Metalsmithing and Related Topics

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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I had been thinking about doing this for Valentine’s Day for quite a while, and didn’t have time, but then I ended up doing it ON valentine’s Day, and gave it to my wife in the evening. It actually only took about two hours to make, but I had been planning in my head how to do it for weeks, so I was able to do the actual work pretty efficiently. The stem and border are 1/8″ copper tubing from the hardware store, and the two faces of the heart are 20-gauge brass sheet. The stem was used to inflate it with compressed air to make it three-dimensional. The heart is only about 3″ across. If I made it larger, it would inflate more and be more three-dimensional. I would like to make several of them to make a bouquet, and maybe make some leaves to go with it, hopefully before next Valentine’s Day.

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Anticlastic forming is probably the most difficult to achieve. I think anticlastic means “making the metal do something it really doesn’t want to do” ;). For me, one of the most fun parts of what I do is devising new (preferably easier) ways to do difficult tasks. I wanted to carry the anticlastic bend to the extreme, that is, beyond 90 degrees, approaching 180 degrees. I made a two-component set of tools for this project as shown in the first picture. The forked piece (I’ll call it a “punch” for lack of a better term) is made from 1″ diameter steel, with a 1″square piece welded on. The wood piece (I’ll call it a “die” for lack of a better term, your suggestions welcome) is about 3″ square by about 5″ tall hard maple, sandwiched between two pieces of steel held together with bolts, to keep the wood from splitting.

The next picture shows a 6″ brass circle poised on the die. This is an experiment, and I didn’t know what shape for sure to make the metal, but I figured a circle couldn’t be too far off.

I had many pictures I took of the entire process, but due to a dumb mistake they are permanently lost, so I can only show the end result. It took about five or six stages of punching and annealing to get the bend as severe as in the final form. The pictures would tell the story much better than I can, and on my second try I will photograph again, and will be able to show exactly what happens.
The next pictures shows the final shape, with much hammering in addition to the forming done with the punch and die. This will go into my collection of unfinished experimental junk, since the original flat shape was not quite correct; if I close it up, it will not have the nice plump form I wanted. Getting it this far enables me to determine the exact shape I will need to do it right.

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I’m not doing anything new or exciting right now, so I decided to dig up something interesting (I hope) that I came up with a couple years ago. I had an idea for a sculpture of a bird perched on a clump of grass. Making blades of grass by hammering strips of brass was not something I even wanted to try, so I made a die and extruded them.

The first picture shows the die, along with some strips of brass, cut about 3/8″ wide. The die is just a piece of steel bar stock, 1/4″ x 2″. there are two openings so the drawing can be done in two stages. (This is 16 gauge brass, so it’s not an easy job.) The openings in the die were made by drilling holes in the steel, then cutting the shape with a jeweller’s saw, and finishing off with various burs and polishing devices.

The second picture shows the first stage of drawing. The die is clamped to an upright beam in my building. I found that a dab of ordinary grease did wonders for being able to pull the brass through. The third picture shows the results of the first stage.

The fourth picture shows the second stage drawing, the clamping of the die being more obvious, and the fifth shows the results. The ends, of course, are all chewed up and ugly, so they had to be cut off and re-shaped.

The last picture shows the final finished product.

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I have had many people tell me that they would like to see how I make my brass sculptural pet urns. I finally got around to photographing myself at work on a dog urn, and have put together a pictorial chronology of the process. I have divided the process into “stages” with the piece being annealed before starting each consecutive stage. Stages 1-6 are raising the simple dome form. Stages 7 and 8 are the transformation of that simple dome shape into a sculpture.

1st Stage: This piece started with an 11 in. diameter circle of 16 gauge brass, annealed. I have drawn, with a compass, concentric lines to serve as a guide for uniform raising. The first step is radial crimping, done with the raising hammer on the special wood block shown in the first picture. Next is the stake I made just for this purpose, 2-1/2 in. wide and 12 in. long, the raised part on the right end has a special purpose that will be shown later. The hammering starts at line 1, 2-1/8 in. from the center. The lines are 1-1/8 in. apart, and I hammer a course on each line and halfway between. The resulting diameter is now 9-3/4 in.

The next four pictures show the results of stages 2-5. The piece is annealed between each stage.

6th Stage: Annealed again. Now the metal gets bent over to 180 degrees from where it started. This is where the special part of the stake comes in. A line is drawn 7/8 in. from the edge for a guide. Resulting outside diameter is now 6-7/8 in.

7th Stage. Annealed again. Now it starts getting interesting. I have tried to picture all of the tools used, although I may have missed some. I have arranged the pictures so that the tool is pictured before the process for which it is being used.
In the first picture, there is no tool other than the hammer. Next, tool 3 is an all-purpose slightly domed stake which gets used more than any other. In the process shown, I’m creating the the separation between the dog’s nose and rear. Next, tool 4 is being used to push out the ears at the place where they fold over.

On to the next group of pictures, still stage 7. Tool 5 is an almost-flat stake with a straight part to make it useable at the bottom edge, as shown. Tool 6 is a special little stake to form the dog’s muzzle. I have four of these for different sizes and shapes of dogs, and one for cats. Tool 7 is for flattening out the bottom flange, which has gotten all wavy and distorted in the previous processes.

The next pictures deal mostly with what I call rough planishing. There are also some other types of refinement going on. With a big hammer I smooth out all the bumps, dents, and irregularities created in the raising process. Tool 8 is used for rough planishing around the bottom. Tools 9 and 10 are different size balls used for rough planishing the rest of the piece. Smaller tools, such as tool 3, are used on the head and other places where the curvature is smaller. Tool 11 is for tight areas down against the bottom flange. At the end of stage 7, it looks like a dog, but still pretty crude. It can’t be refined any more without first being annealed.

8th Stage: Annealed for the final time. Much of this stage is further refinement of the same steps taken in stage 7. Tool 12 is used to further define the line between head and rear. Tool 6 is used again to refine the dog’s muzzle. Tool 13 is for giving the ears more definition.

The next two pictures show the final planishing, done with a small planishing hammer with a very flat, highly polished face. In the third picture, all the refinements are complete.

The next tool, #14, is very special. Made from a found shaft already bent to that shape, it is ground in a way that allows me to recess the bottom flange in order to accept the cover plate properly.

Next, I buff the piece with tripoli to get rid of any small scratches and to expose any defects that need to be fixed. I don’t leave it with the polished finish, however, preferring a satin finish. I apply a patina to darken the brass, and then rub it with steel wool. The resulting finish is very stable, and is the most practical for objects that get handled a lot. In the next picture the holes have been drilled and tapped and a rubber gasket set in place. Next, the cover plate is screwed into place, then it’s done.

Putting this pictorial together turned out to be a bigger project than I expected. I hope that it will be educational and helpful to someone. If there is anything that I have not made clear, please let me know and I will be happy to answer any of your questions.

Steve

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