Most people when they are thinking about taking a vacation they book a flight to Mexico or Hawaii. Not me!
I’m taking a vacation at the metalsmithing studio. I took the day off today and worked on this piece of copper.
This is repousse. It’s a technique that is used on a malleable piece of metal, in this case I’m working on copper. This is my first attempt……….I spent way too long on it because I didn’t have any familiarity with the tools or the process.
Do you think it looks kinda like my embroidery?
To make the copper malleable you anneal it by heating it with a torch and then pickling it and cleaning it.
This is so much fun…………..next you warm up an iron bowl of pine pitch, which smells really good. Then, using lots of different shaped tools, you start hammering where you want the design. I started by outlining my picture. After you work on one side, you take it out, burn off the residual pitch, anneal it and clean it again and flip it over and chase it on the other side.
This is my original drawing…………..inspired by embroidery.
See you later.
Kathi