Tortured metal

Sometimes you just need to beat something with a hammer. Luckily I have a decent stash of copper…It’s been awhile since I did fold forming and air chasing. It was a nice change from the finicky details involved with most of my silver pieces.

This fold forming process begins with annealing a strip of metal, in my case, copper and then creating random folds, hammered down to make nice clean lines. That’s the easy part. Beating it into submission means the metal has work hardened and unfolding it can be a bear. More heat usually solves that problem and then I repeat the process many times over until the piece has been folded to death-or to my liking…or my hands give out. Just depends.

Air chasing involves creating a pillow-shaped fold that is then manipulated with a rounded punches, in various sizes. The air cushion allows me to “chase” the little pillow pockets into various shapes. Again, lots of annealing involved, some gritting of my teeth too.

When I’m done, I have some very rough pieces to work with and then start the design and cutting process. This is the air chasing strip I made into a cuff, just applying my maker’s mark before the final cleaning step:

Some clean-up and a soak in the Pickle Pot and now we’re getting somewhere:

After all that work, I gave them a dunk in Liver of Sulfur to create an ageing patina, then started the clean-up and buffing process all over again. I know-looks like I’m going backwards-