DIY Coppersmithing Tools for Free - Make Your Own Copper Chasing, Repousse, and Dishing Tools on a Budget

If you are new to metalworking, copper may be the perfect material to start with... And it can be done on a budget!

At first glance, copper working looks expensive due to the cost of commercially available tools and new materials. Fortunately, because copper is soft and easily formed, most of the tools you need or want can be easily made with common workshop tools and hand files and reclaimed parts and pieces.

Copper is also easy to find and reclaim or salvage since it is so widely used.

We won't focus too much on specifics here since this is about the tools themselves, but plumbing pipes and fittings and heavy gauge wire are your best bet!

Have fun and use this simply as a guide to get started. It is not rigid. One of the best parts about copper is how easy it is to work with, making it perfect for DIY and improvised tools made from scrap and other common/cheap materials.

Required Tools for copper forming:

The only mandatory tools to work copper are something to shape it with, and a heat source. Copper work hardens as it is shaped and will need to be annealed. To anneal copper, it needs to be heated to just barely red hot. This will soften it back up and allow you to shape and cut it easier and prevent it from cracking. Unlike steel, quenching hot copper will not harden it, so feel free to dunk it in some water to cool it off quickly and get back to work.

A propane or butane torch will get small and medium sized pieces hot enough to anneal, so nothing fancy is required to do this. ANNEAL OFTEN. When in doubt, anneal! Eventually you will know by the feel and sound of the tools on the copper when it is time, but there is no harm in annealing more than necessary.

The Tools:

If you are handy, you probably have most of the tools required to make your copper working tools, and work with copper in general. We are going to focus on making the copper working tools in this instructable. If you don't have a couple of these, they shouldn't be hard to find second hand or borrow from a friend.

1. Hammer (any will do to start, but I prefer ball peen hammers)
2. Drill and bits
3. Some method of cutting (hack saw, jewelers saw, Tin snips, band saw, cut off wheel)
4. Torch (Propane or Butane)
5. Files, Sandpaper
6. Container with Water for cooling
7. Something to carve with (knife, dremel, grinder)
8. Compass or Dividers (or something to trace a circle)
9. Tape measure or Ruler

Optional: Bench Grinder or Sander

The Materials:

Materials are pretty simple and flexible. Scrap and reclaimed materials can be used for just about everything we are going to go over here.

1. Scrap Wood
2. Small diameter scrap steel bar/square/round stock(See Step *)
3. Larger Scrap metal (See Step *)
4. Leather, Rubber Sheet (used truck Mud Flap!), Phone Book, or Thick Catalog (One of these options will be sufficient, but feel free to try out more than one, or combine them).
5. Any other odds and ends or parts and pieces that seem like they could be used to shape metal.

When it comes to scrap materials, think outside the box. Cabinet Knobs, trailer hitch balls, fence post toppers, and even the jaw from a broken adjustable wrench are all things I have used to make various things from copper. I'll give some specific examples in the following sections.

The dishing or sinking stump (block in our case here) is a vital tool when working with copper. It is the gateway to making bowls, dishes, scoops, spoons, ladles, and anything else that requires a dish shape or curve.

A dishing block is simply a concave dome shape in a piece of wood that you hammer metal down into (sink). There are steel swage blocks and dishing stakes available, but we can make our own from scrap wood for almost nothing!

Here we will need:

1. Scrap wood
2. Compass or Dividers (or object to trace a circle)
3. Tape Measure or Ruler
4. Carving tools
5. Torch (optional)

First, we need to decide on the size of our circle. Something around 3" is a good all around size, but feel free to try other sizes depending on the size of your projects.

Next, grab a piece of scrap wood and scribe your desired circle on it. Harder woods will make your block last longer, but be more difficult to carve. Make sure there is extra room around the edge of the circle to provide strength and prevent cracking or breaking the block while in use.

Tip: You can use one large block for multiple diameter circles if you have one available. It will also provide additional weight to keep the block from moving around, but definitely just use what you have available!

Now carve out a bowl within the circle. I like to use a hook knife and finish with sandpaper, but rotary tools, flap discs, gouges, and chisels could all be used to carve this. Use what you have and what you are comfortable with.

The bowl doesn't need to be very deep, but try and keep the curve as even as possible. Get your dish reasonably smooth by sanding. Its ok if it isn't perfect, it will smooth out as you hammer your copper into it.

Optional Step: You can lightly burn the inside of your bowl with a torch during sanding. This will remove moisture from the wood and slightly harden it.

You now have your very own Sinking block to get started! Feel free to carve out other shapes as well. Oval and spoon shapes are just two ideas that could be useful.

After you hammer the copper down, you will want to rotate your piece on edge in the dishing block while hammering to get things nice and round!

Next, we are going to look at some doming tools, or at least that is what I am going to call them.

These tools will help you round out and further refine your dish shapes, or round out parts of pieces that aren't circular.

For these tools, you really can be creative with your solutions, so I am not going to provide a materials list for this portion. Use anything curved or round in an appropriate size.

Two of my most used tools are cabinet knobs I attached to old hammer handles. The handles allow me to use them like punches with a hammer, or I can clamp them in a vise and hammer the copper down onto them.

Repurposed wooden fence post toppers are also a great option if larger pieces are being worked on. They come in different shapes and diameters and will last quite a while before needing to be replaced.

