Raising a bronze pendant.
No, I’ve not gone out and adopted a little orphaned pendant. Raising is term used to describe a metalsmithing technique whereby (typically) a flat sheet of metal is hammered to form a 3D shape. The classic example would be forming a bowl from a flat disc.
First, a bit of background. I made a similar pendant a while ago. That was made out of copper, and a started with a strip of metal which I bent round and soldered to form a very large, flat, thin ring – almost like a small napkin ring. I then formed that to give the final curved shape. Doing it that way (soldering a ring) meant much less hammering to do.
The downside was that there was a line of silvery solder visible at the joint. That didn’t matter, because I had the piece gold-plated, so the silver was covered up.
The copper pendant was spotted by a very nice lady who had it mind as an anniversary present for her husband but, it being their 8th, she wanted one in bronze rather than copper.
The main problem was that, since the metal would not be plated, if I made it using the same approach as the copper one, the line of silver solder would have been visible. Of course, done correctly, the line of solder would have been extremely fine and, in reality, would have been barely noticeable. But, who likes to settle for second best? I decided to try making it from a solid piece of metal with no joins. And I did mean ‘try’, because I was moving into the unknown.
I’m very familiar with working the various standards of silver, and I also know copper. But bronze is actually a rather a general term for a whole range of alloys. They are all mainly copper and tin but, for example, the exact mix of metals used in a bronze intended for casting will be different to that to be shaped using a milling machine. As well as affecting things like the colour of the metal, the different alloys also have quite different hardnesses (in just that same way that adding copper to silver makes sterling silver harder and more suitable for jewellery than pure silver would be). The bottom line was that I wasn’t sure what sort of bronze I would be able to get hold of and how amenable it would be to hammering.
The original copper pendant
As it turns out, I was able to work it fairly readily provided I kept annealing it frequently. Annealing? OK – more technique stuff. It’s a property of many alloys that, as you hammer them, they become harder and more brittle. But if you heat them up, usually to a dull red heat, and then cool them down again, usually by quenching in cold water, you can restore their malleability. The photos below were taken, more or less, after each annealing. So you can tell that I had to do this quite a few times.
The second main problem was one of design. I wanted to use the same plaited leather cord again. I think that it fits so well with the style of the pendant. The problem is that I have not been able to come up with a design for a conventional clasp at the back of the neck. Well, not one that I like and which I could make at a sensible price. For the copper pendant, I felt happy to make it so that cord does not undo, but just slips over the wearer’s head. I plait the cord myself, so it can be any length needed but, to be long enough to go over the head typically means that it will be at least, say, 18″. So fairly long.
I think that would suit most women quite well but, I suspect that it could be too long for many men:
a) because we tend to have bigger heads (yeah, empty);
b) because we ain’t used to wearing long dangling pendants; and
c) because we have enough trouble with other dangly things to be going on with.
So, a design to allow the cord to be unhooked was called for. This small hemisphere design has a slot in the back to allow the cord to be unhooked, but the knots are hidden when worn.
But enough about that. This blog is about bashing metal with hammers. The hemisphere is made from a flat disc and hammering it with rounded punches into a block of steel with a series of increasingly smaller curved recesses. The punches are known as dapping punches, and the block as a doming block. The back was soldered on but you can’t see the join because, yes, I did a really neat job so the line of solder is extremely fine but mainly because it’s at the back.
The third unknown was whether I could reproduce the unpolished finish in one side of the metal. The rough surface of the copper pendant was a by-product the repeated annealing of the metal, and I thought is really helped to make the overall effect of the piece so I left it unpolished.
In the event, the finish that was left on the bronze was pretty uninspiring. The inside bit where I was hitting it with my hammers was bright and shiny and ready for a final polish, just like with the copper, but the other face was just badly marked; the result, I think, of the bronze being harder to work and the fabrication approach needing much more hammering. We had already agreed that, if necessary, I would polish the whole piece inside and out, but I decided to have a go at producing the texture manually.
One of the thing you soon learn when making jewellery is that improvisation is the key to enabling creativity. For example, it is possible to buy texturing hammers and/or punches (ie. with patterns cut in them to mark the metal) but they are never what you really want and you would need far too many to solve every problem So, as an alterative to vast expense, you soon learn to make some of your own tools. A 4″ nail, flattened off and roughened a bit and tapped all over the metal (takes ages!) makes a really nice surface.
So, that’s the story of raising a bronze pendant. Yes, I understand that hubby loved it. And I got another order from the lady a couple of months later. I’ll update this post with a link if I put that item up on the web site.
And, at the time of writing, the original copper pendant is still for sale.
And so to the pictures………
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- Bronze Pendant
Exhibition News
This year seems to have flown by, but it’s time to dust off my blog to bring news that my friends in Pennine Artists are staging what looks like becoming our annual Christmas event. Hosted by Silkstone Church (near M1 Jct 37), it runs from Thursday Nov 3rd to Sat Nov 5th. Last years event was absolutely excellent, and this one promises to be even better.
As part of the varied programme of workshops, demonstrations and musical entertainments, I will be joining my friends from Knock on Wood to play african music. That’s on Friday evening.
Full details of the event on the events’ page of the Pennine Artists web site.
The story of Piaf’s bead – the final countdown
OK, I admit it; I’ve been teasing Sabine just a little in making her wait to see what I’ve done with her bead. But part of the delay has also been ‘cos I’ve been so busy with my Open studios exhibition. More on that in another post.
