Making Progress

I know I've been a bit quiet lately on the teaching front - that's because I've finally set aside some time to make progress on an artistic goal. I've been wanting to raise mokume vessels for a long time. I learned raising wayy back in school (er like the 90s), and of course I've been doing mokume since 2007. But it takes time and effort to put those two processes together. First, you have to fuse and pattern a fairly large piece of mokume, and it needs to be minimum 18 gauge (1mm) in thickness. And second, you have to have the stakes/hammers and a place to make a lot of noise for raising. Back in May, I signed up for David Huang's October 3-day raising class - this gave me a deadline to get mokume discs ready. And of course David posted enticing pics of the stakes he made for the class that would be for sale afterwards - that was a strong motivation too. I also wanted to get faster at raising, and more precise. I knew David could help with that.
So, now I'm back from the class! I had a fabulous time, and made great progress on two mokume vessels. I also discovered I needed (really!) to buy the fancy Saign/David raising hammer - not pictured here, it's in the mail. David very kindly let me borrow his for a lot of the workshop - it improved my raising speed by 30% at least. Worth it! See the photo captions for lots of process information. And stay tuned - I hope to finish both these vessels by the end of the year.

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