Want to have all the fun of cutting yourself, generating metal splinters, getting frustrated and burning your fingers on not quite cooled things that you know you shouldn't throw across the room?
Well have I got the project for you!
This is a Viking/Anglo Saxon pouch lid I have been working on. I took some progress pics and thought I would post them here.
Should be posting completion pics late today or tommorrow, depending on how snotty I am feeling (when your sinuses are concreted all the way down to your ancles your eyes water. And then you cannot see well enough to cut a fine line with a jeweller's piercing saw)
The design is applied to the metal by cheating furiously. I grab and adjust my design and then photocopy it. I then contact adhesive the paper directly to the metal like this:
I then drill and cut right through the paper using the wonderfully sharp lines that are generated.
The swan knotwork is form the Book of Kells. The critters are borres style gripping beasts.
Once the cuts have all been made, I follow any lines that need defining with a very small chisel to cut in the lines. I built the hammer I use to drive this chisel out of a cheap centre-punch. It weighs very little but gives me great control. The chisels are also cut up centre-punches...actually I think they were a cheap set of nail sinking punches.
Once all the lines are chiseled in I put the metal onto a kitchen cooktop and burn off the paper and glue. this also allows me to anneal at every stage.
The copper beasts are then added into the brass facing:
Copper is backed behing the brass knotwork and brass behing the copper beasts.
Some hammered silver insets then go into the swan bodies.
More updates soon.
Sasha
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Work like you were living in the early days of a better nation
-Oysterband
