Task 1: Bowl

The first task we were given to do was to implement various workshop processes to create a bowl-shaped form out of a 2 mm sheet of metal. 


Step 1: Cutting out the material

The initial stages proved to be quite tedious as it involved measuring out dimensions and cutting out the appropriate shape to begin working with. This involved whipping out a protractor to etch the template for the overall base of the bowl. Then with the use of a pruner, we were able to cut out the shape, which actually proved to be quite harder than it looked. To finish off, some sanding was done on the edges to get a more precise cut finish.


Step 2: Initial metal beating

Now it was time to get into the interesting part, beating the crap out of the material until it provided a form that would somewhat resemble the shape of a bowl. Before any of that happened, it is important that inner circles were drawn out to give visual representation on what areas to hammer down. Next was to grab a wooden template of the base depth, then with a special mallet, begin hammering with the sharper end on the outer circles to begin creating its depth. From there it was only a matter of continuely beating the piece until it achieved the right form.

Step 3: Refinement

At this point, the piece of metal began to resemble a bowl, a bowl that didn't look like a normal bowl; bumps everywhere, overall shape didn't look so ciruclar, some edges were disproportional, and many other problems, problems that could be fixed. I also found that during the beating process that I had created a small crack on the edge, a problem that couldn't be fixed. So this step involved using the metal dome and a flat hammer to fix up some of those areas, as well as using the sand bag and mallet to go back and fix up some of the curves. The end result looked as such:

Step 5: English wheel

This was one of the final steps to smooth out the bumps and lumps around the bowl. The English wheel would be the machine to achieve this, and it looked simple enough to use, however proved to be quite the challenge in that it required a degree of technique to correctly create smooth curves. Another process that took some time to get right, it was all about assuring consistency while rolling over the bowl to create a uniform shape.

Step 6: Final Finishes

Finally it was all about finalizing everything, mainly involving sanding and polishing (which I havent gotten around doing yet). Would also go back and fix up a few bumps or inconsistencies using a cutout template.