metalwork
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What is metalwork?
Metalwork involves creating useful and decorative objects from various metals like copper, iron, silver, bronze, lead, gold, and brass. This craft encompasses a wide array of items, including vessels, utensils, ceremonial and ritualistic objects, architectural ornamentation, and personal adornments.
Many techniques used today, such as hammering, embossing, chasing, inlaying, and gilding, are similar to those used in ancient times. Decorative metalwork was originally crafted using a hammer, with separate parts joined by rivets or pins. Around 2500 BCE, hammering and casting became standard methods for metal fabrication. Wrought iron, known for its fibrous structure, is forged on an anvil and can be shaped when hot or cold.
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What are some common metals used in metalwork?
Metalwork uses various metals to create useful and decorative objects. Common metals include copper, which was one of the first metals used for tools and weapons. Iron is another, and wrought iron, known for its softness and ductility, has been used since antiquity for tools, weapons, and decorative work.
Other metals frequently used are brass, an alloy of copper and zinc, and steel, known for its strength and versatility. Aluminum, is prized for its lightness and corrosion resistance. Precious metals like silver and gold are incorporated for decorative purposes.
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What basic tools are used in metalworking?
Metalworking uses various tools to shape metal into desired forms. These tools include machine tools, which are stationary power-driven machines that shape or form metal parts by cutting, shearing, squeezing, or applying electricity, ultrasound, or corrosive chemicals.
Examples of these tools are:
* Lathes Machine tools that remove metal chips from a workpiece.
* Power saws Come in three types: power hacksaws, band saws, and circular disk saws.
* Presses Used for cold forming metal parts or hot forming white-hot blanks into shaped dies.2 Britannica SourcesCreated from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles. -
What are some techniques for shaping metal?
Metalworking involves shaping metal into useful forms. Numerous techniques exist for this purpose, broadly categorized as:
* Casting Pouring molten metal into a mold and allowing it to solidify.
* Forging Shaping metal by hammering or pressing, often done hot to increase plasticity. Types include open-die, closed-die, drop forging, and roll forging.
* Extrusion Forcing metal through a die to create specific shapes.
* Drawing Pulling metal through a die to reduce its cross-section.
* Sheet-metal forming Shaping thin metal sheets into desired forms.
* Welding Joining metal parts by fusion, using heat from gas flames or electric arcs.
* Machining Removing material using machine tools like lathes, milling machines, and grinders.5 Britannica SourcesCreated from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles. -
How is metalwork used to make everyday objects?
Metalwork involves fashioning useful and decorative objects from various metals like copper, iron, silver, and gold. Metals are easily shaped into desired forms through processes such as rolling, drawing, extruding, forging, and sheet-metal forming.
Everyday objects made through metalwork include furniture, which has been ornamented with metals since antiquity. Metals are also alloyed to improve properties like strength and corrosion resistance for use in coins and jewelry. The cost of a finished metal part is often determined by its ease of manufacture rather than the cost of the material.
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How has metalworking changed throughout history?
Metalworking has evolved significantly throughout history. The first metals used were gold, silver, and copper in their native states, valued for ornamental and practical uses during the Stone Age. The discovery that metals could be extracted from minerals marked a significant step, leading to smelting, where metal is separated from ore.
The use of copper axes in the Balkans around the 4th millennium BCE demonstrates early metal casting. Around 30 BCE, the Romans established a brass industry, using it for currency and other applications. The Iron Age began around 1200 BCE, with iron being fashioned into weapons.
The Middle Ages saw advancements in iron making, with monasteries becoming centers for metalworking. The invention of the blast furnace in the 15th century allowed cast iron to be produced. The Industrial Revolution further transformed metalworking with techniques for mass production of steel.
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metalwork, useful and decorative objects fashioned of various metals, including copper, iron, silver, bronze, lead, gold, and brass. The earliest human-made objects were of stone, wood, bone, and earth. It was only later that humans learned to extract metals from the earth and to hammer them into objects. Metalwork includes vessels, utensils, ceremonial and ritualistic objects, decorative objects, architectural ornamentation, personal ornament, sculpture, and weapons.
