Steve Shelby's Metal Art

Making the base part of “Emergence”

shelbyvision — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:34:20 +0000

This sculpture (see previous post) was a big project, so I’m breaking up the process into several parts. The base was the first part I made, and the first attempt was a failure. I did not realize that the stem portion needed to be bent into its final almost-upright position before closing up and silver-soldering the form. One very large piece of bronze wasted.

The material is 1/16″ silicon bronze, which is much more resistant to forming than the 16 gauge brass that I’m used to. I had to devise a way to bend that neck, something that could exert a great amount of force in just the right way. What I came up with is a large block of maple, carved out in the shape that I wanted to have the piece conform to. a clamping device was added to hold the piece securely. There’s a 1/2″ bolt going all the way through the block to provide the clamping force. The pictures below show how it was used. The steel rod extended out about six feet, and I had to push down on the end with all my weight to bend the metal as shown.

After bending, I hammered out the kinks with the piece still clamped in the jig. Then the piece was annealed and formed on a cone-shaped block as shown below, and on a variety of stakes. The pictures below are actually further along in the process. I had to bend, anneal, hammer-form, anneal, several times before I was able to get the desired shape.

Once the piece was closed up, it could be silver-soldered. This was done in several stages, as it is impossible to close up the entire seam all at once. It has to be closed in one place, clamped and soldered, then closed some more, clamped and soldered, and so forth. The curves in the neck were done after the piece was silver-soldered. For the larger part near the bottom I clamped the piece in in the jig and put a piece of 1″ black poly pipe over the stem, then a piece of larger steel pipe over that to do the bending. The smaller part of the neck I was able to bend by hand. In the last picture the piece is mostly done, polished up some and ready for some final planishing.

I have a spin-off in mind for this (since I went to all that trouble I’d hate to only make one): A lamp base, with a hand-blown glass shade.

“Emergence” hammer-formed bronze sculpture

shelbyvision — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 14:39:01 +0000

That’s what I’m calling this for now. It’s based on a quick doodle that was probably subconsciously inspired by Dr. Seuss. After it was done, I tried to figure out what it is, and it seems to be about birth, or the emergence of a seed in plant terms, since it looks mostly plant-like, but the seed, with a little imagination, looks like a baby. It’s a much larger scale than I’m used to working with, and It’s made from 1/16″ silicon bronze sheet, so my poor hands got some major abuse. Every part of it was a challenge, and I had to make some new tooling along the way. In the days to come I will post some pictures of the process. The whole thing is 21″ tall and 9″ across. The “seed” is not attached and has a large steel ball (about 2-1/2″) inside. The bowl pivots somewhat, so that the seed can rock back and forth, making the bowl move slightly along with it. I may be making a motor driven wobbly base to put this on, to make it kinetic. I have no idea yet whether it will work.

Heart on a Stem, Part Two

shelbyvision — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 12:56:35 +0000

Last year I made a brass and copper heart, and posted about it here. I said in my post that it only took two hours to make, but that must have been beginner’s luck, because when I tried that technique again, it was almost impossible to solder, because when heated, the seams tended to open up. So, even though that was an elegant design, I decided if I was going to make more than one, that I would go with something a little less frustrating. This design still takes over two hours to complete, but it’s consistently doable.
The first step is cutting out two hearts one bigger than the other, from 20 gauge sheet. I used a jewelers saw for this. The larger piece has a notch cut out at the point. The larger piece gets clamped to a hardwood form, as in the second picture, then hammered over all around, as in the third picture.

The next pictures shows the larger heart with a wire bent to the general shape so it fits inside the rim. This is to put a space between the two halves so that the solder won’t flow in and stick the two together anywhere but the seam. The wire is stainless steel, so it won’t get soldered to the brass. Next, the smaller heart, which just fits inside the rim of the larger one, is put in place, and the rim is hammered over all the way around, forming a gap-free seam. Notice in the middle picture the 1/16″ dia. rod inserted at the point of the heart. After the seam is hammered shut, this rod is replaced with a short piece of 1/16″ OD brass tube. The next picture shows the seam having been silver-soldered; notice the tiny tube at the point.

That tiny tube is for inflating the heart with compressed air. In the first of these three pictures, the heart has already been partially inflated, and it is being creased down the center with a wooden block. If this is not done, the metal will buckle in a random and aesthetically unpleasing way. The next picture shows the heart being inflated the rest of the way, using a special custom-made filler attachment. Next, the stem. a 1/8″ brass rod which has been drilled on the end, is shown being flared with a punch, so it will fit the point of the heart. The filler tube fits inside the hole in the end of the stem.