So, let’s get right in there and show you the finished item. I think that this is the best view.
At the end of the last post I left open the question of how I might solve the problem of the large gap that I had left around the bead. A bezel setting such as this is a classic solution to dealing with an irregularly shaped stone: cutting it to make ’claws’ allows the irregularities to be accomodated.
In this case, I think that it fits particularly well with the feel of the bead, albeit that it hides rather more than I originally hoped. But not too much, I hope, as you will see from this ‘full frontal’ shot.
I mentioned in an earlier post that the bead is about 3cm diameter, so you can work out that the piece is about 10cm long and 4cm wide overall. What doesn’t show so well is that I have set it on a 4mm rubber cord, which I think works very well.
I was always intending to gold-plate one or other side of the pendant, but the addition of the bezel solved that debate for me, as you can see.
Here’s a final view from the other ‘side’.
Just some final bits of detail: the black band down the middle is done with Liver of Sulphur – essentially it is a rather extreme layer of tarnish. It should wear really well, but to protect it, I have polished to whole piece with Renaissance Wax.
The marks toward the base are the hallmarks. I like to have them on the outside of the piece rather than hidden on the back, but you may think otherwise. I’d be interested in comments on that.
The story of Piaf’s Bead – part 3
At the end of the last post, I was ready to start forming the piece into the body to carry the bead. It’s a case of taking off my jeweller’s hat, and putting on my silversmith’s cap. I did the forming with a hide mallet over a selection of spoon stakes and a sinusoidal stake for some of the tighter curves.
I have soldered on the bar that the bead will sit on. It is actually two short pieces of tube with a longer, thinner piece running through them. When I finally come to mount the bead, I will flare the ends of the inner tube to lock it in place.
Here’s a close up shot. Note the effect of using a hide mallet to do the forming. Can you see it? Precisely – no marks on the silver to clean up. I’ve done no filing or emery work at all, only a light rub down with some Scotchbright. So, just some work to tidy up the decorative holes in the top (they are still as pierced out – not as bad as the photos make them look) and to level off the bottom of the piece.
These final two shots from the side and end show the final shape. I had to get the top flat to be able to get the spindle for the bead lined up which has spoiled the curves a bit, but I’m still happy with it.
BUT….. (the cliff-hanger at the end of the episode – queue drum beats……) the idea of setting the bead on a spindle was partly to enable it to rotate so you could choose which way round to wear it. However, as I feared all along, really, the bead is not symmetrical enough to be able to let it turn in its setting. Worse, in messing around trying to open up the setting to let it turn, I have made I have made the hole in the top a bit larger than it should be. Doesn’t look good. Gonna have to come up with something to tidy things up. But what……..?
The story of Piaf’s Bead – part 2
Design for Piaf's bead
Am I going to tell you why I call it Piaf’s bead? Nah, not the full story anyway. It’s just my nickname for Sabine, the maker. Here’s her description of it:
“The bead is a ‘Chaos’ bead, created by pushing the glass through a brass mesh (it’s still inside the bead), then encasing it. I’ve not made many, because they take forever, but might re-consider now! The dots are made using a silver-rich glass, by reducing the glass in a propane-rich flame, you get the metallic shimmer”
Somehow, it was clear to me that this superb bead should form the centre-piece of some sort of pendant, and I came up with the design in the sketch opposite almost immediately.
Other people had the same reaction as I: the bead has quite a reptilian feel to it. So, as well as the pendant having a lot of ‘body’, I began to experiment with how to texture it to give a snakeskin feel. One thing that you soon learn when making jewellery is that you end up making a lot of your own tools yourself. A 4″ oval nail was soon filed to shape and I tested using as a punch to mark the piece of scrap silver sheet over on the left of the picture (yes, I put it on the scanner along with the page from my notebook).
Satisfied, I began the process of drawing up the design in detail to create the template for cutting out the silver sheet. Some people do this by marking the design directly onto the silver, but I prefer to draw it out on my PC, especially if, as in this case, I need to make allowance for when the silver is formed. I then print out the design, stick it to the silver and cut.
Yes, that’s blood!
I’ll finish this post with a photo of the piece with the snakeskin texture applied. I’ll patinate that on the final piece.
Piaf's bead - cut out and textured
Now it’s out with the hammers to form the sheet into the body.
The story of Piaf’s bead – part one
What about this for a bead? It was made by Sabine of Little Castle designs (http://www.littlecastledesigns.co.uk/). One of those things that I saw and just had to have.
It’s about 3 cm across and 1 cm thick. What to do with it? Well, I’m already well into making the piece, so I know. But I’ll leave you to think about what you think (oh, OK, you’ll see from the picture name that I’m making a pendant….. of sorts)
neckpiece – work in progress
I thought that, if I am going to be doing my Open Studios exhibition in a proper gallery, then it would be good to have some nice ‘centre pieces’ for the show, so I set about designing something on a rather grander scale than I usually make. It will be interesting to see how this finally turns out. Not surprisingly, I drew up the design in meticulous detail to get the curves to flow as I wanted and to provide an accurate cutting template.
As you can see, it’s not sitting as smoothly as I want yet, so there will be some tweaks to the piece before it is complete.
Hello world!
Well, on my website I threatened to start a jewellery-related blog. This is only the start – a test message really – but if you are seeing this then you can at least congratulate me for having got over a first technical hurdle.
