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Living and working on a rural side road, twenty miles north of Toronto, in Markham Township, Ontario, Canada, Scott, ex-broker and machinist, has turned his hobby into a profitable full time job in less than five years. The rural location suits his requirements of peaceful working conditions and the quaint looking self-built shop brings in all the customers he can handle or cares to handle.

"Selling wholesale," he says, "does not appeal to me, because it is much more satisfactory to deal directly with the consumer. Waiting thirty days, and too often 300 days for my payment, with liberal discounts for wholesale, soon eats up all the profits when it is realized that genuine hand-wrought silver and copper jewelry and objects cannot be mass produced. I use no stamps or dies and every design is original, although it may be repeated with variations if it is popular. I find that standard prices—$5 for silver, $4 for burnished copper, or $3 for plain copper, are fair retail prices, are popular and create customer confidence. It speeds the sale and brings in repeats."

Many who visit Scott's shop to admire a brooch, order earrings to match—at the standard price of $5 per pair, or purchase another article at the standard price. Occasionally something special calls for a special price. The procedure is to quote immediately and stick to the quote, This is especially useful around Christmas time, when old customers return and make up a complete gift list.

Recently, in the line of new endeavor, Scott has branched out to make copper door lanterns. The price range for these has not been set as yet, but as soon as a half dozen or so have been made, the odds are that the price will be standardized even though the design will not be. Individual workmanship and standard prices make too successful a formula to be abandoned.

Although bowls, picture frames and other objects are made, the bulk of the work consists of jewelry such as brooches, earrings, pins and bracelets. The rural scene is reflected in most of the subjects wrought in these metals—horses, roosters, dogs, flowers, leaves, fruits; even the apple tree outside Scott's door has submitted an apple for a model. Scott's business philosophy is explained when he says:

"I make no cuts in craftsmanship and no cuts in prices; neither varies, but I do change my designs. There is much to see in the country and it gives you good ideas."

TURNER SCOTT has no notions about being an artistic "long hair." Five years ago when he first started to work in silver and copper, he could hardly draw a line, or make a series of lines look like a drawing. But when he wishes to transfer thoughts to silver or copper he finds little difficulty in creating the design. His designs are literal with little exaggeration. He works only in two materials, silver and copper. Pins, fastenings and all findings are in genuine sterling silver and soldered with sterling to avoid ugly green stains. Like his prices, the material used is open and above board, for he intends to keep his customers satisfied and expects them to tell others about him.

Scott is a quiet man with a pleasant smile and an engaging sense of humor, and it is obvious that he likes his rural surroundings, although for fifteen years he had earned his living as a broker and for four years was a machinist. When ordered by the doctor to forsake such work, it was natural for him to revert to the country life he had known as a boy.

In the cellar of his home, located on a concession road a mile from the village of Markham, he started his work. The basement quarters were too damp. Taking advantage of his concession road location, which is well traveled by local people, he built a workshop, the size of a garage, a few hundred yards from the house. Neat and tidy, it has many windows, including a large front window divided into six panes. Creosoted shingles blend with the trees overhanging all three sides. A sign, in raised copper of course, proclaims his business . . . "TURNER SCOTT. . . HAND-WROUGHT COPPER AND SILVER."

Although his shop is a mile from the paved highway. Scott found that the rural people who use the road quickly "discovered" it. In addition, near-by is a private picnic park operated by the farmer living across the road from his house. In the summer, numerous people from the city and near-by villages picnic there. The approach to this park is opposite Scott's shop, which was built on this location for that reason. Normally, the outside traffic on the road is small, but on holiday weekends, as many as 300 and more cars have visited this picnic park. His shop, his sign, his open window, attract these casual visitors, who all feel that they have discovered this copper smith working on a country side-road.

WHEN HE first started, Scott went to the city in an attempt to contact likely gift shops as outlets. But salesmanship took too much time away from creating and although outlets were, available, he had to make the choice of selling or creating. His main reason for doing the work was not to make big sales, but to earn money while doing the work necessary for his health.

Possibly the thing that disagreed with a man of Scott's temperament was that in wholesaling, after haggling to make the price there was the mad rush to deliver the goods on a mass production basis. To top it off, collection was slow, and here he was back in business, which did not appeal to him for health reasons.

"Wholesale means time lost from the actual work and pleasure of handicrafts with low, slow pay and the killing of individual craftsmanship," Scott asserts. "This may be fine for other people, but not for me. Dealing personally with the customer who wants something I've made, nets me time to work, nets a little money and what salesmanship I do person to person is a pleasure. If the work is good, it only takes a year or two to get a steady stream of customers. There is enough traffic past my door which makes my sign and window sufficient advertisement so that I sell all I can turn out. I never have enough samples of my good work on hand, or in the window, because they go so fast."

It takes an incurious person not to stop and take a second look into the broad window. The work displayed and the neat row of workbenches and tools laid out are easily admired. If lucky, you can see the silversmith himself hard at work, fashioning, hammering or polishing jewelry which any woman would be proud to own and any man would admire for its clean cut workmanship.

