Copper Bowl II: Raising Technique

In our second project we started with a copper plate of the same diameter that was used for the first bowl. The raising technique compresses the copper and thickens the wall. The shape created above was made by hammering the outside of the bowl against a rounded T-stake (as opposed to hammering the inside of the bowl against a concave groove using the sinking techique). I'm finding that raising the bowl is a much slower and tiring process than sinking.  The technique is generally needed to create certain designs that can not be formed by sinking alone (or so I've been told).



Here is the bowl after another four hours of hammering and annealing. Raising is definitely more tiring than sinking. It's starting to look more like a bowl now.

 


Three final hours of hammering and the bowl is pretty much complete.



 

Here are photos of the two bowls together. The diameter of the first bowl using the sinking technique is 5.25 inches while the diameter of the second bowl using the raising technique is an inch smaller. I thought the difference would be a bit more dramatic but perhaps that's only the case when the instructor does it properly!

Left bowl formed by sinking, right bowl formed by raising