The next picture shows the stem fit to the heart, ready to silver-solder. Then the finished piece, all done. This one is all brass. After I was done with this one, I made three more, one all copper, one brass and copper and one copper and brass. The last picture shows all four. I am offering them for sale on my Etsy shop.

Work in Progress: “Super Bowl Challenge”

shelbyvision — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 22:15:15 +0000

Here’s a fun little event I found out about on Facebook. I thought some of you here might like to join in. The idea is to make a bowl and finish it on Super Bowl Sunday, and then upload a picture of it to the Flickr site. Here’s a link with all the information: http://hammermarks.wordpress.com/2010/01…enge-2010/. I plan to watch the game, especially it the Colts are in it, but that won’t be till evening.
I got the sudden inspiration to make a full-moon face, and instead of putting the face on the convex side, putting it on the concave side, so it serves as a bowl and a sculpture at the same time. This was a bit of a challenge, since the curve goes the wrong way, but once I got into it, it all went so well I didn’t want to stop. So, it’s about 90% done, and I’ll set it aside and finish it up at the appropriate time. The bowl is 8″ in diameter and 2″ deep.

Who knew? Brass is more malleable than silver.

shelbyvision — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 22:45:35 +0000

I have always been under the impression that silver was more meleable and ductile than brass. This seems to be the common wisdom. In fact, when people have asked me about it, they usually say something like “isn’t brass a lot harder to work than silver?”, and my reply is something like “Well, yes, but not that much”. I have a lot of experience forming brass, and little with silver, other than making small jewelery items. I recently made a larger silver piece, and I was looking foreward to the ease of forming silver after being used to brass. To my surprise, it was no easier, and I could almost believe it was a little harder, but I was using 18 gauge silver, and I’m used to 16 gauge brass, so I decided it was not a fair comparison.
Then a few days ago, I decided to make a silver “bird in flight” ornament, like the brass ones I have made and told about here. After some unsuccessful attempts with 22 gauge silver, I decided to make two, one silver and one brass, both of them 20 gauge, which is what I normally use for the brass ones. I noticed at the very first stage, where the head is punched for the first time, the silver one would not stretch as far as the brass one. When I got to the next stage, after annealing, the head on the silver one split open rather than stretching (see the picture), while the brass one stretched just fine. This is the first side-by-side comparison I’ve had, and it turns the common wisdom on it’s head.
The alloys used were cartridge brass (alloy 260) and sterling silver. I should try it with fine silver to see how it compares, although I don’t really want to spend that much money on something that is likely to fail. Do any of you out there know if fine silver is that much more malleable than sterling?

Five-way Frog Bowl, hammer-formed silver and brass

shelbyvision — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 02:27:34 +0000

This is a piece I made to enter in the Saul Bell Design Awards competition. One of my few forays into silver, very expensive for me, but I thought it might be worth the expense. Unfortunately it did not make the cut; I guess it’s too traditional-looking, and not really innovative in any way, which is what they want. I may enter it somewhere else if I can find an appropriate venue (any suggestions?). Following is the description from my entry.
This piece is 7 inches tall and 7 inches across at the base. It is three separate pieces which fit loosely together. The bowl and lid are sterling silver with LOS patina and satin finish, and the base is brass, finished the same way. I call it five-way because there are five different ways it can be used or displayed: (1) The lid by itself as a sculpture, (2) The bowl by itself, (3) the bowl on the stand without the lid, (4) the bowl with lid without the stand, and (5) the complete three-piece set.
My design for this set was inspired by some work I had just done previously. I had made a frog on a lotus leaf sculpture, and someone suggested that it would look nice as a lid on a dish or bowl. I had made a tall candlestick with trilateral symmetry, and one element of that was inspiration for the stand. The base of the stand, with the three tapered curving pieces are reminiscent of growing plant roots. The bowl, although I had a general idea of what it would look like did not take its final form, with the juxtaposed positive and negative forms, until it was mostly formed.
All three pieces were made from flat sheet, using raising techniques. The stand is made from three pieces of brass the lower part of each formed into a spiculum or conical tube shape, and silver soldered, then the three pieces were joined together with silver solder. The bowl and the lid are each one piece, and were formed with hammers, punches, and stakes. No pitch was used in the process.

