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#21
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sinusoidal stake source?
On Fri, 24 Aug 2007 07:28:05 -0700, "
wrote: Michael Good gives a pattern to make your own stake from plastics, such as polypropelene, in Tim McCreight's book Metal Technic. I have made my own stakes and I have bought a metal one from Otto Frei. Both work for me. A real simple description I give people at art fairs and such of what anticlastic raising is... two perpendicular planes curiving in opposing directions. This is done through hammering with sheet metal before it is a tublar form- and does not have to be a tube to be anticlastic. A pringles chip or saddle is also anticlastic- the opposite end of the spectrum is sinclastic forms, which would be bowls and the like that have all planes moving in the same direction. I also recommend looking at the Heiki Seppa book. Um, thanks, but I know what anticlastic raising is. I just wondered what Allen called his tool and what he used it for. Abrasha, I heard a rumor that Michael Good has moved towards making his forms with a hydraulic press instead of hammering. Do you know if this is true? -- Marilee J. Layman http://mjlayman.livejournal.com |
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#22
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sinusoidal stake source?
William Black wrote:
"Peter W.. Rowe," wrote in message ... On Wed, 22 Aug 2007 08:14:40 -0700, in rec.crafts.jewelry "William Black" wrote: "Georgia" wrote in message m... I was surprised and disappointed to find, on Googling "sinusoidal stake," to find only a handful of sources--Otto Frei, Walsh (all the way in the UK), and Allcraft. Am I missing something obvious here? 1. Walsh's sell mainly German stakes. 2. They're a specialist 'detail engineering' supplier as well as a jewellers supply house. 3. That's a bloody odd piece of kit for a jeweller, I've only ever seen them in an armourer's workshop where they're used to make couters and polenys. What are you planning on making? Mr. Black's posting, and his being unaware of what the stakes are used for in the U.S., nicely illustrates just why sinusoidal stakes are still somewhat of a rarity. Most larger stake manufacturers are traditional european firms, or patterned after such, and making designs refined over a long tradition of their use. Anticlastic raising, by contrast, is quite new, and it's teaching has been, so far, mostly concentrated in the U.S. The word itself only entered the metals field by means of Heikki Seppa's (spelling? Not gonna look it up. sorry H.S.) cool little book on shell forming and nomenclature in the 60s, which introduced as well, some new ways of thinking about metal forming and the shapes one could get, as well as why work that way. But his work was larger in scale. Not until Michael Good, for the most part, refined thos methods to work on a small jewelry scale, were "raising" tools of a size needed to make jewelry, needed enough for standard designs, like a sinusoidal stake, introduced. That stake, which is nothing more than a convenient means to have a whole series of progressively smaller anticlastic curves on which to work on small items, all in one tool, is quite specifically the result of Michaels innovative work and methods. European jewelry traditions have not yet really incorporated those methods, though of course individual artists may well have, just as U.S. artists learn stuff from their european colleagues. But the tools are still pretty much limited in availability, since the market for them is still small. I looked some of the stuff up on the web. Some of it is remarkably ugly, if novel. A lot of it looks like something from a Birmingham School of Jewellery 'End of course' show that is more for looking at, showing off professional design skills and getting a job than actually selling. Some of it's bent tube that can be bent using any reasonable tube bending process. People in the UK do rather tend to buy jewellery because they like it rather than because it looks striking and unusual. As for the wavy stake, the armourers one is about fifteen inches long, two inches wide and is often the subject of unsavoury jokes involving young ladies. Only today had the time to look at this thread, too much else to do. Interestingly Bill Black,s comment about these designs being like final year projects from the B'ham jewellry schoo in the 70's is right. Ive seen this idea before many years ago. So as a technique its not anything new, tho Mr. Good's use of it has proved to be the flavour of the month in your country. Good luck to himand I hope he has lots of success with it. As a technique its been around a lot longer. The principle of stretching sheet in a specific way to generate compound curves has been used in the automotive industry and the aviation fields for 60 years at least. Tho not by hammering but by wheeling as its called here. I had a product line using this technique on titanium sheet to make 3d cuff bracelets some 25 yrs ago. Part hammered and part tension rolled. As these were just one of a number of designs I made and marketed there was no need to develop the idea further. As a technique it works just as well in most metals from copper through stainless steel then to titanium and on to the noble ones. As for Mr Good's hydraulic press, well , unless he plans on a production run of several hundred of a sculptural form, the die costs will be an eye opener, apart from a steep learning curve. My hydraulic press I use for coining, will go to 250 tons. Not a toy and needs to be treated with respect. With hydraulic pressures of 11,000 psi, this could seriously effect your health. I call it my die breaker. |
#23
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sinusoidal stake source?
