Silver Ladle

I had some extra silver casting grain laying around from my silverware project so I decided to make a small ladle.  Hey why not.

Process shots after the jump

Forgot to take a picture before I started forging, but I used the same ingot mold as the other silverware pieces I've made so use your imagination.  This is after one course of forging.

Each successive course the neck gets longer and thinner while what will be the bowl gets wider and flater.  At this point I'm about as thin as I want to go so I trace this shape onto some paper, figure out the biggest symmetrical shape I can get out of the material, and trace that back onto the metal.  After I cut that out it looks like this:

Then I sink the bowl into a depression in a stump of wood and shape the metal into something bowl shaped.

This gets planished to even out the metal and to refine the form.

Stamp my mark into the back and polish the silver.  After this I carved the handle out of some leftover ebony I had and drilled a small hole for the silver to fit into.  The silver has about a 1/2" tang into the wood, which I riveted in place with some brass.  

There you have it, a small sterling silver serving ladle, handmade by yours truly.