Level: Novice/ Beginner/Intermediate
Access: unlimited forever, you can watch this workshop as many times as you want from anywhere in the world.
Course Duration: 2+ hrs
This course is a great resource to have an access to and it offers a wealth of information that is invaluable for developing your mosaic practice. Dive into this course and learn all the details from choosing the right tools to choosing the materials and cutting them with skill and precision.
This course will teach you:
- how to choose appropriate hammer and customize it for your use
- how to select a wood stump (log), drill a hole, and embed a hardie into it
- how to sit correctly in front of a hardie and how to hold a hammer
- you will learn about a variety of stones, stone hardness, cleavage, and what types of rocks and minerals are appropriate for cutting with the hammer and hardie
- how to work with marble starting with large pieces and breaking them to produce small tesserae
- how to precision cut the marble
- learn about smalti and how to cut both, Cut A and Cut B smalti sizes
- facet large pieces of smalti into beautifully textured pieces
- work with Dalle de Verre starting with the slab and breaking it into smaller pieces, then faceting the tessera
- cut other glass materials such as pre-manufactured tiles, nuggets, etc.
- cut glass rods
- cut stained glass strips
- cut low fire and high fire ceramics
Note:
- this course is about the material preparation and therefore we will not be making mosaics
- this course is a good prerequisite course to "Abstract Mosaics".
Learn About Hammers
What is the difference between a steel hammer and a carbide tipped hammer? What weight of the hammer works the best? How to adjust the handle of a hammer?
How to Choose a Stump
This lecture teaches how to choose a stump of wood and how to drill a hole into a stump for embedding hardie.
Rocks & Minerals
Learn about the hardness scale and what rocks and minerals are ideal for cutting into tesserae. Experiment with different types of stone.
How to Cut Marble
Learn about cutting marble starting with large pieces and reducing the sizes to small workable tesserae.
How to Hold & Position
What is the best way to hold the stone when cutting it? Learn how to correctly position and angle the stone for cutting and how to produce a good quality strike.
Work with Smalti
Learn how to work with a variety of smalti pieces from large to small cuts. Cut Italian and Mexican style smalti, and smalti gold.
Precision Cutting
Learn how to cut smalti with precision and how to shape it into the useful tesserae for your mosaic. Cut trapezoid & triangle shapes.
Cut Stone with Precision
Watch a demo on how to cut stone pieces into trapezoids, triangles, and five sided shapes.
How to Facet Smalti
This demo teaches how to facet large pieces of smalti and produce a beautiful texture.
Example Curriculum
- Watch FREE Introduction to This Course (5:13)
- Supply & Resource List
- Chap1: About hammers, sizes, steel tipped vs. carbide tipped hammers (6:23)
- Chap2: About hammer handles (3:28)
- Chap3: All about hardies (3:45)
- Chap4: Selecting a stump (4:04)
- Chap5: Choosing proper stump height (4:49)
- Chap6: How to drill a hole in a stump. Fitting a hardie (7:09)
- Chap7: Embedding a hardie. How to tap a hardie in and out of a hole (2:01)
- Chap8: Choosing materials that we will cut in this course (3:13)
- Chap9: About Stones and Rocks (5:51)
- Chap10: Rock Hardness (5:33)
- Chap11: Keep the hardie sturdy (2:24)
- Chap12: Your position by the hardie (2:42)
- Chap13: Breaking large pieces of stone (2:43)
- Chap14: Types of hammers, review (1:57)
- Chap15: How to hold a hammer (0:47)
- Chap16: How to hold and place tesserae (1:12)
- Chap17: Making cuts (2:33)
- Chap18: More on positioning tesserae, resting a hammer between cuts (2:04)
- Chap19: Making different size cuts, big & small (1:54)
- Chap20: Non-directionality of marble (1:29)
- Chap22: Cutting different types of marble (3:34)
- Chap21: Making angled cuts: trapezoids, five sided tessera & triangles (3:37)
- Chap23: Cutting other types of stones & minerals. Stone cleavage (8:12)
- Chap24: Cutting other rocks & minerals (2:59)
- Chap25: About Smalti glass (2:23)
- Chap26: Splitting large pieces of smalti (3:00)
- Chap27: How to cut smalti (4:13)
- Chap28: How to cut smalti, continued. Controlling your cuts (3:01)
- Chap29: How to shape smalti (2:42)
- Chap30: Gold smalti (2:48)
- Chap31: How to facet large pieces of smalti (3:12)
- Chap32: Working with Dalle de Verre glass (4:35)
- Chap33: Cutting other types of glass tiles (4:44)
- Chap34: Cutting glass rods & stained glass strips (5:44)
Need Help with This or Any Other Course?
Consultations are available. Please e-mail Yulia for times and rates.
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