How to dome without a block

Copper Flowers from my mother’s garden has been the most popular post of this year on my blog so far. In that post after outlining my flame paining experiment, I had said that I would soon reveal how I domed my flowers without a doming block. We crafters and designers generally are attracted to tools and supplies more than anything else. While I splurge on supplies (beads yaay!!) I try and save on tools by only buying those I really need. I have also been a lucky recipient of many tools from cousins who presented them to me. When I wanted to work more with sheet metal I went and bought myself a steel bench plate (block) and hammer but not a doming block as I thought it was unnecessary. However I started craving for it. So once I flame painted my flowers I was desperate because I wanted to make them 3D but didnt have a block. Irritated I went back into the kitchen and that when this brainwave hit me on How to dome without a block.

I could totally use SPOONS!! The fact that I could totally use big sturdy spoons as doming blocks was an eurekha moment and I would like to share it with you as the tutorial for this this.

So what do you need? A sturdy wooden surface, the metal sheet you want to dome, cut in circles or punches as flowers(like I have here), strong aluminum or heavy duty brass round spoons like the ones in pics. Indians – I am referring to the oil or ghee spoon (enna karandi in Tamil) that we all regularly use at home and a basic doming hammer

For this tutorial, I am using 2 different sizes of spoons and a punched out copper flowers. There isn’t any step wise procedure. Just put the flowers in the spoon, hold the handle of the spoon and hammer with the round side of the hammer. Very Simple!! The amount of curvature depends upon the size of the spoon, size of the hammer head and the amount of force that you use. I wanted a gentle dome, so a couple of hits were enough for me.

In some pieces I had made a hole before hammering and in some after and I realized that it is better to make the hole before ( and file the edges to smoothness) so that the final shape doesn’t get affected by any additional hammering or filing.Once all the pieces were domed I flame painted them. You can read the rest of the procedure here. Here is the final result as shown in my previous post