Lizard Wall Sculpture, hammer-formed brass

shelbyvision — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:32:20 +0000

I guess this is repousse, although I do it a little differently than the norm. I don’t use pitch, because I hate the mess, and I prefer to be able to work from both sides, switching back and forth readily. The first four pictures show the beginning stages, with just wood for backup. The material I’m using is 16 gauge brass. It’s punched and hammered from the back, and then pushed in around the edges in front. The last picture shows how far I was able to go with it before it needed to be annealed.

There were several repeats of this process of hammering, punching, annealing to get to the degree of three-dimensionality that I wanted. The pictures just show a few of the steps. The next pictures show a new technique I discovered, using a very short stake that just protrudes above the stump enough to be useful, and make it easy to hold the piece to work on it. This one is being used to shape the legs.

Here’s another similar tool I used to get an undercut around the edges, especially the front of the head.

In the next picture I’m planishing the body, using a more ordinary stake. I didn’t try to planish the legs; I knew that would get me into a world of trouble. Then hammering the texture into the background.

Then the finished piece, front and back.

Making a Lily Cross, hammer-formed brass

shelbyvision — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:58:47 +0000

I posted pics of one of these before, here, but this time (this one is #5), I took pictures while I made it so I can show how it was made. The first five pictures show (1) The three blanks, cut out and annealed, (2) pushing the metal into a groove to start the tube shape, (3) forming the top part, (4) hammering the tube closed, (5) the three parts, seams silver-soldered, and pickled, ready for the next stage.

Next we have the process of twisting the three elements into one. The metal is very soft from the heat of soldering, so it twists pretty easily. It’s thick enough metal (16 gauge) so that crimping or kinking is not an issue. After it’s twisted together, it has to be soldered, just enough to make it solid; two small spots of solder on the back is all that’s required.

Now the flower petals are given their graceful form, then we see the almost completed piece, with the bottom ends marked for cutting, and then the hanger attached to the back. Some final planishing smooths out the surface before buffing.

The finished piece, hanging on a wall. It’s about 13″ tall.

Flying Bird Ornament in the making

shelbyvision — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 14:19:35 +0000

I first thought about making a bird in flight using my one-piece technique as with my previous birds, quite a long time ago, but was hung up on having the seam lengthwise as before, and came to a dead end for how to do it. I had pretty much given up on the idea until a few weeks ago, while waking breifly during the night, the solution suddenly popped into my head. Fortunately I remembered it in the morning, and was able to start working on the idea. It turned out to be mostly a tooling project, and took quite a long while to get the tooling and techniques correct. This first picture shows all my failures.

One of the biggest problems was breaking through at the beak end of the head, so I had to develop several stages of punching the head, with annealing between each stage. These next five pictures show the process from first annealing (flat blank) to the point where it’s ready for second annealing.

The wood die in the pictures has a large hole at one end and a smaller hole at the other end. All the rest of the steps shown are done at the smaller one. The next picture shows it punched with a slightly smaller hemispherical punch, again ready for annealing. Next, punch is same diameter, but bullet-shaped, and ready for annealing again. Then we have the most elaborate tool I’ve made so far, to finish the shaping of the head.

Next, using that fancy tool, I shape the rest of the body and the tail. Then some hammering to get it ready to silver-solder the seam. Then we see the seam soldered.

The next steps are pretty mundane: filing, grinding, sanding, polishing, attaching a jump ring to the back. Here’s the final result:

Fish out of Water, hammer-formed brass sculpture

shelbyvision — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:36:49 +0000

It’s been about two years since my first try, and I’ve tried several times since then to make an interesting fish shape using the same method I use for my birds. The biggest problem was that I wanted the fish to be curved, to make it more dynamic and interesting, and that turned out to make it infinitely more complicated than a straight fish would be. After several failed tries, I realized I was going to have to have a better way to create the pattern for the flat piece that it starts with. I finally came up with a method that works fairly well: make a clay model, and dip it in dip seal. Dip seal is a flexible rubbery plastic stuff that melts at 360f and makes a nice coating, which can be cut at the same place the seam will go, then removed from the clay model. This can then be flattened out, more or less, onto a piece of paper, and the outline traced with a pencil, yielding a pattern for cutting out the metal piece.

The first three pictures show the clay model before and after dipping, and the dip seal pattern removed and ready to use.

The next three pictures show the annealed flat piece I started with, then when it was ready for the second annealing, and the third annealing.

The next pictures show a little bit of the hammering, and the piece further along, ready for annealing again.

Then, some more hammering, closing it up. It took four separate soldering steps to complete the seam.

Once the piece was soldered I did a lot more hammering to refine the shape, and planishing to get a nice smooth surface. The finished piece, on a smooth table top, will rock and wiggle around like a fish out of water when given a little nudge.