The Home Worker's Page.

Progress, Volume VI, Issue 5, 1 March 1911, Page 574

The Home Worker's Page.

~i ;j:, ;._ Repousse Work. (By Chas. Clark, Gold Medallist and Special Gold Medallist.) We will now suppose the reader has sufficiently advanced from what he has already gleaned from the previous articles to be able to proceed a step farther, namely/to add further and higher relief. You have gone so far as tracing your design on the copper and beating down the background, as explained in the last chapter. It is now necessary to remove the copper from the pitch block. This can be easily done if you insert a cold chisel or some other wedge-shaped tool between the copper and pitch block and work all round the edge of the copper until it is free. Having done this, clean the back of copper with oil and heat as previously explained and straighten out the copper evenly if it has become buckled. To do this you may have to reanneal it and hammer with your wooden mallet on a small wood block. Now warm your pitch block until it flows quite even and place your copper face side down (that is, the side that has just been worked should lie next the pitch) pressing well down, so that every portion adheres to ' it, and not allowing any air bubbles or spaces to occur between copper and pitch. The effect of these is fatal, in the shape of very

ugly marks in the raising, which will be hard to obliterate. Without waiting to get quite cool, start at once to raise those portions that are to stand out in highest relief, by hammering them into the cement, using the largest tool that you conveniently can, say for instance numbers 3,7, 8, 9 and 10 of Gawthorp's brass raising tools. If you require anything larger than the above, you can easily procure some brass rod, and with the aid of a file and emery cloth you can make tools to suit your work very easily. Proceeding with the raising, as I said before, you commence at the places that ought to be in the highest relief and work outward toward the edges, and up to the traced lines on your design, holding the tools in the same manner as when tracing but more perpendicular, and allowing them to slide slowly along in the same manner as you did when tracing without lifting the

tool from the metal. Do not attempt to do all the required raising at once, but give a slight raising all over the design first, then going over and over again if necessary, giving it a further deepening where required. The whole process of raising must be proceeded with slowly and thoughtfully, endeavour to imagine the effect you are producing on the reverse side. If you are not sure of the effect you are producing, it would be advisable for the first few times to take the copper off your block

and examine your work. You will then discover where you will have to do more raising to give your design more form. If you fail to do this you will probably go on beating or raising where it is not required, and so spoil the effect of your design, which cannot afterwards be erased.

To sink even a simple hollow without bruises requires a lot of practice; therefore do not be too ambitious at first, but, try and overcome the raising on simple forms of design before attempting anything intricate. The best advice I can give you for clean, smooth work, is to use the largest tool, and hold it firmly down on the copper, not allowing it to chatter between your lingers; then with the same frequency of hammer blow as in tracing, and the same uniformity in weight of blow, allowing your tool to travel automatically as in the tracing, you will find a nice, clean piece of raising without the bruises that will astonish you. All bad work is produced by not having a firm and determined hold of your tool. In raising the stems of flowers or similar stems where the lines of tracing run parallel, use a tool a shade less than the width between the lines and work the tool along similar

to the tracing, and a nice clean indication will follow. If you want to give a design a sharp set up from the background, such as the edges of leaves or flowers, you raise in the same way as before described, and then, taking your tracing tool, go all round the leaf or petal near to the traced line that was made on front side, making a deep, sharp, continuous line of even depth. This will give your design a very different effect when viewed from the front.

So far we have done all the raising in high relief from the back, so take copper off pitch, clean it and examine for any portion that requires correction in form. If any alteration is necessary, put on your pitch block again, face side up, being careful to have all the hollows or raised portions tilled with the pitch by filling up level with the ground before fixing to your block. This done, you can remodel your design by again beating down any portion necessary to give correct form, or beating down any portion of the background that has been drawn up in the raising.

A Simple Method of Constructing an Ellipse.

• On a straight-edge or ruler mark off a distance QP, equal to half the desired major axis; also, from point P, a distance PM, equal to half the desired minor axis.

Referring now to the drawing, we construct perpendiculars AA' and BB', and lay the ruler down so that the points Q and M fall exactly upon these perpendiculars. The point P will then fall somewhere on the curve of the proposed ellipse. By shifting the ruler about, in such a way that Q and M always fall on lines AA 1 and BB 1 respectively, the mark on the ruler at P will give the position of any number of points, which afterward may readily be joined by a continuous line.