2002-04-24 - 9:05 a.m.

Went to fencing practice last night. Started the evening with Kenny. Our usual popping each other. Let my defenses down for a second and have DelTin applied to forehead.... Next was Penny. We are fairly evenly matched, so that was an energetic fight. I also fought Alan. He decided to give me a drubbing.... Guess I need my weekly bruises from somewhere else given my knight is in France at a conference. And I finally managed to fight Lisette. She's got to get used to lefties at some point....hehe

Tonight, I should hopefully get to play in the shop some. Finish up reworking the pole joint sleeve for Padraiga/Cuan and work on my gorget some more. Might also repair my left thrusting tip....

Currently telecommuting at home waiting for the Comcast tech to show up and not be able to help me restore the cable modem....sigh....

And the armouring topic today is (at Thjora's request):

Repousse

Repousse, or chasing, is applying relief designs onto metal. This is accomplished by affixing the piece being worked into a pitch bowl or sandpad and hammering out the design from the back, followed by cleaning up the design from the front. Pitch bowls are more useful as they will hold the piece yet are giving enough to allow the areas to be indented into the bowl. You heat the pitch to make it gooey and stick in the piece. As it cools, the pitch hardens to hold the piece in place.

For flat sheetwork, the piece can be coated with China White and then the reverse of the design can be transferred to the front from a photocopy by soaking the paper and gently pressing it to the China White. When you lift, the toner will leave enough behind to see the outline. Then you fix the plate face up and lightly outline the design. Then flip the plate and hammer in the relief with chisels. Frequent annealing will be likely required on the piece to prevent cracking. Then the plate can be flipped and cleaned up with fine chisels....You can also add some engraving if you like....

I haven't actually tried this yet. The above is based on one of the classes provided at a Gunsmithing symposium I attended at Williamsburg given by the master silversmith there. The picture above shows some of the samples he worked up as well as his quantities of different chisels....You want them point up so you can find the one you want....

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