Successes

I may have seemed a little whiny in that last post. But I didn’t want to give the impression that this is just all easy, or that it is just this steady climb towards success. There are ups and downs, and last week was kind of a down. So I figured today I’ll tell you about a couple successes. A little while ago, I tried spinning the pieces for a large candleholder. I managed a couple, but then popped the bottom off two in a row, which was frustrating, so my dad offered to spin the rest of them.

Please note that there are THREE spun tops here with their bottoms popped off.

I would suspect him of trying to make me feel better, and except (thankfully), he’s not the sort of person who would coddle me that way. I actually love spinning. It feels kind of powerful to take a piece of metal and so quickly form a shape out of it. And I am improving. I spun the outer pieces and inner pieces for this candle holder.

Candleholder waiting to be buffed all shiny.

The first time I spun the outer piece, it was surprisingly difficult to get one ridge formed properly. By the 6th and final one, it was a breeze. I can’t figure out how it goes from feeling impossibly awkward to easy, just like that. My father not only does not coddle me, he appears to have great faith in my nascent abilities. Back when we first started, he showed me how to spin porringer bowls, which involves rolling the lip of the bowl at the end. (This adds strength to the bowl so it isn’t as easy to dent out of shape during use, which is important with such a soft metal.) I wasn’t very successful at that part. I wasn’t so successful at any of it, really, but it was the first thing I tried to spin. Nevertheless, when he was going to be away for the afternoon, he suggested I spin some more, and left me to it. I confess to thinking him a wee bit nuts, but I do know the basics of spinning and it is a small bowl, so really, how hard could it be?

Not yet a bowl

Hey, bowl shaped! Trimming the edge before rolling the lip.

Not hard at all, actually. Even rolling the lip, something I am not sure I did successful at all last time, was quite easy. I was ridiculously pleased with myself.

Rolled lip!

A couple of days ago, he and my mother were going out, so he suggested I could try making the lids for some round boxes he’d spun. Wooden lids. Would you like to know the last time I tried turning wood on the lathe? Never, that’s when. But he handed me this:

And told me to turn it into this:

Then he left. And I did. Even more fun, because the piece of wood was thicker, I got to taper the top as well.

Turning wood is fun, although the sawdust isn’t. Now, this is pretty simple stuff, but still, it is simple stuff I didn’t know how to do before, and now I do.

More planishing

My father tells me that I missed pointing out something important about planishing. I did mention it briefly when I first started this blog, but not in my last post. Before the use of spinning to shape the metal, pewtersmiths used wooden mallets to hammer the metal into the required shape – in fact, that is still the way it is done at times. However, doing so leaves marks. Spinning also frequently leaves marks. So, planishing is pretty, but it is also funtional – it gets rid of the marks created in shaping whatever we are making.

Here’s a disk I spun to make the lid to a sugar bowl. You can see the marks left by the stick I used to press the metal against the wooden chuck.

Here’s another of the disks, after I planished it, but before I did the final shaping or buffing:

The marks are gone.

After planishing, I put the disk back on the lathe and spun it a bit further, shaping the lip and then trimming it with a chisel. The final step is to solder the little acorn on as a handle.

Here’s what the lid looks like complete and buffed all shiny and pretty:

Fun with Casting, part 1

My daugher’s desire for more dolphins sent me poking through my father’s drawer of molds.

The secret treasury of molds for casting

He wasn’t sure he actually had a dolphin mold, speculating that the dolphins my daughter unearthed might have been cast by Doug himself (who, let’s remember, has been dead for over 20 years). I found it (which doesn’t mean that the ones my kid found weren’t still actually cast by Doug), as well as some other interesting molds, like one for this tiny seahorse, of which my father has absolutely no memory.

Casting is fun. My dad does have a centrifugal casting machine, but it is fiddly and capricious, so a lot of the stuff we need is made the old-fashioned way.

Much of the pewter you see in shops is cast. It is my opinion that the primary talent in casting is in creating the model for the initial mold, so I don’t see that as pewtering in the same way we pewter. I’m a snob. Sue  me.

Not that casting itself doesn’t require some finesse. If the metal isn’t hot enough, it won’t work its way into all the little crevices. Too hot and it shrinks as it cools, which ruins it. And it is different depending on which mold you are using.

To cast items, we heat up the metal in in a small hot pot, using up scraps from producing other items and remelting failed attempts at casting.

Stuff to melt down

Pouring metal into a mold

To cast items, we heat up the metal in in a small hot pot, using up scraps from producing other items. While my spinning continues to improve, I also keep making mistakes. I hate making mistakes, particularly with the spinning. The good thing about pewter is that none of it goes to waste. We cut circles from the nice fresh sheets of metal. The small bits leftover from cutting those circles are welded together to make other items. Bits too small for that are melted down. We melt down everything, even the shavings created by trimming pieces spun on the lathe.

That being said, the metal reduces in value from what you can get for items made from the sheet metal to what you can get for cast items, so it is better to not destroy stuff on the lathe.

