Tag Archives: fine silver

Raised Britannia silver bowl

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wato wato,

This is the completed Britannia silver bowl that I started to cover in the previous post. It was a very pleasurable and satisfying piece that has taught me a lot of valuable lessons I will share with you over the coming weeks, warts and all!

The eagle eyed among you will notice that the rim is nowhere near as thick as I intended. This was because I fractured the rim and had to cut off my hard fought for peened and caulked rim.

I chose Britannia silver as it is a little like a half way house between stirling and fine silver. I have much more experience of stirling and a little with fine silver. Later, if anyone would welcome an introduction to forging, hammer forging that is 🙂 I will show examples of rings I made from round and square fine silver lengths. Another time I will give more information about the different types, for now, suffice to say, fine silver is lush to work with, to a point. It work hardens quite quickly and goes from a soft clay like feel, accompanied by a dull thud of the hammer blow to a shrill metallic clang and subsequent shattering once work hardened.

Stirling silver is more forgiving due to its higher copper content, it is also more resistant, harder if you will, to move than the other types.

Britannia was my choice for a first silver bowl for two reasons. First the colour is, in my opinion, nicer. Being deeper, less chrome like; again this is just my opinion, not a fact. The other reason was that fine, my favourite, would be too tricky to start with as a first attempt, being far less forgiving of overworking, something I am guilty of at this point. I know coward. As the saying goes, better to be a live chicken than a dead hero, or something like that 🙂

The fact I broke the Britannia silver rim, I shudder to think of the mess I would have made if I started with fine, I’m glad I chose as I did. Yes, I would likely have not had the same challenge had I started with Stirling. But I wanted to push myself a little bit and try something I haven’t done before, perhaps not a total coward then eh!

I hope to be able to get some better pictures. I just thought, as I started the thread about the build process it would be helpful for those interested to go back to images of the completed bowl to see how the progress goes.

Until the next time, please keep your thoughts coming. Is this blog useful to you, does it help you, are my explanations helpful and clear, is there anything I missed, anything else you would like to see covered.

All my very best wishes.

Stu Art.

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Silver bowl project; peening to make ready for thickened edge

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I watched a film made by the Goldsmiths company to showcase silversmithing skills. The demonstrator was the awe inspiring Christopher Lawrence;

http://www.pearsonsilvercollection.com/biographies.html#lawrence

Christopher Lawrence embodies, for me anyhow, what is it is to be a true master craftsman. If you stop to dwell too long on his achievements, experience and sheer depth of knowledge, you could be forgiven for being disheartened. Trained from a very early age in a time when measurable performance meant far more than ideas and promise, it feel its fair to say the likes of these crafts masters are becoming ever rarer in a time where talking is far more valued than ‘walking’

Rant over! Lets look at peening the disc of Britannia silver before sinking, in preparation to raising. Peening is the same as the approach I presented in a previous post showing how to make simple curves or dishes without curved stakes. The difference being the working from the centre, as before, this time without the ‘dam’ or ‘moat’ I explained to contain the ‘wave’ of material as it is pushed to the outside edge.

The hammer I used is another junk shop find, very heavy, re-profiled and polished to act as a peening hammer. Consistency, as with much of this discipline, is key. My thinking was that a very heavy hammer can be used to keep the blows consistant. Rather than swinging a lighter hammer, with all the variance this would introduce to the force of each blow, I use the weight of the hammer. You see the gentle curve of the hammer face, all blows overlap to keep the ‘wave’ ahead of, and not behind the next blow. Working from the centre to the outside edge, a section of material at the edge is left. All the material is now concentrated there and ready for calking, more on that in another post.

I lift the hammer as precise a distance from the disk and let it fall on the disc of silver. My reasoning being if the height is consistent, the weight of the hammer will ensure the blows are as consistent as possible, I just have to ensure I keep turning the disc to present the next point of contact for each blow. Do not move the hammer, just the disc of silver flat on the steel trist, working in a perfect circle, hence the guide lines made with a compass, moving outward towards the edge.

The little copper model shown here with the calliper showing the width of the rime is to illustrate the sort of expansion you can achieve. The starting sheet of copper was 0.9mm thick. As you see from the digital read out, the size difference is substantial.

I followed Christopher’s lead and did three rounds of peening to achieve this result. Next time I will show you the stages that follow on from this to create the thickened edge as you go along raising your form.

Untill next time, all my very best wishes.

Stu Art.