London Met course notes

1st session – 20th April 2010
Three new students (I, and two young women) joined what turned out to be a class of maybe 15 regulars who had been attending in some cases for years (in particular Derek and Barry), although only a handful were present in this session. The tutor was Steve Wager, biography below.
We three were each given an 11cm square of gilding metal, and told to mark the centre with a scriber then scribe a circle right to the edge. Then we sawed out and discarded the four quadrants with a #2 blade in a jewellery saw. Next step was to file round the edge of the disk with a 12” cut-2 file, to both give a reasonable-looking circle, and to ensure that the cuts round the size of the disk were circumferential rather than perpendicular to the axis. This apparently greatly reduces the tendency to split at the edges in later operations.
Then we started the dishing operation by hitting the disk held against a large-diameter crudely-spherical depression in a large wooden block (apparently the trunk of a tree). Regular blows with a strange rounded-cone shaped hammer (possibly made of wood), first around the circumference, then spiralling to the centre, gave a gently dished shape. This was repeated for a second course. Then the dished disk was annealed on a bed of pumice on an iron turntable in the foundry hearth. The torch was fed with gas and compressed air, with sufficient air being used to give a bushy flame. The annealing temperature was specified as ‘medium cherry’, no more or less. Silver should be just a tinge of pink. The annealed disk was then placed in a sink full of dilute hot (50°C) sulphuric acid for a few minutes, before rinsing off any remaining black copper oxide.
Then the dished disk was moved to a slightly tighter depression in the wooden block and the process repeated. Instead of the tree trunk, the tutor also gave us a 12”-cube of wood with a crude dished depression in the top centre to use in the same manner.
The final result of several courses of hammering in about three sizes of wooden hole was a nice rounded dish shape, approximating to part of the surface of a sphere. After another annealing operation, we then transferred to using a raising hammer and steel stakes. We were shown a series of about three such hammers with technical details, none of which we understood – in particular that it was very difficult or impossible to buy a suitable hammer! The hammers we used had one end as a cylindrical domed rectangle, the other end as a plain rectangle but with the surface matted and the edges rounded. This was the only end we were supposed to use.
The dished disk then had a series of circles drawn round it with pencil in a compass on the underside, before the tutor started off the process of strongly hammering round the first layer, thereby establishing a departure from the dish and towards a tumbler shape. From then on, we progressively hammered from this new base upwards in a spiral to the top, with annealing in between courses. It took several courses to give a flower-pot shape, although by judicious holding of the bowl against the stake, it was possible to reduce or halt the outwards spread. Before annealing, it was also possible to thicken the top rim by holding the bowl on a sandbag and hammering all the way round the edge with a sort of pecking motion, using a hammer with a rounded chisel-like edge. After going round twice, the hammer was reversed and the flat polished face was then used to clean up the edge of the bowl and flatten the bumps made in the previous operation. The result was that the edge seemed thicker.
After a time, the tutor instructed us to start from about half way up the bowl and force it to curve in by changing the angle of holding it. This frequently caused it to lose shape, departing from symmetrical about the principal axis, until carefully and evenly hammered all round. We also had to reduce the unsightly bulges by holding it on a sandbag and hammering a domed hammer all round the interior wherever there were bulges. After a few courses of this, I got it to the stage of being a shallow goblet or tumbler, reasonably even, but needing more truing up with a doming punch. The acid-cleaned areas were a pleasant pastel pink; the hammered areas were a brightly reflective golden yellow colour.

No session – 27th April 2010
Tutor away.