I tried to cast the little seahorse and horse mold, but could not get the metal to go into the corners properly. I finally improvised by lying the mold flat, pouring the molten metal straight onto it and then smushing a backing down quickly.

When I told my father of my innovation, he showed me a different backing to make pouring tiny molds easier. This sort of thing happens fairly frequently in the shop. My dad shows me how to do something. I then transfer that knowledge to something slightly different, such as another mold. It doesn’t work so well. He then says, “Oh, yes! When you do that one, you have to do it *this* way!” And shows me some modification to what he showed me originally. It’s not like he has a curriculum or anything. We are just winging it here.

Little Boxes*

After messing up a few bowls and baby mugs, my father and I decided I should try spinning some smaller items, so we switched to candle snuffers. You would be amazed at how many people actually use snuffers to put out their candles rather than just blowing them out.

My father spun one to demonstrate, then went off to garden, leaving me to my own devices. Then I spun one, and it worked! It looked just like his. I put it beside the first one and started a third. My dad wandered back in to check on my progress and looked at the two snuffers on the table.

“They are too flared,” he said.

“That one is yours,” I pointed out.

“Oh,” he said. “Well they’re okay then.”

These are the joys of hand-made. I made the rest less flared. Now, if you want a candle snuffer, you have a more options. Isn’t that thoughtful of us?

Spun snuffers waiting to have handles attached.

Having successfully spun something small, I then wanted to try to make little boxes. I am somewhat obsessed with little boxes. I made a medium small square one, then I made a tiny one, about the size of a matchbox. I love it. It is cute. I forgot to take a photo, though, so you’ll just have to trust me on that.

My father pointed out that the effort that goes into cute little square boxes makes them a bad choice, because I’d have to charge too much money to make them worth the time. But spinning round boxes is much easier, so that is what I set out to do. He gave me a wooden chuck that he uses to make something else, but would work for this with a smaller disc of metal. I spun five.

Waiting to be spun

The box is almost finished. I use a chisel to trim the edge before pressing the lip up against the chuck to finish it.

Some of them I left smooth, and some I planished (hammered). My spinning wasn’t perfect, and with some of the boxes there were small lines in the pewter or the sides weren’t quite straight. Those ones I planished, which removes the small defects.

Now, lids. Hinged lids are appealing, but again take more time. So I cut out two circles of metal for each lid; one slightly bigger than the dimensions of the box, and one slightly smaller. I then soldered them together, so when you put the lid on the box, the smaller disc inside holds the lid on.

Waiting to have the lids assembled.

I left some plain, but I experimented with decorating the lids of most of them. A while ago, I made a smaller tzedakah box, and painted the letters. I really liked that effect, so I wanted to see what I could do with the little boxes.

Small tzedakah box with painted letters

The heart shape is soldered on, waiting to be painted.

Finished

A lid for a planished box

I’d show you the others, but they were already gone before I remembered to take photos. My father is in the Red Trillium Studio Tour this weekend, so the boxes are already there. If you are looking for something fun to do this weekend in the Ottawa area, you could go on the tour and see my dad’s awesome stuff for yourself, and tell me if you like the boxes. Any interesting ideas for decorations on the top of the boxes are welcome too!

*How many of you now have Pete Seeger going through your head?

Spinning Sucks

Well, my spinning sucks, anyway. My father makes it look easy.

I wrote those to lines about a week ago, and life then just got in the way, a lot. Now only some of my spinning sucks. Nice to see there’s progress.

My dad demonstrated either a lot of faith in my ability to pick this stuff up, or was just not thinking things through, and started me on big things. Wait, I’m going to back up a bit. Here’s how you spin something:

Everything we spin has to start as a circle. My father has written down on cue cards how big the circle of pewter needs to be depending on the object to be made. Just to make it fun, sometimes he writes down the radius and sometimes he writes down the diameter, and sometimes he doesn’t indicate which one it is that he’s written down. And usually his handwriting is illegible. Thankfully, that hasn’t been an issue so far, as he looks it up and just tells me. I measure out the radius on one of these useful pointy mathy things:

Drawing a circle

Then I cut out the circles, using either the scroll saw or a hand saw, depending on my mood and the size of the piece of metal.

My dad has wooden chucks of different shapes. Affix the right one on the lathe and use a smaller one to screw the metal in tight. The first step at this point is to turn the lathe on and use wooden stick to press against the spinning disc while it isn’t tight, in order to center it. My father just leaves it loose, turns on the lathe, centers the metal and then tightens it the lathe. I tighten the lathe, turn it on, then loosen it, etc., because I am convinced that otherwise the metal disc will go flying off and maim me. This not a random fear. See the gouge in the wall? My dad did that, not me.

This is way high up on the wall opposite the lathe.

Fortunately, the wall is the only thing that was ever maimed, and only once, and we wear face shields to protect our pretty pretty faces.

See all the wooden chucks on the wall?

Next, we use either wooden or metal sticks to press the metal up against the wooden chuck.

The stick in the left hand is for counter pressure.

Pewter is a soft metal, so you’d think this would be easy, but it is so soft that you can fairly easily press too hard and cause the metal to tear apart.

