Rustnstuff: Hammers

Showing posts with label Hammers. Show all posts

Friday, January 18, 2019

Words for a daily focus or reflection

Recently I sold almost all of my Daily Leaf Words sets. The sets are made up of a shallow hammered bowl and seven leaf forms with inspirational words stamped on them. The leaf forms provide the owner with the opportunity to randomly draw out a leaf word each day. If the owner wanted, the word could provide a mindful focus for the day. At different times durning the day it is possible to reflect on the chosen word to centre one's thinking or have a calming stilling impact.

The words in my Daily Leaf Words sets are as follows:

I decided to make seven sets. It started with cutting and stamping the 49 pieces of silver-plated metal.

Then folding them; cutting them into the half leaf shape; hammering them; opening the hammered pieces; and then grinding and polishing the unfolded leaf forms.

I managed to grind and polish 14 leaf forms - I hope to do the other 35 over the weekend - time permitting.

However, before I settle into relaxation on Friday evening I'm going out into the cooler afternoon to continue to cut up the big 200mm square logs that were delivered about a week ago. More on that on Sunday.

Friday, July 6, 2018

Love the lustre of the metal in this trio

I suspected that the metal I was using for a series of Fungi Bowls was going to be delightful to work with; and would result in a beautiful hammered surface and a glorious copper edge - I was a not disappointed.

I usually start making fungi bowls by cutting the 'circles' a bit on the wobbly side given fungi is not always perfect in its shapes. The cut shapes are made into rudimentary bowls by pressing them in a metal form with a hydraulic press.

To give purchase in the subsequent hammering process I create a small indentation in the bowl form.

Then it is over to the left hand stake where I do a first round of hammering to raise the bowl into a tighter shaped vessel.

Then I use a finger shaped stake to systematically hammer the bowl into the conical shape.

I must be pretty consistent in my process and technique as the three fungi bowls come out fitting neatly inside each other.

After a grind and polish three beautiful vessels emerge.

Sunday, July 1, 2018

Who would have thought - 36 hammers!!!!

Fiona commented that I seemed to have quite a few hammers in the pile in my hammer 'storage area' (aka on the bench beside the drill press).

On that basis I thought it was time to sort the hammers out and get rid of any that I was not using.

As it turned out there were 39 hammers in the pile and only three of them were not being used. When I started doing metal work I started with 5-6 hammers; and have built the tools up over time as trips to Japan and jobs dictated I 'needed' other hammers.

The following show the various groups of hammers and the captions indicate their use.

©2018 Barry Smith - Solid pure soft copper hammers used for stamping and tasks that required strength but little marking on the metal. The bottom hammer is a great weight for stamping words on leaf words and peace on peace leaves.

©2018 Barry Smith - Yikes - heavy duty hammers for blacksmithing type jobs like making the rods for Bending sculptures. The orange hammer gets a good workout when I want to stamp images such as the peace symbol on harder metal.

©2018 Barry Smith - Planishing hammers for giving a smoother surface or a facetted surface to the outside of bowls and other metal work. The red hammer second from the top is my favourite planishing hammer - it is a panel working hammer.

©2018 Barry Smith - Riveting hammers - but second hammer from the right is also used in making leaf forms and is one of my favourite go to hammers. The hammer on the extreme right is my favourite when setting tiny rivets.

©2018 Barry Smith - Raising hammers- my bread and butter hammers - used a lot in making bowls, vessels and leaves - size and weight of hammer depends on the size of the task and the softness or hardness of the metal. The hammer on the extreme left and third from the left are my go to raising hammers; the third from the left is often used in leaf making as well; and second from the right is used for making large copper leaves.

And the good news is that the hammer storage area is clean and tidy for a short period of time.

Friday, June 29, 2018

Off to market

I have been making product to go to Maleny Additions and Entangle. This can be fairly mundane creativity. I can put a bit more interest into the work if I: look for ways to improve the pieces; streamline the techniques; and find new 'tools.

The photos below show some steps in the process of making 16 Leafspoons and the photo captions give an idea of what I mean by streamlining and or finding tools that work better.

©2018 Barry Smith - Four of the found tools that I suet progressively and gently unfold the leaves - the fifth step is setting the leaf on the anvil with a plastic-nylon mallet. From left to right the tools are: head of a chisel shaped hammer, wine barrel chisel, carpet layer's chisel and a heavy duty cheer knife.

Ten of the Leafspoons, along with 10 Tea Caddy Spoons, will be delivered to Maleny Additions tomorrow. There are some who say that people only really buy the Leafspoons so that they can get one of Fiona's handmade swing tags - could be right.

A good Friday in the garage-studio.

Friday, May 11, 2018

Not pretty - starting many bowls and the tools used

Yesterday and today I managed time in the studio-garage. The aim is to make 4 sets of Daily Leaf Word sets and about 12 ladles. As you can see from the photos above and below using cut up old, and often dirty, salvaged silver-plated serving trays means that the initial stash of metal can look pretty ordinary.

The fire treatment and hammering does not really improve the look. But they will shine once taken over to the grinding-polishing bench.

I loved the fact that the work bench just became populated by hammers and stakes - all the tools were used in the process to date.

I hope to get time over the weekend to finish the hammering and get to polish the bits - something shiny to show on Sunday.

Friday, October 5, 2012

Shiny Friday

Whilst this morning was taken up with community commitments I got down to doing a bit more preparation for tomorrow's Open Studio.

I have been running out of silver-plated ENPNS for making bowls, leaf forms, Daily Words etc. Last Sunday Fiona and I had to take a trip to a coastal gallery to pick up some of our work. On the way home we happened upon an op-shop so went in search of metal. As you can see from the photo below we were successful - a good stash of other people's discarded treasures.

But alas today I cut 4 of the 7 trays up for metal. Usually when I cut up a tray (with a cutting wheel in my side-grinder) I take the ends off for possible found jewellery bits and metal for words; I take the sides off for leaf forms; and the centre part of the trays become metal for bowls. You can see from the photos I have enough to go on with for demonstrations etc for the next little while.

Given I will be demonstrating I took the time to polish some of my most used hammers. The photo below shows my tiny riveting and jewellery leaf hammers. I have modified the riveting hammers to become leaf and ring hammers; and the chasing hammers are used for planishing and riveting.