ArtMetal

If I were to be gifted with the ability to speak and understand different languages, I'd pick Chinese and French. Would that totally change who and what I am? Or would I be a butterfly farmer with a larger audience?..Hmmm I have enough trouble with one language. For today's lesson you will need, all of the stuff you needed last time, paper, copper, hammers an anvil, ect. another banana, and some clams on the half shell. "There's a movie this time". For complete understanding you'll have to watch all of the past Star Trek episodes. There's one I want you to to see in particular. Trekkies will know it right off. It's the one where Kirk is on a planet, his radio jewelry doesn't work, there is an alien there that is trying to kill him, at least he thinks so. Of course the alien speaks English, Well sort of, he says things like "Chakru near the waterfall. Dindal takes a flower " or " Filbert at Sol" Turns out that his language is one of symbols. Ours is also. We describe things 3D with words like cube, rectangle, sphere, elliptical solid, truncated cone or poly dodecahedron. Those words have agreed upon meanings, we can look them up. We agree what a circle is. The problem is that in the natural world oranges aren't spheres, nothing is square and those are hardly cubes. Some can remember what poly dodecahadrons are. I guess that's good. Seems rather esoteric or didactic though. Not a real handy system. The book you didn't read from the last lesson "Form Emphasis For Metalsmiths" by Heikki Seppa addresses the problem. For the moment We are stuck with the sphere "icle" and square "ish" ness of it all. It's my desire to get rid of the ish and icle of it all, so I'll paint word pictures for forms. Here's one " those tendrils from a morning glory or passion vine that hold onto a trellis. My vocabulary doesn't work well here, my geometry doesn't exactly fit. When I cant do that easily I have yu get the object. Tedious I know just be happy I haven't used tree or volcano for pictures...Ok here's where all heck is going to break out, Get your mist bottle. Get one of those squarish roundish any ishy shape will do pieces of paper. Score an arc across the paper. A butter knife might help. Push the sides together. Ah Ha You are going to have so many ah ha moments , you're going to sound like a steam engine. Break ya ya ya you know what to do. My wife came in to tell me that the cassia are blooming..That's cool 'cause cassia attract sulphurs They are big yellow butterfly's very cool. Breaks over. Scribe two arcs, fold scribe an S shape, Make more paper ish shapes. Remember to breath and to ponder.
Paper stuff is cool. How can this happen in copper? You could score your curve line into the copper with the point of a sharp punch. You could make a point on the tang of a file, bend just the tip and have a tool that will deeply score the sheet when you press and draw it towards you. Makes sharp folds. a moment for some an opportunity to make a tool, forge temper all of that great stuff. or could make a large curved chisel. or you might use a screwdriver and a mallet to trace your curve line (sort of like chasing) jagged line. Or you could do what I do well sort of. get a piece of 10-12-14 gauge WIRE make your curve line out of it and hammer the line into your annealed copper. I use a hydraulic smashing contraption instead of a hammer. Soft not sharp folds. The clam shells and the Banana are made of curved line folds. Hint: The clams are better with cheese. The banana has lots of potassium, Good for you. Anything worth doing requires specialized tools, You've needed a hammer and a piece of wire, very special, indeed. You could get a hydraulic smashing contraption, a rolling mill, a drop hammer or a helve. They are all fun and great to have. Heck you could even take a tax deductible business trip to Florida, Hawaii, or Jamaica learn to scuba dive ( there are great shells and butterfly's at any of then and you need to study organic forms, Somebody has to do the research. I hope that your horizons have been expanded beyond what you see. Send pictures, we like pictures. BF Brad Class dismissed