Repousse' repose, or however you spell it

The ancient art of Repousse and chasing is a way to get deeper grooves and designs into your pieces - essentially making a shallow bah relief. It is done using a pitch and in our case, a cast iron pan.

Foregoing the traditional tar Repouse which is pretty smelly and difficult to deal with, Adam uses a special kind of pine sap - which has no real odor, thankfully. The first step is to melt or soften the pitch - which is usually done with a torch making the top layer unusable for the future. My instructor, Adam has actually developed a technique that uses a nifty heat gun to soften the pitch instead.

Using this heat gun instead of a torch actually saves quite a bit of the pitch and makes it usable for future / additional projects.

The next step is to then brush baby oil onto the metal which keeps it from sticking and also turning the corners of the piece down. Using chasing tools, you can then proceed to create elaborate designs that can have depth in both directions as you flip the piece and add decorative elements on both sides. The effect is quite beautiful.

Its not something I've tried yet ....but on the list, ole'