stake,  Gennady picked out a large t-stake that had a cut back end, didn’t get a photo of it for this entry.  We had to re-grind the back end because it had a chip right where I would need to use it. This stake was necessary because it had to fit into the angle of the base so that I could begin to raise the sides to the proper height.  It took about 3/4 of an hour to grind, smooth and polish the stake’s end.  I had to polish out old hammer dents too for a space that was just over an inch from the end.  I wanted to use my raising hammer  so Gennady showed me how to strike and how close the strikes had to be to each other.  When I got this far he wanted me to use the mushroom top stake  to continue to the edge. Class was over  a little while after I began to use the rounded stake, this shot was taken just before I began to use it.

This shot shows how much more was raised on the round stake before the class ended. The diameter has grown another 1/4 inch, it measures 8 1/8″ or 206 mm.

The Saucer

At home I have been working on the saucer. This is where it was when I stopped  a few days ago.

Here it is today after about four more hours of repousse work.

As you can see it continues to warp as I work on it.  It is strange, nothing like this happened with a copper plate and the Snake Pit plate when I made them. I probably should have  raised the rim a little to stabilize and shape it before I began to apply the decorative work.

Here’s the topside after I cleaned the pitch off of it.

While the plate was in the turpentine, I thought I might need a wooden stake to help me shape the rim.  I made this one from a closet pole.  I set the base a little flatter  with the flat top iron stake and and put my mark along with a 925 stamp on the bottom of the saucer.  I hope that will be enough of a signature for the set. I still haven’t figured our how to mark the cup.

I used the mallet to flatten the saucer a bit. It is now fully work hardened and will have to be annealed.  Then it will be a matter of the final shape and detailing.  I intend to cut the excess off of the edge, but that may have to become a kind of foot if I can’t shape the rim like I want to.

It’s been an interesting couple of days, aside from the regular activities I have begun to chase a saucer for the Wine Cup I finished  a while ago.  Last week in class I annealed and began to sink the center of the saucer.  The flat pieces of silver still seem hard to me, it’s not until they have some capacity for volume that I am able to anneal AND feel that he metal has softened enough to work on.  This saucer was no  different, in disk form it still seemed to be quite resistant to movement when I tried to bend it by hand. It had a slight warp in it as I put it into the Pitch bowl. I used the same stencils I made for the cup to draw the design on to the saucer with a sharpie. Then I scratched the drawing in with an awl.

Here it is with the design scratched in, the perimeter and center are chased,and the sharpie lined have been cleaned off so that I can see where the chasing tool should go.

More chasing a little later.

All the leaf shapes were chased  before drawing in the center veins, a cautionary step to insure that I get them properly centered.  My drawing is never geometrically perfect, so I do some things in steps in order to make visual corrections along the way.  I have begun to hammer down the background.  The saucer warp had increased and  the silver separated from the pitch along two sides. I hammered the supported metal and then removed the saucer from the pitch, used a mallet to flatten the lifted edges and replaced the saucer into the pitch bowl.

The saucer reset, one of the lifted sides has been hammered down and I am beginning to finish the ground in this photo.

In this side view you can see that the work is continuing to warp the saucer.

Out of the bowl the saucer looks more like a potato chip.

I used a mallet to flatten it again and reset it into the bowl so that it could be worked on from the back. I work on each type of leaf separately,  that way the whole saucer is worked on, one small area at a time.  The things I learn can be repeated and improved as I work on each similar element. I’m also hoping to control the warp factor  better that way too.

This is where it is for the moment.

After a number of stops today, I wound up at Metalliferous and got Dave to get me a 7 inch silver disk for the next project in class. It came to $210 and change,  a big expense, but that’s what I needed for my sense of well being as much as making a small teapot.

When I showed it to Gennady, he asked the gauge, I told him it was 18 but I thought it was heavier, it looked thicker. He measured it, it was a full millimeter in thickness, more than 18 Gauge.

The teapot is to be a kind of squat melon shape. The sketch I drew was for a pot about 110 mm in diameter and about 60 mm in height. I had also drawn an expanded version that was about 125 mm x  78 mm, I asked if we could try for the larger pot  with the metal we have,  he said  we would need to stretch the metal and he set out a plan for me using a sand bag to make a bowl from the disk before I do any raising.  He gave me a ball ended hammer that you’ll see in the photos and told me to start at the perimeter spiraling my way into the center of the disk.  He said that I should be able to gain about 2 inches in height before we need to use a stake.