2nd Session – 4th May 2010
This session was delayed a week since the tutor was away the previous week. Most of the day was spent on planishing of the gilding metal pots. The pots were given essentially identical striking patterns of blows as previously with the raising hammer, but using the slightly-domed face of a planishing hammer. Two new stakes were used; a ‘button stake’, which was rather like a nearly-flat-topped mushroom, just small enough to fit comfortably inside the bowl, and some kind of smaller button at the end of a horizontal limb of steel. I think this tilted button meant that it was easier to get at the sides of the pot, whereas the upright one was mostly suitable for near the base. After a complete course from outside of central disc to top near the rim, it was repeated but with a lighter pressure, concentrating on removing any ridges that were apparent between or within courses.
At this stage, the base of the pot had naturally assumed a domed shape, so that the entire body of the pot was globular; that is, it had lost its flat base. No attempt was made to recover any flatness to the base.
I found that I had to concentrate to allow myself to use the hammer in a stress-free bouncing action; it was all too easy to grip like a maniac and seize up around it. Nonetheless, the next day I felt fatigue which was obviously related to the day’s work. Annealing and pickling were used whenever a complete course of hammering was completed, or whenever the metal became too hard.
While the entire pot was still work-hardened, the edge was again thickened by using a pecking action with a light cross-pein hammer, twice all around, and then flattened with the opposite, flat, face of the hammer. For this task, as previously, the work was supported in a depression in a large leather sandbag.
The next step was to make the rim virtually flat. This was done by holding the pot horizontally against a bench peg and using a large bastard file to make scissor-movement cuts across the top, rotating between strikes. The process was somewhat speeded up by burnishing high points of the rim, by forcibly rubbing the rim of the pot in a figure-of-eight fashion across the top of a large flat steel block. The burnished sections were then filed away as before. After about 20 minutes, the top was pretty nearly flat.
The burrs on the inside edge of the rim were removed by ‘peeling’ them away with a three-sided scraper, an unpleasant and not-obviously intuitive procedure. The tool was used by drawing it away from me on the cutting stroke, taking care to keep fingers away. I found it often bit into the rim somewhat rather than merely lifting burrs.
The next project was to make a spoon from a hexagonal-section billet of copper, about 15mm x 150mm. It had the ends filed to slightly dome them, apparently to reduce the chance of splitting of the metal. It was then annealed and pickled, before a series of operations using a heavy raising hammer which had a thick, rounded cross pein on one face, and a flat anvil face with rounded edges on the other. First, the billet was given a ‘neck’ about one quarter of the way from one end by peining it on a huge hefty iron block that had gently rounded corners. The long end was then peined all the way to the end of the rod with heavy blows, before it was rotated 180° and the process repeated. Then it was rotated 90° and again peined, then finally rotated another 180° and given a finally pein. The result was something of a squaring-up of the originally roughly hexagonal billet into something approaching a square cross-section, and with increased length. The short end of the billet, by contrast, was given something of a spoon-shaped scoop by hitting with the pein in line with the billet.
The billet was annealed and pickled, and then the process repeated. In the forty or so minutes available, this was all that could be completed in the current session.

3rd Session – 11th May 2010
The morning was spent elongating the handle of the spoon to reach about 15x10x5mm. The bowl area was developed into a flattened fish-tail shape by hammering with the heavy raising hammer turned sideways (i.e. the long dimension of the striking edge was aligned with the long dimension of the spoon). The hammer face I used was actually covered in rounded facets, unlike those of the other two new students. It didn’t seem to matter.
To spread the material of the fish-tail, I was also directed to strike it with the corner of the raising face. This made deeper triangular depressions which were difficult to remove later, but allowed more precise movement of metal. However, the metal at the edges of the fish-tail were left un-hammered so as to retain the thickness of about 2.5mm. The outer two corners of the fish-tail were rounded with a large file, as was the opposite end of the handle. This had developed an involution which additionally had oxide trapped in it, so it had to be rounded or it would have eventually split during hammering.
Generally, there were more problems with painful rebound of the metal in the holding hand when the metal was too work-hardened. At such times, it also sounded with a much more ringing sound, and of course was springier. One female student actually developed fairly mild but obvious bruising in the holding hand – this gives a clue to the use of a snarling iron! The metal was of course annealed after every full course of hammering.
My handle soon became diamond-shaped in cross section, this was put right by hammering on the ridge of the diamond to force it into submission and retain the rectangular cross section.
The handle was planished I think when still work-hardened, with fairly light blows with a flat-faced hammer. This did not remove all raising marks, and also substituted planishing marks.
The bowl of the spoon was developed by annealing only the fish-tail area, and then hitting with a heavy doming hammer into firstly the shallow, then secondly a deeper, depression in the large tree stump. By rotating the spoon for all strikes, a fairly even bowl form was made. It was whacked pretty strongly to make sure the bowl was fully formed. Then it was planished with a heavier planishing hammer over the domed end of another hammer held in the vice. By travelling an elliptical route with the long axis parallel to the long axis of the spoon, the bowl was somewhat extended in that direction. My bowl ended up with not only some twisting but also a very irregular outline. The last operation done this session was to file across the top of the bowl held against a bench peg with a large bastard file, leaving the untwisting to next session.

