Copper Repoussé
This summer I took 2 courses taught by Aimie Botelho up at Ness creek. The axe making course was great fun but very hard and hot work. I highly recommend the course to anyone, even someone without forging experience.
The second course was a beginners repoussé course, which intimidated me quite a bit as I am not at all artistic. I wanted to do a dragonfly but thought it would be too difficult for a person with 2 left hands. Aimie convinced me to give it a try.
The first step of the course was to nail down our image. I had a stock drawing of a dragonfly and a live example. From this we produced our drawings. We needed 2 copies since we would destroy one during the process, by gluing it to the copper sheet.
Next we used plasticine to model the 3rd dimension from the drawing. The direction from Aimie was not to worry about making it perfect, the point was just to figure out the levels. Mine is far from perfect, but I did spend some time trying different positions of the wings. I think that wings need to have some curve and twists so it looks more organic, and not like an airplane or an ornithopter from dune.
Next we moved on to the copper. Working with copper is a bit different from working with steel. You need to anneal it, quench it and then work it cold. You get about 1 pass with the tools before it work hardens and you need to anneal it again. We all got quite handy with the tiger torch.
The actual forming of the copper is done with a variety of tools. Aimie had provided everything we needed. All the basic punches, a hammer, a frame full of pitch and a silicone sheet.
