Squishing

Ever since i started blacksmithing i have been a little obsessed with power hammers. There raw power and strength is so sexy, how they can take a super hard materiel and move it like water. When we were offered to look further into our own pratice and what we wanted to do i obviously took this opportunity to do anything with power hammers.

I had done a little work with crushing hot steel under the hammer to make candle holders and really liked the chaos and order to it. You can get the same bar at the same length and hit it the same amount of times but it will do a completely different thing. To me that is fascinating that you have an infinite amount of possibles every time it goes under the hammer.

The first piece i did was just some round bar under the hammer.

 A picture of the first sample.

This was the eye opener for me. I spent the next two weeks getting my hands on any kind of bar i could and putting it under the hammer. Square, box section, pipe section, hexagon bar. Every time a different result and every sample i wanted to do more with it.

A couple photos of the progression

As i was running out of different kinds of bar i decided the best way to really progress my work along was to start tampering with the bar before it went under the hammer. I would no longer just used fresh cut section but instead slice or push a tool into to make more unique.

This had some amazing results, some of the finer pieces i have ever produced came from this part of sampling. I made samples that i don't know i made them but i cant stop looking at them. Pushing a tool in didn't work massively well but the slicing had great results.

I tried to do it in some different ways with the grinder and cutting disk. I sliced in horizontal, vertical, diagonal. Took pieces out with the cutting disk and even sliced some straight in half.

 A few of the sliced samples.

Now i have always been a man that is very focused on giving something a purpose. An item having function is very essential to my work over something being purely sculptural. So i was loving sampling and playing with what i could get out of it but i needed to find something they could be. I was never going to make just a pile of beautiful looking samples.

I wracked my brain for a long time what they could be? Were they going to be a component in something? Or were they something as they were? Maybe a super interesting paper weight.

In the next post i would like talk about how thinking of a purpose lead me to building the tables ideas and where i would like to go with them.