A bit more work last night.

Gene
You must have the patience of a saint. I have raisings that are started from my college days, Too. They are going to remain unfinished. Raising does however remain another of the techniques available to me. I do combine raising as a technique in some of my pieces with fold forming. There are some major reasons to me that I perfer fold forming. First of all to develope form only from folded materail is a new approach for me. Prevoiusly folds were, at best, a minor element both in technique and in the concepts of my work. The folds themselves at times take on an organic quality that I enjoy. I hate planishing. Well that's kind of true there is a mind numbing almost meditative quality to the process that I find tedious to pleasingly redundant. The major joy I have with fold forming is that the work developes quickly into form. This technique allows me to get out of the sketch book and into the air and 3d much faster than raising. For instance this shallow bowl and the other bowl of similiar dimension were completed in the same morning. That rapid form development is almost like quick sketching in metal. That brings the completion of the piece closer in time to the design, idea phase of the process. I like my feed back to be closer than the feed back is with other techniques. That desire is nothing new to metalsmiths, but for years it remained a frustration. These are much different times than Peter the Great's day. Brad

This is the other one I made that morning. fluted, fold formed, copper, shallow bowl, line folds: This ten inch bowl is fold formed, the center is press work.

These would look wonderful in my garden as ' my favorite bird bath. Gorgeous. Mary

All the work save that which you do on a press on yours, the lip around the base are folds. There is no raising in the piece. This sample was mainly a study to confirm what i thought I saw in the craftsman piece at the art institute.

It was all folded to shape. There was no raising needed.
The above illustrated piece was formed in one go from an annealed blank. The pattern paper is still glued to it in spots. It was never reannealed.

The main problem was bending the 32oz stuff. It went from flat to picture 1 in a couple hours including layout (radial copy is great)
Tuning that last bit was another 1.5.

(there was some head scratch time in there uncounted as a looked for ways to get the folds they put into theirs similar. It went faster once I realized that if I folded in certain ways and then unfolded with certain sized tools, it took care of what I had originally seen as two processes in one pass.)

Gene
Sculptor
Elk River, MN

Gene,
Very nice piece of fold forming. I guess head scratching time doesn't count It's part of the fun. It is the interrelationships of the curves and the folds that hold my attention and send me head scratching, too. For others here's an axample of what we are talking about. This form only has two folds but they control the shape of three planes. Idea development: Just two folds developes such a nice form. Brad

I am SO impressed! Such beautiful work! I have only recently started 'playing' with fold forming for small and not so small jewerly components. When making a large piece, I am assuming I would need a large ?? rolling press and a hydraulic press? Or is it possible to do without the hydraulic press?
Do you ever do workshops?
Sandra
Airville PA

I am now accepting E-mails. Brad

I still do fold forming. There are a few more to this series. The hammering involved in these is only to create texture. Brad