To Tumble No More

BRASS
BRONZE
GILDING METAL
STERLING SILVER

I must have got bored with the tumbling thing after making four tumblers in different alloys, so I decided to make a lid for the first brass tumbler. This showed pretty quickly that it was unstable, so I dimpled the base. After that I decided that I preferred the tumblers to be converted to pots with lids, so have two brass (only one shown), one gilding metal, one bronze and two sterling pots (again, only one shown). The not-shown sterling pot is still 'work under construction' and does not have a dimpled base; instead I flattened the base with a planishing hammer, then gave it a bevel all round the bottom edge. Pics later.

Adventures in Tumbling

It's been a while since I posted since I have had little time and energy to update the blog. I have in fact made five tumblers; small metal cups which, although they wobble somewhat, will right themselves even when pushed to the horizontal then released. I read somewhere that it was an 18th Century Naval tradition to use silver tumblers for the officers, because the motion of the ship was less disturbing for a tray of tumblers full of whiskey! All the tumblers were made from a 120mm diameter disk of 18swg metal, using either gilding metal & bronze respectively as in the pic top left; sterling silver top right; or brass (bottom two pics). I decided to dimple the base of the brass tumbler as in the right-hand pic. This makes it a lot more stable although it is still a 'tumbler', but reduces the height and internal volume and, as we all know, "size matters". In all cases, I left a centre band hammer-textured.