Oh, I forgot - yes, I have gotten another piece finished lately - read more about it here at my etsy shop.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
roller texture earrings and learning repousse
It's been slow going lately without getting much done here but I did get a chance to finish a couple pair of roller textured copper earrings last week. Karen wanted a pair of copper earrings with springy wire decos and beads so I made 2 extra pairs with different shapes of leaves and different beads so she could have a choice for her favorites. Here are the 2 pair that she didn't choose:
What I have been doing is learning repousse. Nothing to show that I would want to put in a finished piece yet - just doing lots of practicing. Here is a trial piece from the front:
From the back:
Repousse is a French word meaning "to push". In metal working it is taking a flat sheet of metal and hammering it from the back with punches to make volume, refining it from the front also and then usually finishing the front with texture of some sort or planishing it smooth. Here is the set-up that I am using - the bowl of pitch that holds the metal while it's being worked on (pitch offers just the right amount of resistance to the hammer blows - allows the metal to move where it is being struck but keeps the area around that still), a cup of repousse tools in the upper left corner and the chasing hammer on the right. You need a lightweight hammer to strike the tools as the metal can only be moved very slowly. To get much height or detail you need to frequently anneal your metal and rework it over and over again:
Close-up of the tools in hand and a very excellent book on the subject in the background:
I love these tools - they are works of art in themselves! From www.mettleworks.com.
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