On Aug 24, 8:25 pm, Abrasha wrote:
wrote: Abrasha, I heard a rumor that Michael Good has moved towards making his forms with a hydraulic press instead of hammering. Do you know if this is true? You have this only partly right. I visited Michael in Camden, Maine, during my Summer vacation with my family last month. We also visited the shop. His new pride and joy is this huge hydraulic press. So yes, he does use a hydraulic press. However, he uses this press for large projects only, not for jewelry. He uses it for sculpture and the like from table top size to several feet in size. They are still sinusoidal shapes, just much larger. For jewelry he has literally hundreds of different shaped stakes around the shop which are used for a variety of jewelry shapes. He has the standard shapes of course, and he has many specialized ones, that are used for certain styles of earrings, for instance, only. Some of these stakes are large and many are small to very small. The jewelry is still hand hammered. -- Abrashahttp://www.abrasha.com Thanks for clarifying. Maybe some day I will get an opportuntiy to go to one of Michael Good's workshops. I would love to see the stakes for the earrings because I have not figured out how he gets the curves and twists in such close proximity. I was thinking maybe it was magic. |
#24
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sinusoidal stake source?
On Sat, 25 Aug 2007 09:25:34 -0700, in rec.crafts.jewelry Ted Frater
wrote: Only today had the time to look at this thread, too much else to do. Interestingly Bill Black,s comment about these designs being like final year projects from the B'ham jewellry schoo in the 70's is right. Ive seen this idea before many years ago. So as a technique its not anything new, tho Mr. Good's use of it has proved to be the flavour of the month in your country. Flavour of the month may not be quite accurate, Ted, as the popularity of Mr. Goods work, and his teaching of his variations on anticlastic raising, goes back well into the mid 80s, and maybe earlier. You're correct that the "look" first became quite popular, especially in art schools (where trends tend to appear about 15 to 20 years before they become popular in mainstream retail jewelry, it seems) in the late 60s and 70s. That's because it was at that time that Heiki Seppa first published his little book, "form emphasis for metalsmiths". This did not so much describe any new techniques, rather what it did was to give us a new, well organized nomenclature to describe the forms and the methods of generating them. His explorations of what were (then, and now) called shell structures led to, at least on this side of the atlantic, a whole bunch of new ideas on forms in silversmithing, with a proliferation of sculptural forms that had not previously been seen so much. Its kind of a situation where giving people a language to describe a type of fom, make the production of those forms more popular. The methods evolved, on both sides of the atlantic, both in refining more specialized tools and methods in working this way, as well as in refining the finished forms. It's not new at this point in time, but has rather, reached a stage where the finished work can draw on several decades of history and experience in the field, so a lot more people are not only now doing it, but taking it for granted as a standard set of techniques, rather than anything new. As for student work, well, it wasn't just end of year stuff done this way. My first anticlastic raising project was a sort of torque or collar that I made almost near the beginning of the first semester of my junior year in college at the University of Wisconisin, in the fall of 1972. Fun, took a couple hours, and I still have the thing. I used to wear it now and then... Good luck to himand I hope he has lots of success with it. He already has. Michael's been doing this type of work for decades, and at this point, has a well established international reputation as a goldsmith, jeweler, and teacher. It's not a new thing he's just starting with by any means. As a technique its been around a lot longer. The principle of stretching sheet in a specific way to generate compound curves has been used in the automotive industry and the aviation fields for 60 years at least. Tho not by hammering but by wheeling as its called here. I had a product line using this technique on titanium sheet to make 3d cuff bracelets some 25 yrs ago. Part hammered and part tension rolled. As these were just one of a number of designs I made and marketed there was no need to develop the idea further. As a technique it works just as well in most metals from copper through stainless steel then to titanium and on to the noble ones. As for Mr Good's hydraulic press, well , unless he plans on a production run of several hundred of a sculptural form, the die costs will be an eye opener, apart from a steep learning curve. You're discussing hydraulic press use from your own experience with standard die making techniques. You should be aware that here in the states, we've got a whole different approach to the things used by artists, that does not use standard die making methods, or need large production runs. Usually the presses are smaller in size, but dies are often made from simpler materials, like delrin or aluminum. For example, a simple shape carved in delrin plastic, placed on top of a sheet of metal, with a thick layer of urathane rubber underneath, it confined in a box shape, and the whole sandwich pressed down, will force the metal around the delrin shape as the rubber is deformed and pressed the metal up and around. This type of die can be made for one-off uses, sometimes in minutes, at little or no cost. These are not so much used to strike designs into the metal as in coinage striking, they're used simply to shape the metal, and often are a sort of generic forming operation with furthar working taking place by hand. The use of presses this way is simpler than what you're describing, but