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:

Planishing

I previously mentioned planishing, which is when you strike the pewter with a small metal hammer to give it a dimpled finish. It is surprisingly difficult to control the hammer precisely, and if you miss the right spot you can just dent the piece instead. I am improving. I now manage not to dent the metal as often as I did. Yay me!

You won’t find much pewterwork with a planished finish, as it requires one person, a hammer and time. If you want to produce pewter hollowware (by that, I mean items not cast, such as beer mugs, bowls, vases, etc) more quickly or cheaply, you’ll have to go with a shiny or satin finish. We do a lot of work with shiny finishes, which requires buffing the piece upon completion and looks like this:

A satin finish is a dull sheen that is produced by holding steel wool against the piece once you have spun it and while it is still spinning on the lathe. It takes only a few seconds and so is the fastest and easiest finish to produce, and therefore the one favoured by companies mass-producing items, such as Royal Selangor. It is also one we don’t use.

My father has several hammers he uses for planishing, but his favourite is the one he inherited from his mentor, Doug Shenstone. This is convenient, because my favourite hammer is the one he used to use, which is slightly lighter and smaller.

There is still a marked difference between my planishing and my father’s. This is a bowl I just did:

Here is my father’s version:

This is what mine looks like on the inside:

This is what my father’s looks like:

And here are the two pieces side by side:

It is easy to see how much more regular and even my father’s planishing is. It isn’t really that my planishing is bad at the this point (although, sometimes it still is). It’s still, in my humble opinion, a very pretty finish. It’s just random, whereas my father’s is very regular. Think of it as the difference of handmade.