4th Session – 18th May 2010
The session started slowly, it took me some time to decide that the bowl of my spoon was thicker on one side than on the other. I mentioned this to the tutor, who got me a stake to put in my vice. I then hammered with the planishing hammer to try and even it up, with good results, although the near-maximal work-hardening meant that there was very little movement left. If I had known what I was doing, the whole operation would have taken only half to one hour instead of the whole morning.
The afternoon was spent with a fairly coarse file, filing out all the planishing bumps from the handle on all four surfaces. The tutor expected the final two edges to be done against the bench pin, to avoid marks from the vice. However I contrived some vice jaw buffers from card, which mostly meant that I could retain the vice as a holding device. After finishing with the coarse file, I repeated the operation with my special silver files to give a finer result. Again, if I had had more experience, I would have tried to be more careful with the initial planishing of the handle, to ensure less effort when filing subsequently.
By way of light relief, I watched as the tutor melted about 15g of 9ct gold, with difficulty, in a small clay crucible using the same large gas-oxygen torches we had been using all along. The gold was part of a damaged necklace. The first crucible cracked and replaced by a fresh one, using lots of borax as flux. An ingot mould was prepared by being washed with oil, and fitted with some kind of metallic stick insert to reduce the size of the cavity. When eventually the gold was molten, it was poured into the mould. After pickling, it was progressively rolled down in a wire mill, but the results were disappointing – the presence of severe cuts and cracks indicated quite a bit of contamination.
Later at the Y I used 400-grade paper to improve on this finish, but found that not all the file marks were shallow enough as yet to remove. I also don’t know what the usual and ‘best practice’ procedure might be for the inside and outside of the bowl.

5th Session – 25th May 2010
The first half day was mostly spent wasting time, re-filing coarse file marks on my spoon handle with a finer file. We were each given 4 pieces of 1mm gilding metal; 30x126mm, 116x10mm and two of 45x45mm. The large rectangle was held with one end over a 40mm diameter steel cylinder and hammered over with a mallet, the other end similarly. Then the entire strip was bent round the cylinder by hand. The ends were closed up manually, then bashed nice and flat against the cylinder with the mallet. The seam opening was then filed flat in three strokes of a large hand file; by holding the file between the bench peg and chest, with the band gripping the file on both sides at the seam. It was drawn towards us and back, twice only, then once straight down. This latter operation was to give file grooves running along the length of the seam which would help to hold solder. More than two draw operations risks rounding the ends of the seam, which is almost impossible to fix. The same procedure is used on making rings (at least by silversmiths).
The band was placed with the seam vertical and facing forwards on a fire brick, with the seam forward of the brick so that heat could enter from below and into the band. Two pieces of fire brick were placed at the sides. A long length of hard solder was cut from a standard strip to be only about 3mm wide; the end was then heated and plunged into a container of “Easy-flo” solder. It was then used as a paint brush to liberally paint the pre-heated seam of the band. This soon gave the appearance of a clean pink copper coloured strip down the seam, whereas the rest of the band turned dark with oxide. Then the band was heated more strongly and the strip held on top of the seam until it melted and flowed down the seam. It was quenched and pickled, then surplus solder was carefully filed away without removing any of the gilding metal substrate.
Next, the rather tricky operation of forcing the closed band onto the 40mm cylinder, mostly by gentle pressing, but with the help of a mallet on the exposed end of the band. For those with much distorted bands, it proved necessary to use a smaller diameter cylinder first then use the mallet to regain the cylindrical shape. When it was finally fitted onto the 40mm cylinder, even if apparently near-perfect originally, it was gently tapped with the flat side of a planishing hammer to ensure perfect roundness. This was done by tapping once round at about a quarter of the width from the edge, removing and repeating a quarter of the width from what was now the other edge, then finally the same process round the central circumference. This last operation was essential to true up the band as a cylinder, since otherwise, when viewed from the side, it would be seen to have flared ends. Such tapping is a stretching operation, but stretching is not desired; all that is required is producing an exactly circular cross-section to the cylindrical band. The horizon line was checked against a straight-edge to make sure.
Next both circular ends of the band were carefully filed with a large flat file to make them completely flat, checking by rubbing in a figure-of-eight fashion on a heavy block of iron. This was the same process used on the bowl of the spoon.
A 40mm diameter circle was scribed on one of the 45mm squares of gilding metal, but in my case at least a second circle was also scribed with the same centre, fractionally larger. This was to give a bolder line, and make sure it could be just seen all around the band when laid in the circle.
Next with a small lozenge-shaped graver, we had to raise five stitches of metal around the circumference of the circle on the square of gilding metal. Each stitch was started by digging the graver in about 1mm from the scribed line on the interior side, and wiggled forward to end exactly at the scribed circle. The graver was then lifted to the vertical to lift the extracted metal into a vertical stitch. To get my band to sit on the square of metal, exactly within the stitches, required going over some of them again with the graver to nudge the stitch slightly further outwards.
The square was then soldered under the band, sat within its stitches. It was placed on a fire brick on pumice, the interior of the square was dosed with flux using a length of solder as a spoon, then the exterior seam at the four corners. A large paillon of easy solder was placed at each corner on top of the flux, touching base and band. Each paillon was about 3x6mm. The band was then heated while slowly rotating the turntable. In this case the paillons mostly floated around on the flux before melting, but as soon as the pool of solder touched the seam, it was sucked into it, making a perfect weld, with a lot of surplus on the upper surface of the square of metal. After quenching and pickling, that was the end of the session.