Some other ideas include:

1. trailer hitch balls
2. broomsticks, dowel rods, and yard tool handles with rounded ends
3. ball bearings of different diameters
4. Solid plastic or wood screwdriver handles

The world is your oyster here. As long as the material can hold up to the hammering (at least for a while), you can use it to shape your copper!

Chasing and Repousse are the methods use to put an image or pattern into metal. A ton of jewelry and art are formed using these techniques in many different materials.

Let's start by defining what these methods are (don't worry, the tools are the same!):

Repousse: Using punches and tools on the back of the work piece. If your piece was laying on the table or hanging on a wall, you would be pushing material out towards the viewer.

Chasing: Using punches and tools on the front of the work piece. Pushing material away from the viewer.

So basically, the only difference is the side you are working on, and what direction you are moving material. Otherwise, everything else is the same.

These two techniques are almost always used together to achieve the final design. Often, repousse gets the general shapes started, the piece is flipped over, and chasing is used to further define the shape and add detail.

Making The Tools:

Tools for this start to get pretty pricey if you want to purchase them. When I was first researching, I was shocked how expensive punches were, and several different shapes would be useful getting started.

Luckily, it is pretty simple to make your own punches. Many professional artists still choose to make their own, customized to their style and projects.

Materials:

1. Scrap steel stock
2. Cutting tool of choice
3. Files, sandpaper
4. Backing Material (leather, phone book, rubber, etc)
5. Water bucket or Can

Optional: Torch, grinder, rotary tool, sander

Punches can be any diameter and shape you want them to be, or you project requires. The real key here is making sure that everything is smooth and edges are softened and rounded (most of the time)! Let's go over a few of the "standard" punch types.

1. Liners: These can be straight or curved. If the name doesn't give it away, these are for putting the main lines of your design on the metal. The tips are usually thin, and at a fairly sharp angle to create a well-defined, thin, line.
2. Domed: These are rounded of, quite similar to the doming tools we previously looked at, but on a smaller scale. They are used for pushing material out from the workpiece with a softer edge. They can also be used for texturing areas.
3. Planishing: These punches are meant for smoothing, flattening, and hardening. They have a flat face with rounded edges. The flat face spreads your hammer taps out across a larger area, and the smooth rounded edges prevent making more tool marks.

There are all kinds of other punches out there, but these are the three to begin with. As you gain more experience and run into different situations, you can make different punches for any situation you come across, including texturing punches.

To make a punch or ten, find some steel. Old broken tools are a great place to start because the steel is usually decent quality, and they are hardened and tempered already. (I can't be the only one with a bucket full of broken tools?!!?)

I have used screwdrivers with broken tips or handles, wrenches, hex keys, regular round and square stock, and even rebar to make punches. Nails are also a popular option. In the photo I have included here, you can see punches I made from many of the things just mentioned.

I like to use power tools to get the general shape going. Then I move to sandpaper and files to do the final shaping.

You can definitely do all of your shaping with files and sandpaper, it will just take longer. There is almost no chance of ruining the hardness or temper of the steel.

As you are grinding and shaping your punches, quench them in water often to keep them cool. Getting steel too hot will soften the steel and undo any tempering. If it starts turning colors or gets too hot to hold, you risk ending up with a (relatively) soft tool. It will still work but might not last as long as a hardened/tempered tool.

Mild steel and rebar are not hardened or tempered to begin with. Luckily, Since copper is much softer than steel, your tools will last a while before you need to make another.

You can harden and temper your own tools, but that is outside the scope of this Instructable.

Using your Punches:

Now where does the backing material come in? When chasing, you need something with some flex or give underneath your copper, but you still need to support the material around the punch strike to get well defined marks.

Traditionally, you would use chasing pitch, which is made of pine pitch with some additives. It can be expensive, and you need quite a bit of it for large pieces. Luckily there are cheap/free options to get started.

When I first started out, I used a couple pieces of scrap leather folded and stacked on a block of wood. You could use an old catalog or phone book, or rubber sheeting. As long as your design does not have a lot of depth to it, these options should provide pretty good results for a lot of projects.

Better than all of these is a sandbag filled with very fine sand. I made my own with some scrap leather and spent blasting media. If you can find or make one, do it!

A sandbag will mold to your piece and also fill in raised areas. This allows you to add detail to areas you have already raised from the back side and really start to give your piece dimension.

Even if you get more advanced, you will still like having a sandbag around. I have gotten myself a couple pounds of pitch, and I still use my sandbag quite a bit. I even put my pitch bowl on it to keep it from moving around while in use.

If you have ever want to work with metal, I encourage you to give it a try. It doesn't have to be expensive to start, and you can accomplish a ton with a few simple DIY tools.

Once you get the hang of how the metal moves under your tools, you will be able to make just about anything you need to achieve a desired look, shape, or effect.

Copper can be left as is, polished, patinaed, enameled, or flame colored like the mushroom sculpture I shared here.

You can make home decor, wall art, garden and yard art, light fixtures, candle holders; and practical items like cups and bowls. The possibilities are almost endless.

Here are some great additional (and free!) resources:

Art of Coppersmithing, John Fuller Sr - https://archive.org/details/ArtCoppersmithi00Full/page/n3/mode/2up

Copper Work, Augustus F Rose - https://www.gutenberg.org/files/41851/41851-h/41851-h.htm