Half Donut Shape

Jewelry Discussion
1

Hi dear group members …

Can someone explain to me (preferably with pictures) how to make the
shape which looks like a ring donut cut in half (can be seen here
Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos ).

Thanks in advance for your help …

Paul Townsend (aka Mr Beau jangles)

2

The Artist Micheal Sturlin is a regular Orchidian and you may post
this question to him.

I had the privilage to see the piece, the tools and the studio in
which it was made.

He is a very humble soft spoken artist with bold designs and loves
nature.

Kenneth Singh
Karat46@aol.com

3

One way that I have found to be successful is the following:

  1. Decide on the outside diameter of the donut and make a 1/2 sphere
    conforming to this dimension. Make sure you drill a small hole in
    the centre of the disc before dombing.

  2. Place finished sphere, domb facing up in a pitch bowl.

  3. At location of predrilled hole, proceed to deform metal with
    various sized ball punches (small to large) down into the pitch until
    desired shape has been achieved but making sure to anneal adequately
    during process.

  4. Turn donut over in pitch bowl and work from back if necessary.

Hope you find this explanation adequate and look forward to reading
other suggestions. Have a good one from David Tranter in sunny Cape
Town, South Africa. aurum@worldonline.co.za.

4

Hello Paul, the item you are referencing is one of my pendants which
is titled “Citrine Repousse Pendant” (copyright 2002), from the JDPN
website gallery.

The half donut shaped part of this pendant was formed using the
repousse technique, raising the shape from the back of the 18kt gold
sheet while it is set in pitch (face down), using dapping punches.
You can find on repousse in the Orchid Archives if you
search for it. This technique was one of the most commonly applied
techniques in goldsmithing, in many regions of the ancient world.
Here in the west it is currently undergoing a wonderful renaissance.
Generally repousse is done with fairly thin metal, but in my
particular application I use rather thick gold sheet, from 1.25 to
1.5 mm. This makes the process more time consuming and difficult to
achieve, but it gives the substantial quality that I desire to the
finished piece of jewelry.

It is very enjoyable to do repousse, and quite frankly I find it a
bit therapeutic to pound out the metal for the pendant after the
tranquility of crocheting the necklace chain.

Michael David Sturlin
https://www.ganoksin.com/orchid/sturlin1.htm

5

Michael Sturlin does do beautiful work. He may well respond to you
in person but until he does, I can say that to me it looks as if it
is repoussed. This is process whereby the annealed metal is
supported by pitch and pushed into shape using a chasing hammer and
differently shaped punches. This accounts for the subtle texture.

Marilyn Smith

6

This donut or torus form is easily form with a delrin die cut our in
negative form and then using hammers or a (best) a hydraulic press.
There’s a couple of pieces on my website I made with this
process…some bracelets and some pear shaped pearl pendants. Thomas
www.islandgoldworks.com

7

It may have been done with a hydraulic press. You can make all kinds
of similar shapes by learning the methods of "anticlastic forming"
presented in Heikki Seppa’s books. A workshop in these techniques
can open up all kinds of forming possibilities and give you a good
understanding of the principles involved.Good luck. Jan

8 
   Decide on the outside diameter of the donut and make a 1/2
sphere conforming to this dimension.  Make sure you drill a small
hole in the centre of the disc before doming.

David I am assuming the size of the hole will dictate how big the
hole ends up in the middle of the donut…

Can this be done using a leather sandbag as I do not have any pitch?
Thanks to everyone for the help…once again Orchid rules

9

I assure you that this piece was not done with a hydraulic press.
Although a similar looking effect might be achieved with a press, it
would not have the tool marks which are evident in the item being
discussed.

This item was hand fabricated, the old fashioned way, applying the
technique of repousse to a flat sheet of gold. It took me several
hours at the pitch bowl to develop this form because the sheet is
rather thick.

There are certainly other alternatives to achieving this shape. It
could be very easily, and quickly, carved in wax and cast, but then
it wouldn’t be a repousse pendant, which is what this series of work
is titled.

Michael David Sturlin
https://www.ganoksin.com/orchid/sturlin1.htm