Anyone on Orchid than can create by hand something that matches my
Elephant head pendant (as an example) I would love to see it and
have you teach me how it is done.
The elephant head, because of it’s depth of relief, is perhaps the
toughest of your pieces on your site to make by hand, but certainly
not impossible.
Yes I know a sculptured piece can be made using daps, stakes.
gravers, chisels etc it would have a different look than this
example but again if I can learn from you I am very open minded
and would appreciate being educated.
The statement that it would have a different look, is your problem.
It doesn’t need to. Suppose you were carving this from hard carving
wax (the way most of us might do it). Leaving aside your torch for
melting and wax pens for the same, could you carve this in wax? You
don’t need me to show you some new magic methods or techniques. No
doubt you already have the needed skills, or could easily learn them.
Just standard methods. But more patience than working in wax is
needed, and perhaps a more studied methodical approach to the
sequence of steps you take.
Almost the same types of tools, or equivalents, would work in metal.
Slower, but they work. You’d use the same methods after carving to
finish and polish the piece, so if you get the carving in metal
pretty close, after some work with rubber wheels and brushes and
buffs, you’d be there.
Now, you’d probably not want to start with a solid cube of metal and
carve it all away. So if I were making this, I’d start with fairly
thick flat sheet cut to the outlines, and dapped/repoused/chased a
bit to get most of the contours of the ears and back areas roughed
in. Then dap up a domed form from heavy sheet, and distort it till
you’ve got the rough contours of the head, minus trunk. Go ahead, be
brutal. Crunch with pliers and hammers as needed, since you’ve made
it thick enough, and slightly oversize, to allow refining and carving
the surface. Solder it on. Heavy wire can be added if needed to make
a trunk. Unlike normal fabrication, where you’re doing clean
soldering and retaining the form of the sheet or wire, in this case
you’re just building up the form which you can then model and carve
into. As needed, you can always go and add a bit more sheet or wire
or grains or whatever, to build up details. Always use a hard
solder, fit parts reasonably well, and it blends in, and doesn’t
remelt when you add more metal if you need to. I know this sounds
daunting, but it really isn’t. Just needs patience and taking it one
step at a time. If you look at the whole finished form and wonder how
to get there, it can be difficult to visualize. But break it down
into parts, volumes, planes, etc, and take them one step at a time.
Like I said, if you can carve it in wax, you can carve it in metal
too. It’s a bit more difficult to match what you do with heat,
melting/blending the wax, but you can do this in metal with rubber
wheels, brushes, polishing, etc. Or, to a degree, if you’ve got good
torch control, some fusing too.
As I said in my prior post, you can get cast items that end up being
very difficult to impossible to really make any other way, but they
need much more complexity of form than the nice things you have on
your site. Your elephant head is likely the hardest. But those
leaf/branch forms, would be really easy. Others are in between.
Now, I won’t argue with you as to whether casting is the best way to
produce these. From an economic and time standpoint, it certainly is,
and if I were making these for a line, I’d be casting them too. But
for somewhat similar items I’ve made over the years that were to be
cast, more than once I’ve found the best way to get the most detailed
and accurate model from which the mold is made, is to hand make the
original, in metal, not wax. The extra time it takes to form and
detail the metal makes you work more carefully, and the extra
strength of the metal lets you get more accuracy too, at least more
accuracy than many wax carvers are capable of (yes, I know some
amazing wax carvers who don’t fit this statement).
By the way, if you want to be really efficient in making metal
models for your molds, try pewter. It’s softness lets you work
faster, it fuses/welds beautifully, holds detail just as well as any
harder metal, yet still can be worked by some of the methods you
might even use with wax. Not as good if you’re making models of
things that have lots of thin wires or the like, but for more solid
volumetric forms, it’s wonderful. Never work hardens (actually gets
softer the more you work it) and it’s really cheap. Just don’t
contaminate your precious metal area or tools with it.
For a fine, easily found on the web, example of what I’m talking
about, go find work by John Paul Miller. He’s best known of course
for his use of granulation and enamel to decorate his wonderful
pieces. But before that, all those organic flowing wonderful animal
forms of his, were totally fabricated. Nothing cast. In fact, no
solder even, just fused. Yes, it looks different from your work, but
that’s not the point. If you can hand carve/make it in wax, there
will usually be ways you can work out to hand make it in metal too.
Both metal and wax are plastic moldable, carvable, joinable
materials. While the tools and methods of each may differ, it’s only
to a degree. All work according to the same underlying principals.
And while wax is a wonderful medium of amazing possibility, I’d have
to say there are more things I can make in metal that I’d have a
tough time doing in wax, than the other way around.
I’m sure Leonid, when he made his similar statement, had much the
same thoughts. I’m also sure that were he to make a copy of one of
your pieces, no doubt he’d have his own methods and sequences and
tools to do it. Many others doing the same would work out their own
unique methods. But underneath all, are the same basic principals
with which our tools work, and the basic operations we can use to
shape, cut, bend, carve, etc, the materials we’re working with, be
they metal, wax, wood, stone, etc.
Whether one way or the other is quicker, or easier, or more
efficient, or more economically viable, of course, are different
questions, and again, each worker may have different preferences and
answers.
Cheers
Peter
