Metalsmithing and Related Topics

This is the second one of these candle holders I’ve made, and since it’s been a couple years since I made the first one, I had a hard time remembering how I did it. This time I took a lot of pictures and took notes, so I’ll have some help when I do the next one. I didn’t show every step here, but I think I show enough to give the general idea of the process. The most difficult and tedious part for this piece is the soldering, especially soldering together the three main pieces, which are a real challenge to hold together in the right position, and keep the seems from opening up when heat is applied.

The first picture shows the five pieces of flat brass ready to be worked on. The next two show the first steps of forming the drip catcher, which had to be done in three stages, annealed between each, to avoid tearing the metal.

The next two pictures show the candle receptacle being made. this actually took several steps, starting with a large ball and a large hole in the wood piece, and gradually going smaller and smaller.

The next three pictures show the forming of the tube part, first by punching the brass down into a long groove to get it started, then by hammering on a flat stake, going over it several times until the tube shape is completely closed. Then, soldering the seam.

The next steps are shaping the extremities on a special wood block, this is done to both ends to get them ready to join together. First two parts are soldered together, just enough to hold them. This is done on both ends. Then the third piece is added and soldered in place, just enough to hold it all together firmly. The third picture shows the setup for doing the twist.

Next, the final shaping of the two ends, which must be done before final soldering. The fourth picture is a view that I thought was so beautiful I had to share it. It’s a shame that it gets completely covered up, so I’ve already started a new project that features this same element, only it will be visible. Stay tuned. The fifth picture shows the clamping setup for soldering the top assembly to the base assembly.

Now, the finished piece. It’s 13″ tall.

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I made this sculpture for my daughter Stephanie’s 27th birthday. When she was little she would spend hours trying to catch frogs at the edge of our pond. When we arrived at Stephanie’s house for her birthday celebration, her daughter, age three, greeted us, all excited, showing us a toad she had in her hand!

I wanted to make this out of one piece, and since I had never done anything quite like it before, I was not sure if it would even work. It turned out to not be all that difficult, although I had to make some new tools to do it. It started out with raising on a stake, like making an off-center bowl shape. The first four pictures show that part of the process.

It was looking a lot like a hat, which made me think about making a real hat, but I digress. the frog details were mostly pushed out from the inside, using a sand bag for backup, then refined further from the outside. I would have liked the nose to be longer, but the metal was getting dangerously thin, so it had to stop there.

The pictures of the finished piece were taken with my new Nikon D60 camera, which I’m still trying to learn how to use.

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It’s been quite a while since I posted here; I just don’t have much to say unless it’s to talk about something new I’ve made. Well, I’ve finally got something new to talk about. This is a continuation of my quest for new techniques of forming, as described in my previous posts, Experimenting with new forms, part 1, and part 2. I’m calling this a “coiled pot”, as it resembles the simple method of making a clay pot. With brass, however, it’s not so simple. This piece is 4″ tall and 5″ in diameter.

In the first picture, I’ve taken a vase, the shape of which I like, and covered it with 2-3 layers of masking tape, then drawn pencil lines on it. Then I take a knife and cut along the lines and get a flat pattern, shown in the second picture on the sheet of brass. The piece is then cut out on the band saw, picture 3. It’s a pretty rough cut, and it took an hour or two to smooth the edges.
Picture 4 shows the piece formed into the general shape, some hammering on stakes having been done. Soldering starts at the bottom, as shown in picture 5. Soldering is a painstaking procedure, done a little at a time. for each step along the way I had to come up with a new way of clamping to keep the joint together, as in picture 6. Picture 7 shows the completely soldered vessel, with a ring for the lip ready to go. I got the idea for the ring from David Huang, who’s work I greatly admire.

The last three pictures show the finished piece. When I started this project I thought it would be an easy as well as interesting way to make a vessel. Interesting, yes, easy, no. I could have made two or three similar vessels, raised in the traditional way, in the same amount of time. I really like the looks of this piece, though, so I will probably make more, and hopefully learn some shortcuts.

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Having figured out the orange problem, see Part 1, I have moved on to other adaptations of the same technique. This one worked out well enough I’ve made it into a finished piece, which I’m calling “magic Orb”, as it reminds me of something from Harry Potter. Any other suggestions will be considered.

The first picture shows the styrofoam ball covered with masking tape, the line drawn and cut. When the tape is pulled off and flattened out it looks like the second picture, which also shows the cutouts of brass. This time it’s two pieces, so I can use a stake on the inside to refine the form. I decided I liked the appearance when the metal overlaps at the edge as it goes around. This makes a strong form that can be soldered. Overlapping created some geometry problems that I had to deal with, some extra hammering to lengthen the strip incrementally to allow for the thickness of the metal. The third picture shows the larger part all soldered, ready for the end piece. The end piece I had ready to go turned out to be much too small and shaped all wrong, so I had to make a new one, see the fourth picture. The fifth picture shows the end piece in place ready for soldering.

The finished piece. The stand was modelled after a piece I had sitting on my shelf for about seven years, just a little experiment that never had gone anywhere, suddenly brought to life. The “orb” has a 1″ steel ball inside to give it a little extra magic. The whole thing is 7″ tall.