Here’s what the disk looked like after I’d been hammering a little while, some of the disk is still flat in the center. Gennady came over to where I was working and struck the disk a few times, he decided that the sand bag was too loose,  ( I had been making constant re-arrangements which were more annoying than difficult, but still manageable) and we went to a stump that had depressions in it.  He told me that I should strike a little lighter because the wood was more aggressive than the sandbag. I liked the bowl’s shape and crinkled edge,  if I was going for a serving dish,  I would have stopped here and begun to give it a final finish.

I hammered the disk into a bowl shape trying to keep the movement uniform, it was still a bit lumpy.  The hammering is done on the inside of the bowl with the round end of the hammer (D4 in the photo) at this stage .

I took  the bowl over to Gennady and he said that I should do it again without annealing. I was very surprised a but excited by what  was happening. In the next photo it’s hammered half way around the lip of the bowl, at this point it was about 40 mm deep  and 160 mm in diameter.

When I finished the second round, it was a little deeper and about 150 mm in diameter.  Now I annealed it .

Looking at the bowl, we were about to mark the base of the teapot, Gennady set it onto the raised edge of his desk, took a small hammer from the closet behind him and struck it once in the center. ” Ah”, he said, “I think you can(should) stretch this more”,  it will give me more to work with when I start to raise the sides. We marked the base line  and he struck the bowl along the line a few times to push the metal down inside the base, showing me where I should make the stretch.  He told me I should be able to push another quarter inch out of it. I was really impressed that he seemed to feel or hear  the potential with a simple strike of the hammer.

Here’s what it looked like after I had completed the round of  sinking the base.  It’s a little lumpy especially seen on the inside.

He told me to even it out, ‘ Be meticulous’.  I was working in a small depression on the stump and made it happen.  The 7″ disk started out at a diameter of  177 mm, at this stage it measured 198 mm.  The metal had been stretched about 7/8″.  All of this took place in less than three hours.

Today I began to raise a silver wine goblet. Classes were not held last week because of the Jewish Holidays so I wasn’t able to start it until today. Here’s a photo of the disk that I purchased about 2 weeks ago. It’s 6 inches in diameter, that’s 153mm. I say that because from here on in I will always refer to the size in metric terms.

I was a little uneasy about annealing the silver because, being an alloy, it is more temperamental than the copper I have been working with which can take all sorts of over heating and not be compromised like sterling can. Gennady watched me anneal and got me started with the base. Raising is a longer process and the very first steps are passed through quickly, and only once, after that it is a lot of hammer swinging to gradually close and shape the vessel. Starting from a flat disk is difficult because there is no shape to hammer against, only a circle scratched around the center mark. The hammer has tio strike on one side of the line against the edge of a stake to make a dent in the metal, you strike again and again lengthening the dent along the outside of the circular scratch until you come full circle and the dent forms a base of the goblet to be. The disk now looks something like a sombrero with a very low crown. The next step is to crimp the sombrero’s brim. A special stake that is shaped something like a boat with the bow cut off is set into the stake holder and a special mallet with a tapered hear is used to hammer the flat parts of the disk into the stake’s groove like a loose accordion fold, this raises the disk edges and begins to decrease its diameter. This photo was taken after I had begun to raise the pleated disk into a bowl shape. You can see a little of the crimping remains above the raised portion, vessels are always hammered from the base to the lip. The out side first and then the inside.

Here it is after the first round of raising. The diameter went from 153mm to 148mm. The height of the bowl went from nothing to about 30mm. The base is 50mm.

The bowl was annealed and pickled and I began a second round. Class ended before I could complete it, I may be able to do that this tomorrow if my pipe in the basement vise matches the stake I’m using at school.

Here’s a photo of the stakes.The blue one on the right is for raising and shaping, the other one is the crimping stake which has two grooved tops.

On the ferry ride home we were treated to the sight of the Queen Mary 2 in the Hudson River side of the harbor. We all wondered why it was out of place, it’s usually berthed in the East River Brooklyn Terminal on the other side of Governor’s Island. A guy said that this was the farewell voyage, and the ship was being shown off and being given a send off celebration. Apparently it has been purchased by Dubai and it will become a hotel. I guess never to sail the seas again. As we pulled away from the scene there was a fire boat with all its hoses running like a great water flower in the harbor near the Queen Mary 2 while helicopters flew in attendance over head and smaller escort boats motored around its hull. Here are a few shots, one from the slip as we were leaving and another with the Goldman Sachs Building on the Jersey side of the harbor in the background.