6th Session – 1st June 2010
A sophisticated desk scriber was used to mark two lines all round the drum of the pill box, about two-thirds of the way up, and about 0.5mm apart. This scriber consisted of a vertical steel bar on a heavy steel base; the vertical bar had a carriage which held the cutting tool. This appeared to be a wedge-shaped slice of hardened steel, and was itself held in some kind of vernier arrangement so that precise measurements could be taken of height above the base plate. Then using a saw I made a saw cut carefully all round between these two lines. This was a slow operation requiring concentration so as not to depart from the plane of the marked lines, and not to ‘bounce’ on the surface causing unnecessary blemishes. At two diametrically opposite places on the drum, the cut was made all the way through, to allow movement of air in subsequent operations.
The remaining square of gilding metal had a circle scribed as before to just exceed the diameter of the drum, and again I raised five stitches with a graver. It is actually quite a difficult operation to get the drum to sit neatly and relatively immobile within the stitches without damaging them, since they are the merest hairs of metal. The square with drum positioned on top was raised by means of two old iron cotter pins (to allow heat to circulate underneath) on a heat-proof block, and then fluxed with borax from a borax cone. To this mixture I added three dashes (with the end of the cone) of easy-Flo. In retrospect, the mix was too thin to do a perfect job, and probably responsible for the fact that the soldering was inadequate. Five paillons of easy solder, each rather large at about 5mm long each and full width, were placed around the drum then the whole gently heated while slowly rotating the turntable. It took a lot of heating to make the whole red-hot and get the solder pieces to melt. It was then quenched in water; the tutor said I should not have quenched it at all, to save getting water over me in the subsequent sawing operation.
Then after gently cleaning round the lightly-sawn line with fine sand paper, I sawed my through the entire line, faulting only in one place by about 0.3mm deviation. This required as much care as the initial sawing of the fine line. Sure enough, trapped water on the inside made a frequent unwelcome exit onto the saw and bench. The whole piece was then pickled in hot acid, which revealed that although solder seemed to have gone all around the outside of the seam, in one large area on the inside there was no apparent solder. To make it more certain, remaining specks of brown flux glass had to be removed; the whole piece was heated to about 150°C then quenched in acid, to ‘shock’ the remaining flux away. This proved that not all the inner seam had soldered. I used a sharp angled dental pick to ‘brighten’ (by scratching) the visible solder on the interior of the drum, which apparently helps it flow again in a subsequent melting. I filled the interior with a generous amount of ground borax and some on the exterior, and additionally added a sixth solder paillon on the outside. The whole was then reheated until the solder flowed.
After quenching in water then pickling in acid, it was seen to be much improved. The dental pick was used to remove one or two stubborn bits of brown flux glass.
I filed the two exposed drum ridges to reduce the impact of the sawing fault, and then started on sawing the corners off one of the two drum sections. The cut was made about 1mm from the actual drum itself, to allow spare material for accurate filing. I only got as far as one corner on one drum section before end of class.
A separate activity was filing the end edges and corners on a long square-section Arkansas stone (about 10x10x500mm) to round them. This was then used with a mix of oil and detergent on the interior of my copper spoon bowl to grind away the planishing marks. This stone was actually rather too fine for this operation, taking a long time to make it smoother. I had a coarser synthetic combination stone, but it seemed too large for this use.

No session – 8th June 2010
Tutor away.