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Whenever I peel an orange or tangerine, I always try to get it all in one piece. It ends up as a graceful s-shaped curvy thing. then I try to put the peel back into its original form, always hoping it could look good enough to fool someone. Well, something I was working on the other day made me want to try making an orange peel out of brass. It turned out to be a little more complicated than I first thought; Just guessing at the shape doesn’t work. I ended up using a styrofoam ball, covering it with masking tape, then drawing and cutting through the tape with a knife to get the template. (See the first picture.) Hammering from the inside on wood forms the metal and also creates an almost orangepeel-like texture on the outside. It turned out to be a kind of catch-22 situation: once the shape is mostly formed, there’s no way to get a stake inside it to finish it. I’m thinking maybe if I could anneal it, and the fill it with pitch, I could then hammer it into a more refined shape. I’m not sure if it’s worth the effort, though for something as uninteresting as an orange. But, on the other hand, if I found out it works, I could try the technique on something more interesting. I have this idea for a horse, but I’m going to have to get there in stages, one step at a time. I’m also thinking about using a similar technique to make solid vessels, overlapping the layers just enough to solder them together. then there’s also the possibility of a larger sphere, like the orange, but instead of just a simple spiral, get really crazy with it, putting lots of interesting shapes into the cut. The possibilities are endless.

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I just couldn’t resist the title. I was working on both of these at the same time, and suddenly realized the irony of making a greyhound and a rabbit. They even have similar ears. The greyhound, my second one so far, is an urn for custompeturns.com. It’s about 7″ across. The rabbit is to be a gift for my son and his wife when we visit them at Easter. My wife is so envious that I will have to make one for her, maybe for Mother’s Day. The rabbit is about 6-1/2″ long. Each piece is hammer-formed from a single piece of 16 gauge brass sheet.

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This subject was brought up last week, and since I have nothing else to report, I decided to do a little pictorial about it. “Magic Flame Soldering Compound”, available from Rio Grande, is one of those products that appears to be too good to be true. It does claim be be a soldering flux, and I had no luck using it for that, but it is fabulous for preventing firescale when annealing or soldering. Over a long period of use, I have fine-tuned the procedure. The stuff is very expensive when using it for large scale pieces as I do, so I dilute it to the max, mixing it 50/50 with “Cabosil”, which is fumed silica, an inert filler/thickener used commercially in everything from varnish to makeup. It’s the thickener in Navel Jelly. I pre-mix it with water to a pudding-like consistency so it’s ready to mix with the Magic Flame. I mix these two ingredients with rubbing alcohol, which is less dangerous than denatured alcohol. I’ve tried using water instead, but it won’t coat the metal very well; the metal tends to resist it, leaving spots unprotected. This process works extremely well on brass, which is mostly what I work with, but I have also used it successfully on sterling silver, nickel silver, and copper. If I ever have enough money for gold, I’ll give it a try.

The first pictures show the Magic Flame compound as it comes from the jar, the Cabosil, and the two mixed with alcohol, ready to use.

The next pictures show the mixture getting brushed on; it’s such a thin coating it doesn’t look like it would do anything. Then annealing. Then what it looks like after annealing.

The next pictures show the piece being pickled to remove the coating, which takes about 10-15 minutes if the pickle is hot, much longer if cold. Then it’s ready for some more hammering.

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A while back I posted a teaser titled “Anticlastic Extremism”, which didn’t explain much because I lost almost all of the pictures. I did the process again, and posted the end result last week in “Hammer-formed Brass Hen Sculpture”. The second time around, I got the pictures, and now I can do a reasonable job at showing how it was done.

The first four pictures show the first stage of the process. Notice the size of the hammer; it takes a lot of force to do this. If I had a press that’s probably what I would use.

The next three pictures show how much deformation takes place and why it takes six stages of annealing/forming to reach the final goal. The end view shows how the metal folds, and would fold over onto itself if it was forced any further. (I may experiment with the punch tool, making it thicker, to see if it will reduce this problem.) It has to be hammered flat, then annealed, to be ready for the next step.

As I mentioned, it took six stages to get the desired result. The next three pictures show just a couple of those stages and the final stage. It has to be bent further than what is desired in the finished sculpture, since the final forming and planishing will decrease the angle a few degrees.

The next four pictures show some of the tools and forming processes to smooth out and close the form.

Next is the tool used to form the crest or comb, and the result. Then the part that will be the beak is way too long, so it has been marked for shortening. I used a jeweler’s saw and some rotary tools for this. Then there’s the Ball Stake mounted horizontally for forming and smoothing.

The next pictures show the gradual closing of the form, which takes some annealing in between, and then soldering the seam, which requires clamping.

The next two pictures show the forming of the flat part on the bottom. then planishing with the big hammer. I also finished up with a lot of planishing with the small hammer. Then there’s a special planishing tool I made from a piece of steel rod, for planishing in tight places.

Voila! It’s done.

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Here are a couple pics of the brass hen I made recently, hammer-formed from a single piece of 16 gauge brass sheet, my second attempt. It’s about 4″ tall. My first attempt did not get finished because I did not start with the right cutout shape, as mentioned in my previous post, Anticlastic Extremism. This one is still not as plump as I would like, so I will be trying again. I may have to do some alteration to the tooling. I have a bunch of pictures of the process, and will do a pictorial when I get time.

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