can be a great time saver, and can generate forms simply and quickly that otherwise might take considerable hand work. Do some researching on the use of the "Bonny Doon" line of hydraulic presses by artists. These are small bench size presses, working with an automotive type hydraulic jack as the power source, usually somewhere in the 20 to 50 ton range. There is, of course, always some cost to tooling, and always a learning curve, but presses used this way are not as bad in either department, as you're thinking. My small Bonny Doon 20 ton press cost me less than a thousand dollars with the tooling I've got, and gets used more for single items, or production of less than a half dozen of an item, than anything else. I don't think I've ever used a die that took me more than a couple hours to make from available scraps or whatever materials I've got around. That's very different from your uses, of course, but it's been quite enough to justify owning the tool. Cheers Peter |
#25
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sinusoidal stake source?
On Aug 25, 9:25 am, Ted Frater wrote:
William Black wrote: "Peter W.. Rowe," wrote in message .. . On Wed, 22 Aug 2007 08:14:40 -0700, in rec.crafts.jewelry "William Black" wrote: "Georgia" wrote in message m... I was surprised and disappointed to find, on Googling "sinusoidal stake," to find only a handful of sources--Otto Frei, Walsh (all the way in the UK), and Allcraft. Am I missing something obvious here? 1. Walsh's sell mainly German stakes. 2. They're a specialist 'detail engineering' supplier as well as a jewellers supply house. 3. That's a bloody odd piece of kit for a jeweller, I've only ever seen them in an armourer's workshop where they're used to make couters and polenys. What are you planning on making? Mr. Black's posting, and his being unaware of what the stakes are used for in the U.S., nicely illustrates just why sinusoidal stakes are still somewhat of a rarity. Most larger stake manufacturers are traditional european firms, or patterned after such, and making designs refined over a long tradition of their use. Anticlastic raising, by contrast, is quite new, and it's teaching has been, so far, mostly concentrated in the U.S. The word itself only entered the metals field by means of Heikki Seppa's (spelling? Not gonna look it up. sorry H.S.) cool little book on shell forming and nomenclature in the 60s, which introduced as well, some new ways of thinking about metal forming and the shapes one could get, as well as why work that way. But his work was larger in scale. Not until Michael Good, for the most part, refined thos methods to work on a small jewelry scale, were "raising" tools of a size needed to make jewelry, needed enough for standard designs, like a sinusoidal stake, introduced. That stake, which is nothing more than a convenient means to have a whole series of progressively smaller anticlastic curves on which to work on small items, all in one tool, is quite specifically the result of Michaels innovative work and methods. European jewelry traditions have not yet really incorporated those methods, though of course individual artists may well have, just as U.S. artists learn stuff from their european colleagues. But the tools are still pretty much limited in availability, since the market for them is still small. I looked some of the stuff up on the web. Some of it is remarkably ugly, if novel. A lot of it looks like something from a Birmingham School of Jewellery 'End of course' show that is more for looking at, showing off professional design skills and getting a job than actually selling. Some of it's bent tube that can be bent using any reasonable tube bending process. People in the UK do rather tend to buy jewellery because they like it rather than because it looks striking and unusual. As for the wavy stake, the armourers one is about fifteen inches long, two inches wide and is often the subject of unsavoury jokes involving young ladies. Only today had the time to look at this thread, too much else to do. Interestingly Bill Black,s comment about these designs being like final year projects from the B'ham jewellry schoo in the 70's is right. Ive seen this idea before many years ago. So as a technique its not anything new, tho Mr. Good's use of it has proved to be the flavour of the month in your country. Good luck to himand I hope he has lots of success with it. As a technique its been around a lot longer. The principle of stretching sheet in a specific way to generate compound curves has been used in the automotive industry and the aviation fields for 60 years at least. Tho not by hammering but by wheeling as its called here. I had a product line using this technique on titanium sheet to make 3d cuff bracelets some 25 yrs ago. Part hammered and part tension rolled. As these were just one of a number of designs I made and marketed there was no need to develop the idea further. As a technique it works just as well in most metals from copper through stainless steel then to titanium and on to the noble ones. As for Mr Good's hydraulic press, well , unless he plans on a production run of several hundred of a sculptural form, the die costs will be an eye opener, apart from a steep learning curve. My hydraulic press I use for coining, will go to 250 tons. Not a toy and needs to be treated with respect. With hydraulic pressures of 11,000 psi, this could seriously effect your health. I call it my die breaker.- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - Ted: Can you actually make "saddle" shapes by roller-stretching on an English wheel? I thought it was generally used for compound curves where both surface profiles move in the same direction, not for saddle or anti-clastic shapes, such as we are discussing here, where the cross-sections curve in opposite directions. Can you post a link to a couple examples, if you know of some? Regards, Bob |
#26
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sinusoidal stake source?
