TIME TO LEARN Y'ALL.

So here is a drawing of something i have been semi-doing. I have been doing shallow raising to create some organs for my painting. I took pictures of the whole deal, but they were fucking horrible, so I drew the process of raising metal on several napkins to explain.

For the next few napkins, we have some tools:



- a tripod
- a torch
- a quench bucket full of water




- a raising stake
- a raising hammer
- a better raising stake (the one that will be featured in the illustrations)



- another stake (which will not be appearing in today's tutorial)
- a nylon hammer (doesn't scuff your shit)
- a planishing hammer (for a final finish)



So we are starting with a circular form. Actually, let me explain the metal a bit more.

The metal in question is copper, but you can use brass, bronze, copper, silver, nickel, gold, w/ever. Copper, silver, and gold will move the easiest. Brass, bronze, and nickel are super, duper hard.

Metal is malleable, so all I am saying here is that it can be hammered. I haven't specified really. Anyway, the process of raising is called raising because we are going to raise a vessel from a disk. You might think you can only hammer metal to make it thinner, but what we will be doing will be the opposite. We will be compacting the metal and making it thicker, actually. Hopefully, the process will explain, but I have produced some shitty drawings.

I have a cut copper disk. I now realize that I didn't explain how to use a jeweler's saw, so just assume you found a piece of metal in a circular shape and it is perfect. Good. Drawn on it are a series of circles. The inner circle will be the base of the vessel. We don't need it to be curved, so we won't be manipulating that area. What we are trying to do is hammer from the inner most circle to the outer most circle, pushing the metal upwards and in a way, together. I will explain that in a bit.

Also, before even doing that, we have to anneal the metal, which is what the first napkin is for. We set the metal on the tripod and take the torch to it. I didn't draw this, but the torch has a gas and oxygen knob. Some don't have this, so that's ok. Anyway, we're cranking the gas and lighting it, the turning on the oxygen and creating a blue cone with our flame. The cone can be pretty long, maybe an inch and a half or two. You want a good, strong, broad flame. It doesn't have to be super small and precise because we are just trying to heat the metal up.

We're heating the metal to soften it. Annealing is a process of heating the metal to a dull to cool red. Any more than that and you're just melting it. Actually, if you apply flame to the metal, the flame will come off orange if it is annealed. If the lights are out, the metal will be a dull red at that point. Doing this sends the particles in disarray and softens it, making it easier for us to hammer. As we hammer the metal, the molecules are compacted and it hardens. It is necessary to anneal the piece every course of raising, maybe a few times if the metal becomes too hard to work.

So we have heated every part of the piece up to a dull red, it all doesn't need to be red at once. We quench it in the water and clean it off. I forgot to draw a pickle pot, but imagine a small crock pot full of water minus a couple of inches, then some pickling salt is mixed in, a few tablespoons. Heated pickling salt will clean the surface of the metal because when you heat metal, it produces firescale. Moisture is actually pulled out of the metal and then dries on the surface, along with a little bit of copper. You'll see it flake and get all over your hands and shirt or blazer. So we clean the surface to draw on it, plus we don't want to hammer that firescale into the copper, or the hammer, or on our stakes.

So what we have above is an annealed, pickled (and then rinsed in a sink and dried with napkins or whatever you might have) piece of metal that is drawn on with sharpies. We are drawing the circles about a centimeter apart, maybe a little less. Draw them as straight as you want, maybe use a compass too. I never use them and all of my work ends up wobbly.



Here, we are setting our disk against the raising stake at about a 45 degree angle. We start and the inner most circle, placing that line right on the point of the stake. You'll have to guess where it corresponds, but I have faith in you. Now, the planishing hammer has two sides, a narrow side and a broad side. We're using the narrow side at the moment to just move in one circle at a time. Strike above that line, or between two lines. We are not trying to hit the point of the stake, but right above it. The sound will be a bit hollow, then you'll hear the hammer hit the stake. Stop hammering! We are trying to move the metal, but we aren't trying to squash it. You want to rotate the disk and hammer some more. Your blows should overlap to make your courses even and smooth. Keep hammering around in a circle, going clockwise or counter-clockwise. You'll switch this up every course or raising to keep things from going lopsided.



Keep going up the circles! The metal should get wavy like the third drawing. When you are hitting a wave like that, what is happening is the metal is hardening where the the hammer is contacting it, possibly at the peak of two of the waves. The metal inbetween that is resting on the stake is being pushed together by the metal surrounding it. So in those areas, the metal is actually getting thicker. Keep doing this until you have this cone sort of shape. Well, a cone with the top lobbed off.

Once you have done that and come close to the final shape, you're going to flip the hammer over and use the broad side on the whole deal, overlapping blows and making everything really flat. Remember, we are moving the metal until it contacts the stake and nothing more. Your surface should be pretty smooth and uniform.



We are annealing the piece, pickling, and drawing more circles. You're going to start your circles one below where you last started to create the shape we want. Just draw more circles, hammer some more, and when you reach the end, go over the piece with the broad side of the hammer and smooth it out. Anneal, pickle, more circles, hammering again. Now we've got a shape that resembles a cup, but has some angles to it. We can knock those in, so that's ok. We want that shape pictured above.



The other side of the raising stake is curved. We're resting the cup on the stake and using a nylon hammer to knock the raised parts in. You should have some nasty looking indentions left from your raising hammer. We can get rid of those by using a planishing hammer against the curved stake. Planishing hammers have really flat faces and leave smoother, wider marks on our metal. We are hammering all around the piece, starting top or bottom, it doesnt matter as long as the whole surface is covered. We are hammering just hard enough to flatten out the marks left from the raising hammer. You'll do this over and over, making softer blows as you go. By the time you are done, the piece should be quite hard, which is exactly what you want, so there will be no need to anneal the piece after planishing. From here, you can file the surface, sand it, polish it, give it whatever finish you want.

This is a really shitty tutorial. I should upload the pictures I took anyway.




I hope some of this made sense. I think it took me two hours to actually make the piece and way more time to try to make it into some sort of understandable digital format.