And so it begins...

So the plan here is to raise and chase a 48 inch disk of copper, making this the largest vessel I've attempted to date. The big initial challenge was finding a sheet of copper 48 inches wide. It would seem no one in the USA mills it that wide. After much calling around, and asking other metalsmiths if they knew of a source, I found one. Leonard Urso ended up being the one who could connect me with someone at Samuel Specialty Company out near him in New York. This company didn't actually have it, but they had a source they could special order it from. While I just needed a 48 x 48 of the metal this sort of special order never works that way. I expected this. There was a minimum order of two full sheets which were 48" x 96" each. I thought about it a bit and decided to go ahead with the order. I really do want to try raising a piece this large. Here is a shot of the in front of the studio when it arrived. The tag on the crate said it was from Japan. I guess that's where you have to go to find wide sheets of copper.