This post is going to be another one of limited interest to most. This past weekend I taught a vessel chasing workshop to a fabulous group of students. During the course of it we were talking about so many items and where to find them that it seemed like it would be a good idea to assemble a post which gathers much of that information together in one place for easy future reference. I expect this post will be useful for all future classes as well and will try to keep it up to date. If you are a metalsmith you might find some of this information useful even if you haven’t taken any of my workshops.
Continue reading “A Gathering of Reference Links for my Students”Category: Tutorials
These posts contain project tutorials.
15 Piece Chasing Tool Set
This will probably not be an exciting post for most people. For the vessel chasing workshops I occasionally teach I make a minimal set of 15 chasing tools for each student to use during class. If they’d like to buy it afterward they can. Not all sets get purchased and so I sometimes have them available for anyone to purchase. However, I need a place I can direct interested people so they can see what’s in the set. That’s what this post is going to be, a reference point for information about the tools. If you are interested in chasing work you might get something out of this as I’ll be describing what I generally use each tool for.
Continue reading “15 Piece Chasing Tool Set”What torch do you use for annealing?
I won’t say it’s a frequent question, but it’s one that comes up often enough, “What torch do you use for annealing your vessels?” Answering it often involves composing some long emails, with lots of research time to hunt down links and such. So I thought I’d put together this post to provide a convenient place to refer people to for all the information. Those blog readers who aren’t much interested in metalsmithing stuff may want to skip this. Today’s post is another instance of the Studio Snippet taking over! (Jargon tip for non-metalsmiths, annealing is a fancy way of saying “heating up the metal to the appropriate temperature in order to soften it, allowing it to be worked further without breaking.”)
Continue reading “What torch do you use for annealing?”An Incredible Tool for Splitting Kindling
I just finished making what is known as a kindling splitter today, and oh my goodness is this a freaking amazing tool! Anyone out there who has a wood burner or uses kindling should probably think seriously about acquiring one. It makes the tedious, dangerous job of splitting wood into smaller sized “kindling” pieces quick, easy, and MUCH safer.
Continue reading “An Incredible Tool for Splitting Kindling”Studio Snippet takes over: Specific details on chasing a small section of a vessel
The studio snippet is taking over again! Over on my FaceBook page someone was asking for more detail about how I’m going about chasing in some shell-like forms on a piece in progress I shared. As I set about doing that I realized it was going to be a bit more of an involved effort than I normally put into such posts, since anything on FaceBook is essentially a flash in the pan, all but forgotten in a couple days. As this information might be something of perennial interest to at least a few people I thought I’d post it here instead. However, it is likely not of much interest to most people as it’s kinda technical geeky stuff about the metalsmithing technique known as chasing. Perhaps you non-chasers will find some interest in getting a deeper understanding of just what goes into such work, but you might also just want to skip this post.
Continue reading “Studio Snippet takes over: Specific details on chasing a small section of a vessel”Copper Tongs: a simple beginner project
For those of you metalsmiths reading this, have you noticed how the quality of copper tongs seems to have degraded in the past decade or so. They used to be of good quality with reasonably thick metal. Now, to me anyway, they all seem like flimsy, cheap things made of such thin copper stock. I’ve wondered for a while why we would purchase such things? I mean, aren’t we metalsmiths? Wouldn’t making our own pair be a very basic project, a project suitable for suitable for a beginning student on the first day of class? I’ve never purchased any for my own studio, rather I made a hefty set back when I was in college from some scrap plate copper I had. I actually made a second pair for the university’s studio, which somebody stole rather quickly! I guess that’s one indication they were considered good, probably also a reason why school studios only have crappy ones!
Continue reading “Copper Tongs: a simple beginner project”