7th Session – 15th June 2010
I missed the morning session over gut worries (I spent it in The Music Studios instead). As it happened, the morning was probably given over to putting student work in the cabinets for the private view this evening, and for the exhibition over the next few days, in room 411. The room was white-walled, and the windows covered with white muslin which gave exactly the required misty, haunting ‘white’ look for the aluminium and glass cabinets containing the art work.
For the afternoon session, I hammered my 116x10mm strip of gilding metal round a steel cylinder somewhat smaller than the inside diameter of my pill box, using a hide hammer. It was then closed up to fit inside together with a small amount of overlap. The tutor marked the place to cut with a biro, and I sawed the surplus off with a jewellery saw. I tapped it into a perfect circle to check that it still fitted into the box with a little clearance, and then spent some time getting the mating edges of the strip to fit perfectly. I did this with a bastard file, ignoring the advice previously given for truing the edges of the strip used for the body of the box, by giving it quite a few draws along the file (instead of only two). But I also refined it a little with a piece of coarse sand paper, and somehow managed to avoid rounding the edges.
I then soldered the ends of this bezel (for such it is) using what I very much hoped was hard solder. I used the tutor’s recommended method, namely setting it with the seam vertical and projecting forward from the front of the brick so that heat from the torch could get underneath (I took a couple of photos). But my strip of hard solder, cut specially, was both too short and too thin for the job, so that I couldn’t use it to transfer easy-flow flux to the hot band without burning myself. I used instead a longer wider piece of solder lurking behind a fire brick, and still found it difficult to transfer flux to the hot band so that it amply covered the seam. But I succeeded sufficiently that there was an oxide-free zone down the relevant part. Then I found it difficult to get the solder to melt on the top of the seam; but when it did, it ran as required all the way down the seam to fill. The bezel was pickled, and I filed away the most objectionable part of the excess solder from the centre of the seam on the outside. It was tried inside one section of box and found, as desired and necessary, to be on the small side. It was then tapped gently all round the other third, reversed, tapped round again, before trying for size. Some more taps with a dapping hammer made it just barely over-large, although slightly skew in that one side fitted nearly half-way into the box; the other side did not quite enter. I subsequently filed the bezel away from college so that it fitted neatly between the two sections, and then left it for the tutor’s directions. But I was very taken with two future possibilities; firstly, gilding the exposed rim of the top and bottom sheets, which look golden in the as-filed state; and secondly, etching the top surface of the lid, since an existing etched coin placed on top looked very appealing. The gilding, by the way, would only look good against the acid-depleted appearance, which is of copper, or possibly of merely tarnished gilding metal.

8th Session – 22nd June 2010
I put five stitches on the inside of the barrel of my pot using a graver in the usual way; it had first been scribed all the way round in such a way that the bezel-to-be would be half inserted in the pot, half in the lid. The bezel was then inserted, sat on the stitches, and then four large pieces of easy solder were placed around the joint together with a liberal helping of easy-flo flux, and soldered with a large bushy flame from on top.
I spent the afternoon filing round the pot, with lid fitted in place, using my new bastard file which is excellent. I refined the strokes with a second-cut file, but was unable to do more sanding since I did not have a sanding stick, and had to borrow sanding paper from Raleigh (one of the two other students, her last session). But I think the tutor was well pleased with my result.

9th Session – 29th June 2010
I think to slow me down, or to reduce the work the tutor had to do, I was given a large sheet of gilding metal and asked to mark out a 6” diameter circle in one corner, then take it to the guillotine and cut the corner out by means of two right-angle cuts. I then sawed the circle free with a jewellery saw, managing to break three blades in the process. My new coarse file made light work of refining the outside to a near-perfect circle.
Then it was dished in the wooden stump by thumping with the smaller, pointed end of a conical wooden mallet, making unsightly bulges all over, and the amount of curvature gradually increased by annealing, pickling, and then moving to a tighter cavity in the stump. The final result after several passes was a shallow bowl with bumps all over.
Then the usual pencil circles were drawn on the underside with a compass, and the tutor started off the first pass by thumping it on the usual cow-tongue cast-iron stake set in a low cradle, with a raising hammer. I did the next courses, annealing between each. When the shape was so crimped it was in danger of deforming, it was annealed then thumped round the upper edge only with a hide mallet, then ‘caulked’ with a caulking hammer twice all the way round before annealing and returning to the usual raising sessions.

10th Session – 6th July 2010
Last session – end of academic year. I think I rather idled along, merely cleaning up some of the items made previously.