It is that time of year again - Super Bowl Challenge time! (for the rest of this post, it will be known as SBC)

I have not participated every year and if you click the link for the SBC, in the category list to the right, you will see I have only blogged two other times about the SBC; but that is not to say I did not participate.  The first year I did the challenge, I started my bowl on SBC Sunday and it was an utter failure so I did not finish nor did I blog about it - let's just move on shall we.

My submission for this year began as an idea to do something different; that means NOT metal.  This is partly because my studio still isn't built out though I have space to do some metal work and I am just exhausted due to the stress of moving last year, and we still haven't unpacked all the boxes.

So what did I make? 

If you read my personal blog Kernology, you will see that I also love fabric and fibers - I sew: clothing, quilts and other fabric items plus I knit and weave.  So I reached back into my sewing skills locker and decided to make a sewn fabric wrapped coiled bowl with handles and let's not split hairs on the definitions of bowl, basket, vase and bucket; lets just say a  vessel shape, shall we. 

I went into my fabric stash and found some bright batik scraps from a quilt I made many, a year ago; the quilt block is called 'Card Trick.​

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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In the blog post prior to this, I gave you a brief hint about my bowl for the Super Bowl Challenge.  
I have tried TWO times to participate but the first time I burned my hand and gave up. The second time, I stretched the metal as I was raising it to too much and I gave up again.  

Then for the past 3 years I was in Tucson during the challenge and did not even try to participate. 

This year, I wanted to and have completed the challenge

Since the challenge can be started before Super Bowl Sunday, I started to raise the bowl about 4 weeks ago. It is not a big bowl, it actually fits in my hand  BUT with so many other things happening, I wanted to give myself plenty of time. 

And then, with the new house being renovated, we are in Texas at the moment to do some design selections and a walk through. THUS I really could not finish the bowl today. THUS I finished it last weekend. 

I went in a different direction and didn't even do any chasing and repousse on the bowl. I enameled it. I learned torch fired enameling in 2012 and I made a ring, and had not done any other enameling since despite having bought the basic supplies.  Thus, I wanted to play with enamel and see what I could do on a small bowl. It was about having some fun.

After I finished raising the bowl last Saturday. I went into my copper scrap pile and got some pieces of copper I could do some tests on as I had a sample box of enamel and color names but no clue as to what they would look like.  I did about 6 test firings and on Sunday, I went into the garage with TWO plumbers torches (one was MAP and the other Propane) , the bowl and the enamels. I first did a counter coat on the outside in a nice bright green. Then applied a cobalt blue to the inside of the bowl and a deep blood red to the rim.  

Despite using TWO torches and forming a bit of a box with my fire bricks, it did take some amount of time to get the bowl hot enough for the enamel to melt and fuse.  Yet, overall I do like how it turned out and YES, I did have fun. 

Here is my bowl and of course, some process pictures which include some of the bowl cooling and you can see the enamel colors come out.