Like this!

This is NOT how it is supposed to look.

This is wrecked. I have messed up spinning in less bad ways – rippling the metal and such – and my father has managed to fix those.

Fixing my mistake.

But after several of these experiences, I suggested that perhaps we should just start me on smaller items. That’s when things got better.

That will be the next post.

Trying Something New

Last week, I was talking to a friend and told her about my new adventure. It turns out that she runs the gift shop for the synagogue we belong to and is looking for some original, local stuff to sell. I am Jewish. My father is not. This hasn’t stopped him from creating a whole line of Judaica (some of which you can see here).

My friend was delighted to hear about this, but asked particularly about tzedakah boxes. These are boxes you can use to collect money for charity (children often put in part of their allowance every week, for example). You can use something a simple as a tin can, but nicer boxes are popular as gifts and appreciated as works of art. It had never occurred to us, but I love nice boxes, so I thought it was a great suggestion.

We started off by deciding on a size – 5.5″ tall by 3.5″ wide and 2″ deep.

I keep my thumbs out of the way!

I cut mine out of a new sheet of pewter, sawed them out and started planishing, and my father started his by welding together scraps to make the same shape. His way was faster, but only because he actually welds successfully, of course.

My father has this cool system for making boxes wherein you only cut out two pieces to make the body of the box, not four. Then, he explained, I would measure 2″ line, draw a line and then use a saw blade on a rotary tool to score the piece along that line.

Now, one: the sheet of metal isn’t that thick – only a couple of millimeters. And two: planishing flat pieces isn’t as easy as it seems. I figured you can just hammer away with no concerns about denting, but you need to be extra vigilant that no random bit of dust or speck of pewter lands on the metal because it will create marks, and all the flat surfaces in the workshop are rather, um, busy.

So planishing those rectangles was hard work, and then my father wanted me to just hand-saw only half-way through the metal. It was nerve-wracking. As with everything else, I practiced on a piece of scrap first and was actually successful, so I attacked my precious planished pieces next.

Eeek!

Saw, then file into a V-shape, then bend the metal into a 90 degree angle and solder to reinforce it.

Next, I soldered the two pieces together and was rewarded with an actual box shape!

Every step involves filing – filing to straighten edges and get rid of the extra metal from soldering.

The key is to manage that without accidentally scratching the planished area, something I wasn’t always successful at. Accidents meant repairing the damage. It can be very fiddly. Fortunately, I like precise, fiddly work.

The letters are also fiddly, but fun to do.

sawing out the letters

Again, I was quite nervous attaching them. The smaller a piece of pewter, the easier it is to accidentally melt it and those letters are small. It takes a fine touch. Fortunately, soldering really does come more naturally to me than welding and I got them all on successfully (after checking and rechecking that I was spelling the word correctly!)

My father, who is good at welding, welded his letters on.

Ta da!

Getting started

I’ve been working with my dad for several weeks now. I started out making something he calls tube candleholders, which hold tealight candles. These are shaped by cutting rectangles of pewter out of a large sheet and then using a rubber mallet to beat them into the correct shape around a metal stake – something very cathartic for a person dealing with marital difficulties!

The next step is to weld the seam together. I remember being bad at welding 20 years ago. I’m still bad at welding. Fortunately, the step after that is to file down the seam until the metal is smooth, so my lumps all disappeared. Then, I planished them. Planishing involves placing the pewter against a very smooth metal stake and then hammering it with a smooth-headed hammer for a dimpled finish. The shape of the stake differs depending on what is being fashioned. I like these candleholders because the the  planishing is relatively easy. If you are planishing something cup-shaped, you must hit exactly the right spot or instead of an attractive dimple, you will dent it out of shape. But these candleholders are planished on the same metal rod they are shaped around, so it is pretty much impossible to hit the pewter in the wrong spot.

I have ADD, which means I have very little patience for boredom. Generally, anything that forces me to just sit and think drives me crazy with frustration. Attempting meditation of any sort has always been a complete failure for me. I can’t even comprehend how people can find it relaxing. But to me, planishing feels like I imagine mediation is meant to be. It requires just enough concentration – on where to hit next, on keeping the pewter and hammer clean of any debris – to stop me from really thinking about anything else. I find it very relaxing.

I took a crappy photo of my finished product:

Here is a better photo of my father’s version of the same thing:

(You can see the his other candleholders on his website, by the way.)

Next, I tried to make a few quiaches (Scottish drinking vessel). It was my first kick at spinning again, and I kind of messed up the first one I tried to spin on the lathe, causing the surface to ripple rather than be completely smooth. But that is the brilliance behind planishing. It was invented to hide all the imperfections created when shaping a bowl, and it works. There were some spots I had to go over a few times, though, to work out the dents I created making mistakes.

No longer any good for a quaich, I transformed my small bowl into a porringer when I soldered on a handle my father cast. Soldering is the standard method of attaching handles or bases. I am much better at soldering than welding. I like soldering.

The final product is a one-of-a-kind piece in my father’s catalogue, as he doesn’t planish his porringers.