'Offering Bowl' is forged from part of the 'Resurection' Bloom made at in 2005.
Influenced by the sculptural work of Lee Sauder, I envisioned creating a bowl like form that was sold in the centre and preserved the ragged edges of the natural bloom along the margins. A first attempt was made at this piece earlier in the year, but the bloom material was not consolidated enough and the resulting form broke into several large pieces.
The work started with a pile of three fragments of partially (poorly!) consolidated iron from the original bloom. At this point the original bloom had been subjected to a single weld series. The places were flattened, then welded to a piece of mild steel for a handle. This starting stack was roughly four inches long by 2 1/2 wide and about one inch thick.
The stack was brought to a welding heat and give an initial quick working with a hand hammer. The edges were re-fluxed, and it was returned to the fire for another weld heat. This time the flat surfaces were compressed under my small air hammer.
The sequence was repeated a second time. On this second weld course, some working of the two long dimension edges was undertaken as well. The two ends were not compressed.
Now that the bloom iron had been pretty much welded to a solid billet, the material was compressed to create a flat plate. This work was done with a heavy crowned hammer and under both flat and crown dies on the air hammer. The end result was a thin plate, roughly 8 inches long by about 4 wide and roughly 1/8 thick. There was some splintering and cracking in the centre of the plate, but this was specifically retained.
The last step was to roughly smooth one surface on the course belt sander. This would form the inner surface of the finished piece. The plate was again heated, then worked with ball peens into a deep dishing form. This created the finial partial sphere shape.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment