[4Sale] Antique chasing punches

Hello metalsmiths!

I have access to approximately 700 chasing punches that were used at
the turn of the century at Pairpoint Silver Manufacturing Company. I
need only the liners, crescents, and planishers - about 1/3 of the
set. The rest are ornamental. You could possibly sell them
individually for a nice profit. I’m not interested in selling them
myself.

Please contact me if you’re interested and I’ll send images.

Jeff Herman

Hi Jeff,

This may be totally out of our league, but I teach a beginners
silver smithing class at our Club and I’m wondering if we could
incorporate these into the class somehow. I would be interested in
seeing what you have and what you would be asking for them.

Thanks for your time
Gerry Koshman

Hi Gerry,

Beginners would love to see the immediate results that punches like
Geff has for sale.

But they would like that more if they made the punches themselves
like I did many yrs ago. I was asked to put some wording inside a
bracelet and found some letter punches, victorian Times old roman,
lovely with serifs around 1/8 in high. Then thought id like to add
some designs as well as my makers marks, year, etc. So got lots of
old center punches and chisels about 4 to 6in long, picked them up
for pennies at boot sales, anneal, file the designs, heat and harden
after, and away youd go.

Designs like a moon, a fish, a sun, an ankh, wavy line for water, and
so on. Ive some 50 or so different designs so I could make up
pictograms to reflect a persons hobby, like fishing, or motor sport
etc. Sold hundres of them inc all metals done this way. The 1/2in
wide by 1/4 in thick metal ones will take deep incising 1/16th in!
look great. In copper, then fill with pure tin melted in and filed
off level for 2 colour result.

If in your class each one did a different design then thed be able
to share them! how many students?

What do you think?
Ted.

Dorset in
UK

Hi Ted,

Thank you for your suggestions, I only have 4 students at a time
because of space limitations, but it is nice to be able to give them
one on one attention. I don’t have any experience in chasing as I am
self taught and would have to practice myself.

We only have 4 sessions for our course and just cover the very
basics. I would like to give your idea some thought and maybe do it
as a workshop.

Thanks again for the tip
Gerry