Poetic progress and product

 

On Saturday I managed to set and print a couple more double pages for my Daily Words publication - a pamphlet book of seven open form poems including poems about  hope and shine - though the words printed above refer to the word Joy because of the structure of the book. 

Photos below show the sheet set out to create the back to back pages - this all takes a bit of doing.

A couple of photos of proofing and 25 copies of each printed.

Today (Sunday) I focussed on marking up, cutting, grinding and doing a bit of forming of the metal - stages in making 20 leaf-form Tea Caddy Spoons.

This first forming stage was done using a metal form and a polished wood hammer - I taped the edge of the form so it would not mark the back of the metal too badly.

With a bit of luck I will finish these next week.

Cards for Christmas and 24 pieces of silver

 

Saturday and Sunday were quite a busy couple of days. I managed to print 20 cards and 20 postcards for Christmas; and made 7 Tea Caddy spoons, 8 Leaf Teaspoons and 9 pate knives for Maleny Additions (MA).

The cards were printed in rubine red and have been dusted with gold dusting powder.

After a lot of cutting, form folding, hammering, grinding and polishing went into the 24 pieces but they look great as you can see below.

A few process photos follow.

The last tasks with the MA pieces are to add swing tags, courtesy of Fiona, and then do price lists - never done until it is all done.

Press and product

 

The press is Deckled Edge Press or course; and the product is more functional metal work.

Over the weekend we have held a 'beginning of the financial year stocktake sale' - selling or moving on stuff that during our annual reviewing June we deemed to be excess to requirements'. The photos above and below are of the setting up for the sale.

Earlier in the week I managed to complete and deliver some Tea Caddy Leaf-spoons to Maleny Additions - some went into our physical  Deckled Edge Press studio shop as well.

I have a couple more stashes of functional objects to make and then I will be back into projects.

Functional creations

©2019 Barry Smith - Eleven Tea Caddy Leafspoons with tags ready for delivery to Maleny Additions

I had a request from Maleny Additions for another batch of Tea Caddy Leafspoons. By grabbing bits and pieces of time I managed to finish 11 leafspoons as you can see from the photo above.

I know I have done this before but I still felt I might share some aspects of the process.

©2019 Barry Smith - Marking the blanks of the Tea Caddy Leafspoons onto the sections of silver-plate cut from a old silver-plated tray - using a template.

©2019 Barry Smith - Blanks cut and ready for forming into spoon shapes - the metal looks pretty rough and dirty

©2019 Barry Smith - Gorgeous curly offcuts

©2019 Barry Smith - Bowls of the spoons formed

©2019 Barry Smith - Marked up ready for folding and hammering

©2019 Barry Smith - Grinding completed as the sun went down

©2019 Barry Smith - Polishing finished in the morning light.

The Tea Caddy Leafspoons appear to be very popular as functional art pieces - quite a number make their way overseas - they are light and strong.

Production number 2

In all I delivered 23 pieces of silver-plated objects to Maleny Additions. Add to that 6 peace leaves and you can see why I thought it was useful to separate the products out into two posts.

©2018 Barry Smith - Cut and ground front end in the metal dapping block

I'm focussing on Leaf Tea Caddy Spoons and Leafspoons in this post. One would think that because the objects are both spoons the process would be the same - similar but not the same.

First some images of the Tea Caddy Spoons,

©2018 Barry Smith - Dapping tool and hydraulic press form bowl

©2018 Barry Smith - Pressed bowls - they will need further work at the end of the process

©2018 Barry Smith - Folding in the vise without damaging the bowl

©2018 Barry Smith - After gently finishing the folding on the anvil the leaf form is hammered

©2018 Barry Smith - Opening the leaf forms on the anvil edge

©2018 Barry Smith - Looking good

And the old favourite Leafspoons.

©2018 Barry Smith - Folding the flat leaf blank in the vise

©2018 Barry Smith - All forms half folded in the vice

©2018 Barry Smith - Folding finished on the anvil with a nylon hammer and then the leaf form is hammered with metal hammer

©2018 Barry Smith - Leaf forms opened on the anvil edge but bowl is still flat

©2018 Barry Smith - The hardwood timber form I made for creating the bowl shape - well worn

©2018 Barry Smith - Ball hammer used to sink the bowl form

©2018 Barry Smith - Ready for grinding and polishing

©2018 Barry Smith - Seven Leafspoons looking good

If you study the photos you will note that the main difference in the sequence is that in regard to the Tea Caddy Spoons the bowl shape must be done first - it just cant be done elegantly after forming the leaf. Whereas with the Leafspoons the bowl is done last so that it does not collapse when forming the leaf as it would if done first as in the case of the tea caddy spoons.