Greene style wall clock

[Rennie Heuer]

This is related to the grandfather clock I'll be building this fall for a customer in CA. I found a coppersmith in Ohio that is doing the clock face for that clock and, as is his custom, when doing something he has not done before he will make a scaled down version to test technique and process. The face of this clock was actually his practice piece for the big clock. My CA client was so impressed (as was I) with the test face that he commissioned me to build a 'simple' frame for it. As all the other pieces I am building for this customer are in the Greene & Green style and in walnut, this seemed to be simple, but keeping with the theme. The sapwood was intentional and at the customer's request.

Shown here with one application of natural Danish oil, it will get several applications of a satin varnish before it ships - it will hang in a kitchen and will need the extra protection.

If you ever need copper work on any kind I would highly recommend John Monk at luminesque.com. He is an artist of the highest caliber and an absolute gentleman to deal with. The final picture is of the large clock face and the hinges he made for my grandfather clock project.

 

[Leo Voisine]

That is really cool. I love the copper work. Makes me wonder about copper hammering. I have alwas wanted to try that. I could make a form then hammer the copper onto it. Hmmm - just makes me wonder.

It is really cool to see this - thanks for posting.

 

[Robert Horky]

definitely quite the artisan .... and the frame really adds to it. Great job and I can see why the client was impressed.

 

[Rennie Heuer]

That is really cool. I love the copper work. Makes me wonder about copper hammering. I have alwas wanted to try that. I could make a form then hammer the copper onto it. Hmmm - just makes me wonder.

It is really cool to see this - thanks for posting.

Give it a shot!

definitely quite the artisan .... and the frame really adds to it. Great job and I can see why the client was impressed.

He is good, no doubt. The 'simple' frame allows the copper to be the star, as it should be. I'm hopeful that my grandfather clock case will do justice to the large face and hinges.

 

[glenn bradley]

Your coppersmith has it going on. Really nice stuff. I see a relationship being established here.

 

[Paul Douglass]

Love that clock.. I remember when I was in High school, making pictures in copper was popular... I did several as did a lot of friends.. It was real fun...

 

[Tom Niemi]

That’s fantastic Rennie!!!

 

[Darren Wright]

That is really cool. I love the copper work. Makes me wonder about copper hammering. I have alwas wanted to try that. I could make a form then hammer the copper onto it. Hmmm - just makes me wonder.

It is really cool to see this - thanks for posting.

Seems like you could do the same process used for the inlays to create both halves of a mold, with a little tolerance for thickness of the metal.

 

[Ryan Mooney]

Seems like you could do the same process used for the inlays to create both halves of a mold, with a little tolerance for thickness of the metal

The stretching tends to be pretty uneven across the material and the repousse process actually stretches the material quite a bit. I have done very little (and certainly nothing on the level of the work at luminesque.com - wow) but here's my $0.02 on the process.

The way the metal works when hammered would be difficult to reproduce in a press because you'd get some weird side stretching and deformation. I think it would likely be possible with a series of forms with annealing steps between each form but naively trying to press into a form (at least at home scale press and form design..) would end up with a crinkled mess. So simply doing press forms would tend to end up with a lot of side artifacts and not have very good resulution. I'd be very surprised if they make a complete form, but instead would expect them to mostly use collection of small forms to hammer into. There are a lot of commercial versions, but for soft stuff like copper and silver if you're not worried about having a lot of longevity you can do pretty good with a series of coves cut into some hardwood. Having forms of different depth to hammer into is also kind of critical because if you try to go full depth in one pass it goes poorly and you'll end up with weird deformations and cracking and....

The other key to success here is properly annealing the metal, for silver you can just scribble it with a sharpie and when the sharpie disappears it's at the right temperature and just dunk it into a pickle of salt & vinegar to anneal. Copper like to be a smidge hotter for dead soft but that would get you pretty close (I've had pretty good luck with the hot vinegar/salt pickle mix there as well.. although make sure to clean well and use a fresh batch between different metals.. another lesson learned.. hah). A metal grate large enough to support the work you can heat from the bottom is also suuuuper useful because you can more evenly heat the piece. You generally have to anneal several times while working the piece as the hammering work hardens it pretty quickly.