I’m going to go through the steps of cutting out a design on metal showing the different techniques and tools that I use. I’ll start with the design on paper and show how I transfer and cut this out on my sheet of metal. Because this is only a demonstration I’m just going to use a piece of scrap copper.
I’ve chosen a pattern with a lot of cutting out so you can see how to cut a small detailed area with a jewellers saw. I am only going to use a section of this pattern so I using a stencil to pick an area and mark it out.
Once I have the design I glue my piece of paper on to the metal. I don’t always work this way. Often if it’s a pattern I might use again I will transfer the design on to the metal and save my original piece of paper to be used again. Once the paper is glued on I mark out the areas that will be cut out. With this design I’m going to cut out all the black sections.
These black sections will have to be drilled through to allow the blade to get into these areas. So I am going to mark the centre of the drilling hole with a centre punch. I use this because a drill bit has a habit of wandering if it doesn’t start on a recess. The centre punch forms a large enough dimple to guide the drill bit. It’s important to use this when I’m drilling in such a small area where there’s no room for error!
I’ve drilled all the holes and now I’m ready to start cutting. I open one side of the frame so I can pass the blade through the drilled hole and reattach it to my piercing frame on the other side.
I’m going to make a video of the cutting so you can see how the blade moves along the metal. I’ll post that on Monday..
Pingback: Cutting Silver Part 2 | Eileen Moylan