May 22, 2002

I spent over 3 hours last night working on a tiny section of the left side of the breastplate, planishing and trying to smooth it out. I realized the work would probably go a lot easier with a heavier planishing hammer, but I don't have one right now. You can hopefully see the "planished" image on the right looks smoother than the one on the left, which remains untouched. My biggest hurdle right now is switching from planishing the concave curve next to the ridge to the convex curve at the ribcage. Well, that and my technique isn't up to par, yet.

I realized that I will need to put some sort of decorative plate in between the boobs. When making my original crease, I put some deep and ugly chisel marks there.

I did so some more coaxing of the waist, too. As I worked on planishing the edge of the flare, the side kept trying to un-bend on me. When I tried it on, I could tell a big difference so I bent it back into place over me knee (which is not as easy as it was early on.) I don't think I'll be able to do much more shaping as the piece is getting very hard. I've already noticed a crack in the bottom of the center ridge. Not huge, but hopefully fixable.

I might not post updates after each hammer session for a while, since the planishing work is very slow and shows little result from time to time. I did order a couple of buffing wheels and some two different polishing compounds. I'll get it looking good yet. :-)

to be continued on June 2, 2002...

If you have any questions or comments, please email me at: rjl@falcon1.net.

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