I’m alive! It’s summer – can I use that as my latest excuse for my appalling lax behaviour in updating my blog? Let’s go with that.
I have several posts on the go, but I am leap-frogging over them to show you the latest cool thing.
My father’s mentor, Doug Shenstone, had a very different style than my father has. One thing he did that I really like is fluting. Because pewter is soft, you have to reinforce bowl rims so they don’t dent. The easiest way is to roll the lip. Another way is fluting. It takes more time, but I think the result is very pretty. Here’s a bowl Doug made for my mother shortly before he died:
My father had no interest in fluting, so he actually got rid of some of the equipment Doug used (which, I confess, amazed me because my father is – how shall I put this? – an enormous pack rat). But since I was interested, we decided to try it.
First, we made this thing. We don’t know what the call it. It’s our fluting thingie. We made it from toasted maple, in case anyone is interested. It may be too soft for our purposes, but it works for now.
I spun a bowl and planished it. Then I put it on this sheet that let me mark the bowl evenly where I wanted to flute.
We first practiced on a crappy bowl that was kicking around the workshop. I think both my daughter and I used it to learn (in my case relearn) to planished.
To make the flute marks, you have to hold the bowl against the fluting thingie we don’t know the proper name for, then use a hammer and something sharp to create the line. The first thing we discovered is that the process requires three hands – one to hold the bowl steady, one to hold the wedge in the correct spot, and one to hammer. This is a mild annoyance, mostly because it seems that there really should be a way to make this a one-person job.
Doug used a brass wedge to make the lines in the bowl, but my dad figured that a wooden wedge would make for smoother lines, so we tried that out too, and he was right. So that is what I used to make the flute marks along my bowl.
The practice bowl, brass wedge and wooden wedge that we used.
Finally, I cut out and filed smooth little Vs to finish off the shape.
This is the final product. I am very happy with it and I think I will continue working with fluting, but I sure would love to figure out a way to make it a one-person job.
Becoming a Pewtersmith 