Yesterday I taught the first day, of four, of a private chasing & repousse workshop, in San Diego. This workshop was the beginning level and when scheduling this workshop, I finally admitted to myself that the large fleur-de-lis, I normally teach may be a bit too much for a beginner class that is ONLY 4 days as most times, the students don't finish it.  As a result, I have changed the design for the beginning workshop and what was the first design will now be the advanced beginner design. I am also going to add projects to the list of classes I teach, so students can follow each level with something that they can make, wear and build upon their skills. This is all detailed on the workshops page. 

As for yesterday, Lisa made great progress. She learned to anneal, put the metal in the bowl, line and we just got to repousse when we stopped. Afterwards we went to dinner, saw a friend and his band play some music and I got to drive home, late but happy as a result of the fun we had. Here, as usual are pictures. 

It is that time of year again, when Wendy over at Hammermarks has the Superbowl Challenge and this is the ninth year. 
​I was going to do a fabric bowl this year but then I got busy at work and it even overflowed into my weekends so I gave up on that.

Instead I did a forged and sunk copper dish - what else!

I used a drop hammer to forge the edges and then gently sunk the middle. I used 6" square copper that is 0.125" thick or gauge 8.
I then had to pickle it and gave it a good polish. It sat for a week and then began to tarnish, so I cleaned it again (yesterday) and then went into the garage to create the Red Oxide Patina.   This took almost an hour with the setup, heating and quench.  I let it sit and then had to polish it again to bring up the color and then put a good coat of wax on it. This morning I buffed the wax and took pictures.    

I really like it but I think I heated it a bit too much. The red is deep and on the back side, without proper lighting, it look almost black. Then on the inside of the bowl,  the forged areas are on the border between red and black.  I still have some work to do on how to limit or prevent the black oxide from forming.  

I hope you enjoy this slide video (with music!) that shows the process. 
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