Hello James
Thank you for your response to my question about how you created the female form to match the brass punch shown in one of your photos. I decided to try this for myself and not having suitable urethane I used a pure lead block and a 2 ton arbor press modified to hold various dapping punches. I wanted to form 1.5" diameter half spheres. I did find that I needed to use a hammer and increasingly large dapping punches to create a suitably sized female form in the lead for the 1.5" dapping punch. This was pretty straightforward but as the size of the punch increased I noticed that the lead began to "bulge" around the circumference of the spherical hole as I was preparing the cavity. I suppose that could have been avoided if I had drilled out some of the lead before hand and I think I'll do that in future. I expect you may have had to do something similar when making the cavity for the brass punch. In any event, the result were two very neat half spheres, each 1.5" in diameter. My first couple of efforts failed because the surplus copper wrinkled up and formed corners on the formed sphere. When I pierced the copper to discs slightly over 1.5" diameter and then did the forming in the press all was well. I wonder if you had to do something similar prior to forming those beautiful enamelled bells shown in another one of your pics.
This has been quite a useful and interesting experiment for me James and I really appreciate your sharing your vast experience here.
Ramsay