General processes and techniques
Many of the technical processes in use today are essentially the same as those employed in ancient times. The early metalworker was familiar, for example, with hammering, embossing, chasing, inlaying, gilding, wiredrawing, and the application of niello, enamel, and gems.
Hammering and casting
All decorative metalwork was originally executed with the hammer. The several parts of each article were hammered out separately and then were put together by means of rivets, or they were pinned on a solid core (for soldering had not yet been invented). In addition, plates of hammered copper could be shaped into statues, the separate pieces being joined together with copper rivets. A life-size Egyptian statue of the pharaoh Pepi I in the Egyptian museum, Cairo, is an outstanding example of such work.
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After about 2500 bce, the two standard methods of fabricating metal—hammering and casting—were developed side by side. The lost-wax, or cire perdue (casting with a wax mold), process was being employed in Egypt by about 2500 bce, the Egyptians probably having learned the technique from Sumerian craftsmen (see sculpture). Long after the method of casting statues in molds with cores had superseded the primitive and tedious riveting process, the hammer continued as the main instrument for producing art works in precious metals. Everything attributable to Assyrian, Etruscan, and Greek goldsmiths was wrought by the hammer and the punch.
Embossing, or repoussé
Embossing (or repoussé) is the art of raising ornament in relief from the reverse side. The design is first drawn on the surface of the metal and the motifs outlined with a tracer, which transfers the essential parts of the drawing to the back of the plate. The plate is then embedded face down in an asphalt block and the portions to be raised are hammered down into the yielding asphalt. Next the plate is removed and re-embedded with the face uppermost. The hammering is continued, this time forcing the background of the design into the asphalt. By a series of these processes of hammering and re-embedding, followed finally by chasing, the metal attains its finished appearance. There are three essential types of tools—for tracing, for bossing, and for chasing—as well as a specialized tool, a snarling iron or spring bar, which is used to reach otherwise inaccessible areas. Ornament in relief is also produced by mechanical means. A thin, pliable sheet of metal may be pressed into molds, between dies, or over stamps. All of these methods have been known from antiquity.
Chasing
Chasing is accomplished with hammer and punches on the face of the metal. These punches are so shaped that they are capable of producing any effect—either in intaglio (incising beneath the surface of the metal) or in relief—that the metalworker may require. The design is traced on the surface, and the relief may be obtained by beating down the adjacent areas to form the background. Such chased relief work sometimes simulates embossed work, but in the latter process the design is bossed up from the back. The detailed finish of embossed work is accomplished by chasing; the term is applied also to the touching up and finishing of cast work with hand-held punches.
Engraving
To engrave is to cut or incise a line. Engraving is always done with a cutting tool, generally by pressure from the hand. It detaches material in cutting. When pressure is applied with a hammer, the process is called carving.
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Inlaying
The system of ornamentation known as damascening was much practiced by the early goldsmiths of Damascus; hence the name. It is the art of encrusting gold wire (sometimes silver or copper) on the surface of iron, steel, or bronze. The surface upon which the pattern is to be traced is finely undercut with a sharp instrument. The gold thread is forced into the minute furrows of the cut surface by hammering and is securely held.
Niello is the process of inlaying engraved ornamental designs with niello, a silver sulfide or mixture of sulfides. The first authors to write on the preparation of niello and its application to silver were Eraclius and Theophilus, in or about the 12th century, and Benvenuto Cellini, during the 16th. According to each of these authors, niello is made by fusing together silver, copper, and lead and then mixing the molten alloy with sulfur. The black product (a mixture of the sulfides of silver, copper, and lead) is powdered; and after the engraved metal, usually silver, has been moistened with a flux (a substance used to promote fusion), some of the powder is spread on it and the metal strongly heated; the niello melts and runs into the engraved channels. The excess niello is removed by scraping until the filled channels are visible, and finally the surface is polished.