That is a great idea, hopefully the trailer hitch doesn't have any deep scratches in it, if not it should work very well. I can see you hammering away with neighbors walking by wondering what is that crazy lady up to lol.

See if a machine shop can dome/mushroom it out for you for a cheap price if you have a spare ball that is. Thanks for the idea also, I will try to heat one when I start forging and shape then grind!

Many thanks!

Thanks Alan

Thank you

It was so long ago that I am sorry but I have no idea. I will try to figure it out cause I am going to make a mushroom box soon.

I make my own sanding sticks, and well files you can get everywhere Otto Frei has a great selection, if I had to suggest I would say that Valtitan makes great files.

I believe that a trailer hitch ball would work quite well. Very inventive of you. Oh you can get them from many places try Contenti.

you are never too old to start

pas trop vieux pour voir de belles choses sortir de tes mains et faire plaisir autour de toi

Yes I do plan to start doing videos very soon. I have just been very busy lately.

Any gauge will work but 18g, 20g is in the sweet spot. 16g is cool but a lot of hammering, 22 is too thin for most but not all applications.

You can use any metal gold, silver, brass, copper etc. I just happened to have a piece of copper handy so I used that.

Brass will work beautifully, you just need to anneal it more often than with Copper. As you normally work with Brass, just work and anneal the metal as you would normally do.

Hello Pamular, It is a Cross Pein hammer made by Fretz for anticlastic and synclastic forming.

Hum, no I don't think so. It has to have a round shape to make the dome. You could use the top of a base ball bat or almost anything with a curved surface. A bracelet mandrel is at best oval but flat, look around you might find something just perfect for forging it.

wow that is a lot of hammering to thin it and elongate it unless you have a rolling mill, I wish you the best. For fine silver you will want your starting thickness to be about 18 to 16 gauge this is because fine silver is much softer than sterling. Good luck, I hope everything turns out great.

@@patcahillmetalworks322 Thanks very much. The bar started out at about 8mm thick. I will have to see how that converts to guage thickness. My hand is blistered and sore from several hours of hammering, on Friday (using a 4.4lb lump hammer). I'll try again on Wednesday, when I have a day off. It has gained 2-3 inches in length so far.

@@martynm.449 I hope you are annealing your silver between hammerings. Fine silver is a bit tougher to see when it is annealed properly because it doesn't go dark like sterling silver does. One trick some people use is marking it with a sharpie and when that mark disappears or almost disappears it is annealed.

@@patcahillmetalworks322 Thanks Pat. I was wondering about annealing. I will get the blowtorch on it, before I next hit it again. I appreciate the tip about the sharpie. I'll do that and keep my fingers crossed as well!

Hi Pat! Thanks for your advice. I found that heating the Silver made it so much easier - it was like working with butter! I decided to ditch the idea of using all 8ozs in one bracelet. It was so big and looked a bit silly. I cut a strip about 1/2" wide and used that instead. I hammered it out to about 8" in length and made a nice cuff. I have used a mixture of a claw hammer and the end of a cylindrical tool (hammered against it) to make a more interesting and attractive texture in the surface. I'd send a picture if I can... Maybe I'll upload a quick video. Thanks for your input. For my first go I'm quite pleased. I've subscribed to your channel and plan to make more things with Silver in the future. Cheers!