Ted Frater wrote:
Only today had the time to look at this thread, too much else to do. Interestingly Bill Black,s comment about these designs being like final year projects from the B'ham jewellry schoo in the 70's is right. Ive seen this idea before many years ago. So as a technique its not anything new, tho Mr. Good's use of it has proved to be the flavour of the month in your country. "flavour of the month"? You know Jack **** pal! SNIP As for Mr Good's hydraulic press, well , unless he plans on a production run of several hundred of a sculptural form, He does not the die costs will be an eye opener, He mostly uses no dies, and when needed, he makes them himself. apart from a steep learning curve. He wholeheartedly welcomes the learning curve. -- Abrasha http://www.abrasha.com |
#28
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sinusoidal stake source?
Bob wrote:
On Aug 25, 9:25 am, Ted Frater wrote: William Black wrote: "Peter W.. Rowe," wrote in message ... On Wed, 22 Aug 2007 08:14:40 -0700, in rec.crafts.jewelry "William Black" wrote: "Georgia" wrote in message news:cobnc39q0ga70no85c91251d4vn4nsdbmd@4ax. com... I was surprised and disappointed to find, on Googling "sinusoidal stake," to find only a handful of sources--Otto Frei, Walsh (all the way in the UK), and Allcraft. Am I missing something obvious here? 1. Walsh's sell mainly German stakes. 2. They're a specialist 'detail engineering' supplier as well as a jewellers supply house. 3. That's a bloody odd piece of kit for a jeweller, I've only ever seen them in an armourer's workshop where they're used to make couters and polenys. What are you planning on making? Mr. Black's posting, and his being unaware of what the stakes are used for in the U.S., nicely illustrates just why sinusoidal stakes are still somewhat of a rarity. Most larger stake manufacturers are traditional european firms, or patterned after such, and making designs refined over a long tradition of their use. Anticlastic raising, by contrast, is quite new, and it's teaching has been, so far, mostly concentrated in the U.S. The word itself only entered the metals field by means of Heikki Seppa's (spelling? Not gonna look it up. sorry H.S.) cool little book on shell forming and nomenclature in the 60s, which introduced as well, some new ways of thinking about metal forming and the shapes one could get, as well as why work that way. But his work was larger in scale. Not until Michael Good, for the most part, refined thos methods to work on a small jewelry scale, were "raising" tools of a size needed to make jewelry, needed enough for standard designs, like a sinusoidal stake, introduced. That stake, which is nothing more than a convenient means to have a whole series of progressively smaller anticlastic curves on which to work on small items, all in one tool, is quite specifically the result of Michaels innovative work and methods. European jewelry traditions have not yet really incorporated those methods, though of course individual artists may well have, just as U.S. artists learn stuff from their european colleagues. But the tools are still pretty much limited in availability, since the market for them is still small. I looked some of the stuff up on the web. Some of it is remarkably ugly, if novel. A lot of it looks like something from a Birmingham School of Jewellery 'End of course' show that is more for looking at, showing off professional design skills and getting a job than actually selling. Some of it's bent tube that can be bent using any reasonable tube bending process. People in the UK do rather tend to buy jewellery because they like it rather than because it looks striking and unusual. As for the wavy stake, the armourers one is about fifteen inches long, two inches wide and is often the subject of unsavoury jokes involving young ladies. Only today had the time to look at this thread, too much else to do. Interestingly Bill Black,s comment about these designs being like final year projects from the B'ham jewellry schoo in the 70's is right. Ive seen this idea before many years ago. So as a technique its not anything new, tho Mr. Good's use of it has proved to be the flavour of the month in your country. Good luck to himand I hope he has lots of success with it. As a technique its been around a lot longer. The principle of stretching sheet in a specific way to generate compound curves has been used in the automotive industry and the aviation fields for 60 years at least. Tho not by hammering but by wheeling as its called here. I had a product line using this technique on titanium sheet to make 3d cuff bracelets some 25 yrs ago. Part hammered and part tension rolled. As these were just one of a number of designs I made and marketed there was no need to develop the idea further. As a technique it works just as well in most metals from copper through stainless steel then to titanium and on to the noble ones. As for Mr Good's hydraulic press, well , unless he plans on a production run of several hundred of a sculptural form, the die costs will be an eye opener, apart from a steep learning curve. My hydraulic press I use for coining, will go to 250 tons. Not a toy and needs to be treated with respect. With hydraulic pressures of 11,000 psi, this could seriously effect your health. I call it my die breaker.- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - Ted: Can you actually make "saddle" shapes by roller-stretching on an English wheel? I thought it was generally used for compound curves where both surface profiles move in the same direction, not for saddle or anti-clastic shapes, such as we are discussing here, where the cross-sections curve in opposite directions. Can you post a link to a couple examples, if you know of some? Regards, Bob Hi Bob, I dont have an english wheel, tho seen them used many times. What I do have is a Durston powered mill. this has overhung extension shafts outside of the main frame. On these shafts I have a no of different wheels that produce different sections of rolled material. Also a pair of flat rolls. If I set these rolls to a taper I roll the edges of a strip thinner on both sides leaving the middle thick. This automatically produces a saddle shape if you encourage it to go that way, by hand in fact. You then can place ths saddle shape on a flat stake and dress down to get a true "U" shape or beyond curved like a piece of bent tube with the outside half cut off. However you can also do another thing, instead of taking the metal and curving it in one direction, you can also twist it to make a spiral. Now if im making a cuff type bracelet, from titanium sheet the anticlastic bit is the last part of the process of forming, thats before polishing and fire oxidising. However the anticlastic bit is done progressively from the middle out to the sides. this produces the opposite shape. The convex shape is outside and the concave inside. Using 20/1000 in titanium sheet it works fine, but as the edges despite rounding them are still too sharp for use, I roll the edges to make an 1/8th roll all along the edge. this makes it safe to use. I do this with a chasing hammer in a half round groove in a silversmiths stake. takes about 5 mins a side. Hope you follow. Let me know if you want further guidance. Ted. |
#29
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sinusoidal stake source?
Peter W.. Rowe, wrote:
On Sat, 25 Aug 2007 09:25:34 -0700, in rec.crafts.jewelry Ted Frater wrote: Only today had the time to look at this thread, too much else to do. Interestingly Bill Black,s comment about these designs being like final year projects from the B'ham jewellry schoo in the 70's is right. Ive seen this idea before many years ago. So as a technique its not anything new, tho Mr. Good's use of it has proved to be the flavour of the month in your country. Flavour of the month may not be quite accurate, Ted, as the popularity of Mr. Goods work, and his teaching of his variations on anticlastic raising, goes back well into the mid 80s, and maybe earlier. You're correct that the "look" first became quite popular, especially in art schools (where trends tend to appear about 15 to 20 years before they become popular in mainstream retail jewelry, it seems) in the late 60s and 70s. That's because it was at that time that Heiki Seppa first published his little book, "form emphasis for metalsmiths". This did not so much describe any new techniques, rather what it did was to give us a new, well organized nomenclature to describe the forms and the methods of generating them. His explorations of what were (then, and now) called shell structures led to, at least on this side of the atlantic, a whole bunch of new ideas on forms in silversmithing, with a proliferation of sculptural forms that had not previously been seen so much. Its kind of a situation where giving people a language to describe a type of fom, make the production of those forms more popular. The methods evolved, on both sides of the atlantic, both in refining more specialized tools and methods in working this way, as well as in refining the finished forms. It's not new at this point in time, but has rather, reached a stage where the finished work can draw on several decades of history and experience in the field, so a lot more people are not only now doing it, but taking it for granted as a standard set of techniques, rather than anything new. As for student work, well, it wasn't just end of year stuff done this way. My first anticlastic raising project was a sort of torque or collar