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Question:

Can anyone point me in the right direction to begin doing Metal Relief Art?

What tools and techniques are best?

Answer:

I've taken a metal working class which covered repousse, which I think is what you want to do. If you have no metal working experience taking a class would probably be best. Places which offer jewelry classes may also offer this. Otherwise the material of choice to start with are copper sheets, they are easy to anneal. Annealing is relieving stresses in the metal by heat, that makes the metal soft. Working it will harden it again. Really works well with copper. Metal may need to be pickled so oxides don't get worked into the metal. Pitch is used to hold the metal sheet in place (at least for small ones). You will need a variety of chasing tools and a small hammer. You can make chasing tools yourself from toolsteel, but read up about tempering steel before you try it and before you buy tool steel. As there are a lot of details to be covered, and I am not really into writing pages of it down I recommend reading a book about it. Generally a good book about sheet metal working is this one: Silversmithing by Rupert Finegold and William Seitz.

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