that I made almost near the beginning of the first semester of my junior year in college at the University of Wisconisin, in the fall of 1972. Fun, took a couple hours, and I still have the thing. I used to wear it now and then... Good luck to himand I hope he has lots of success with it. He already has. Michael's been doing this type of work for decades, and at this point, has a well established international reputation as a goldsmith, jeweler, and teacher. It's not a new thing he's just starting with by any means. As a technique its been around a lot longer. The principle of stretching sheet in a specific way to generate compound curves has been used in the automotive industry and the aviation fields for 60 years at least. Tho not by hammering but by wheeling as its called here. I had a product line using this technique on titanium sheet to make 3d cuff bracelets some 25 yrs ago. Part hammered and part tension rolled. As these were just one of a number of designs I made and marketed there was no need to develop the idea further. As a technique it works just as well in most metals from copper through stainless steel then to titanium and on to the noble ones. As for Mr Good's hydraulic press, well , unless he plans on a production run of several hundred of a sculptural form, the die costs will be an eye opener, apart from a steep learning curve. You're discussing hydraulic press use from your own experience with standard die making techniques. You should be aware that here in the states, we've got a whole different approach to the things used by artists, that does not use standard die making methods, or need large production runs. Usually the presses are smaller in size, but dies are often made from simpler materials, like delrin or aluminum. For example, a simple shape carved in delrin plastic, placed on top of a sheet of metal, with a thick layer of urathane rubber underneath, it confined in a box shape, and the whole sandwich pressed down, will force the metal around the delrin shape as the rubber is deformed and pressed the metal up and around. This type of die can be made for one-off uses, sometimes in minutes, at little or no cost. These are not so much used to strike designs into the metal as in coinage striking, they're used simply to shape the metal, and often are a sort of generic forming operation with furthar working taking place by hand. The use of presses this way is simpler than what you're describing, but can be a great time saver, and can generate forms simply and quickly that otherwise might take considerable hand work. Do some researching on the use of the "Bonny Doon" line of hydraulic presses by artists. These are small bench size presses, working with an automotive type hydraulic jack as the power source, usually somewhere in the 20 to 50 ton range. There is, of course, always some cost to tooling, and always a learning curve, but presses used this way are not as bad in either department, as you're thinking. My small Bonny Doon 20 ton press cost me less than a thousand dollars with the tooling I've got, and gets used more for single items, or production of less than a half dozen of an item, than anything else. I don't think I've ever used a die that took me more than a couple hours to make from available scraps or whatever materials I've got around. That's very different from your uses, of course, but it's been quite enough to justify owning the tool. Cheers Peter Re your hydraulic press, its horses for courses and I didnt think I belittled your type of working. As you know if one wants to produce proof coin quality 3D relief work in solid metal , tonnage is essential. Apart from having the right type of dies in the right material. It also depends on the size of the object you want to press. Its tonnage per sq in that counts. So a 20 to 50 ton hyd press pushing on 1sq in is a lot of work on thin sheet. Say 20/1000 in. Take a 3in by 2in oval plaque in 1/8th in fine silver, I need all of the 250 tons to fill the detail of the dies I use. that includes the Times New Roman lettering around the top of the plaque. As a hydraulic press is basically a slow operating press its not possible to hot work with these dies on it. However one can do hot drop stamping on the same dies with the same silver but much less tonnage. The 275lb hammer on my medium drop stamp gives at best 100 tons dynamic energy , but as the energy delivery is so fast, in a fraction of a second the blank has no time to cool to the point of being hard. In fact it gives better results, especially with deep dies. If you can mail me off list with your snail mail address its time I sent you a sample or two. Cheers from the UK as well. ted. |
#30
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sinusoidal stake source?
On Sat, 25 Aug 2007 18:55:01 -0700, in rec.crafts.jewelry Ted Frater
wrote: Re your hydraulic press, its horses for courses and I didnt think I belittled your type of working. Oh, I know you weren't belittling anything. I just wanted to make the point that unlike the longtime industry standards for tool and die work, and the usual uses to which presses, hydraulic, drop hammer, or otherwise, have long been used in metalworking including jewelry work, there are other less costly ways in which this type of tool can be used, and that in the last couple decades, perhaps especially in the U.S., artists have devised a number of methods often using low cost, sometimes home built, presses, and low tech methods of die and tooling production, that have rather expanded the usefulness of such tools, especially for artists. Many in the tool and die world, or in industries commonly using classic steel stamping or coinage dies, the types of tooling used in these newer methods may seem amateurish or somehow less "real". Certainly, they are easier and cheaper ways of doing the things they do, and they do not usually duplicate the types of results produced by classic dies. But their low cost and versatility, and the speed of making the tools for low production quantity uses, has opened up a new avenue of production for many artists. See if you can find a copy of "Hydraulic die forming for artists and metalsmiths" by Susan Kingsley. She didn't invent it, but did refine the methods a lot, wrote a good book on it, and taught it through a lot of workshops, along with Lee Marshall, the guy who started producing the Bonny Doon line of small hydraulic presses so people didn't have to go make their own press. As with anticlastic raising, the methods themselves got their first exploration (by artist metalsmiths) some decades ago (70s, I think), but as with anticlastic raising, it's taken a while for the body of knowledge to spread to enough people, and perhaps to a second generation of metalsmiths now, so it's more widespread than just stuff found in the art schools or a few isolated studios. It also illustrates an interesting difference between metalsmithing in the U.S., and that in europe. European jewelers and smiths are often highly trained technically, having gone through more extensive training in technique and methodology than the somewhat shorter courses found by U.S. art school students. One result of this seems to be a greater degree to which the european artists tend to stick to the traditional methods they were taught. The thinking often goes "there's a right way to do this sort of thing, and thats the main way it should be done. ". Here in the states, students are often not so ingrained in the "right way". While that means many will spend or waste more time with the wrong ways, and sometimes not produce work of as high quality while they're learning the so-called right ways, sometimes with instruction and often just by trian and error, it also means they tend to be more open to exploration of new ways, or ways which work even if traditional workers don't regard it as the right way. You recall the old saw about an expert being the guy who'll tell you exactly why something won't work, while the amateur is the guy who, not knowing it shouldn't work, goes ahead and sucessfully does it. This sort of exploration into unorthodox methods seems more common here in the U.S. And in hyrdraulic die forming as we're discussing here, the traditional die worker often may use urathane rubber as a spring to eject parts from a die, or for similar uses as an ancillary tool. But it was the U.S. workers, who, noting that urathane deforms, but does not compress, and under pressure will flow up and around a form pressed into it, first made major use of it as a replacement for the female half of a die set. That means a single welded up steel box with an inch of urathane rubber in it becomes a universal forming die if you put metal sheet into it, place anything on top as the male shape, and press down. I'm not saying, of course, that this was invented in the U.S., or even by artist metalsmiths. I have no idea, in fact, where this was first noticed or made use of. But it was here in the U.S. that artists who saw this method, first took serious note of it, and accepted it as a usable and respectable method. It's since travelled the atlantic of course, but even now is somewhat slower to catch on. I'm reminded of an interesting interchange I saw when first visiting various jewelers and metalsmiths studios as part of a trip to London along with the rest of the class at Cranbrook Acadamy of art, during the 70s. At Cranbrook, Richard Thomas (the head of the metals area, and pretty much a self taught silversmith) had worked out a means of sinking metal into what he called a masonite die. Two layers of masonite, perhaps with a sheet of aluminum or brass, etc, in the middle, had a shape sawn out of the middle, bolt holes drilled to clamp the layers together, then a sheet of silver or other metal also drilled and clamped in the middle of the sandwich. You could then use hammers to sink the sheet into the exposed cut out shape with considerable ease. The sandwich would keep the edge flat and supported, and it was very easy to do things like a tray, for example, since with that support, keeping the edge flat, the bottom too, could be easily controlled and kept flat. When we got to London, this method was being explained to some silversmithing instructor at the Royal College of art, I think, after he'd just finished expounding on how a tray, among the various vessels one might make by classic raising methods, was among the most difficult to do, since the shallow wide shapes like that would warp and distort easily, and controlling a tray while raising or sinking it took great skill. So our masonite die method was brought up, explaining that this method made it easy. So far so good, right? What was intersting about all this was the great degree of resistance this whole idea was met with. There was, we were told, a right way to do this, and other methods simply weren't the right way. Granted, using a masonite die means the worker won't have to learn to control the metal enough to do it that hard way. But in the time the classic worker will have, with great skill of course, made his one perfect tray, the guy with the innovation of the masonite die will have made two perfect ones... And I'm rambling again. Enough already. Cheers Peter |
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