THE WORK includes about twenty distinct steps from raw material to finished product, with slight variations depending on design and finish. Original materials are flat sheets of copper and silver or the same material in wire form. Fittings such as pin fastenings and ear findings are sterling for reasons explained previously.

These fastenings are the only parts purchased in the manufactured form. The rapid jump in prices recently has made it difficult to gauge costs, but within the last few years, for example, backs for earrings have jumped from $1 per dozen to $4. Scott thinks it foolish to compromise and buy non-silver findings and continues to pay the higher price, but does not expect to raise his prices until it goes much higher. Pin fastenings, too, are silver and come in a standard length which, if too long, is cut down to size.

The pins consist of a sterling silver bar about 1½ inches long and ¹/8 inch wide to which is fastened a pin and clasp like the business end of a safety pin, except that the pin works on a pivot rather than the spring of its own metal. A fine jewelers' saw can cut a portion out of the center for shortening after which a soldering job joins both ends together to make a smaller size pin for a smaller brooch.

Scott uses no short cuts on the actual hammering and shaping, which is the sign of hand worked metal. All copper and silversmithing follows basic principles and Scott is not pleased by today's inclination to mass produce a successful item by stamping dies. He uses assembly line methods only in such processes as soldering, pickling and coloring.

SCOTT STARTS with flat sheets of copper and silver two by three feet, and ¹/8 inch thick, or rolls of wire about the same thickness. The copper is a cold rolled, annealed variety and soft to work as compared to silver which is slightly more brittle. As most of his work is in copper and silver which has been planished and chased, the following procedure is typical. Both metals have almost the same reaction to hammer, saw and file.

Selecting the metal to be used, a piece is cut from a large sheet with jewelers' saw or snips, about the size of the item to be made. Before any further work is done, this blank is cleaned and polished until it is unmarred by any imperfections. Polishing is done by using an abrasive such as pumice stone applied by hand and buffed on a cloth wheel run by an electric motor. Once polished it is ready for the design to be applied.

The pattern carrying the design is an ordinary sheet of smooth notepaper with the design sketched in detail on its face. Glue is applied to the metal's surface and the pattern pressed to it and allowed to dry under a weight. When dry, the pattern's outline is followed and cut with a jewelers' saw, which is so accurate and fine that it cuts a line the thickness of a hair. In the case of piercing a design, a hole is first drilled and the saw inserted and then set in action to cut out the metal. The work is supported in a vise with blocks of wood in the jaws to protect the work. Saws must be held steady and without twisting. The least movement gives a poor edge to the work or raises burrs. With intricate designs, filing may be necessary and all craftsmen have more hat pin size files than the proverbial dog has fleas. Not only is filing done to remove surplus metals not reached by the saw, but in intricate work or piercing it may also be used as a help in cutting sharp corners.

ONCE THE outlined item is cut out, the pattern is soaked off and carefully stored for additional use. In a sense, patterns standardize the work and assure the worker that he can repeat a design proved popular. But as will be seen as the work steps are described, in finishing two items cut from the same pattern, different effects can be created by marking and coloring.

Next the all important forming takes place. This is shaping the metal to take away flatness. Often forming is eliminated and a flat piece of jewelry created. But there is little call for this flat effect because in the customer's eyes it does not have that hand worked appearance. In making monograms, however, a flat highly polished surface is most often desired.

Not using dies or presses to form his work, Scott resorts to hammering the reverse side of the metal while it is supported face down on a bed of pitch. This pitch, when heated slightly, gives enough to take metal being pushed out when it is being hammered and at the same time gives support. Occasionally, when larger items such as lanterns, picture frames, or bowls are being formed other support may be needed, such as a wooden stake made from an old tree trunk, a swage block of steel, which in Scott's case is an old flatiron, or possibly a sand bag filled with fine sand. In jewelry, the items being small and more intricate, the pitch bed, about a foot or two square and two or three inches thick, is used.

FORMED TO satisfaction, the object, whether it be a bird, an apple or a horse, now has outline and body form to make it recognizable. Now its character can be imparted by the method, or combination of methods, used in engraving the surface to represent feathers, wrinkles or other decorations. These are little hammer marks, engravings or indentations one sees on not too close examination of jewelry made by hand and put there on purpose.

Not using acid methods of engraving, Scott depends instead on mechanical means, which once more calls for individual workmanship which shows on the finished work giving it that desirable feature in the customer's eyes.

To outline, say the jawline on a horse, or the wing on a bird, the formed metal is placed face side up on the pitch bed and is "chased." This is in effect indenting the raised surface, or reversing it partially, which gives another dimension to the work. Chasing tools are similar to blunt chisels and come in sets of four or five, varying in size but with the same shape to the head in each set. The head is highly polished and tempered. Scott, being ingenious, makes his own from various sized spikes and nails. He tempers the steel by heating with an acetylene torch to a cherry red and quenching in oil. The high smooth polish is necessary because a mar on the tool head will transfer a blemish to the polished metal.

It requires lots of practice to learn chasing. The tool is held to the metal and struck with the hammer in a rhythmic series of blows. As the blows strike, the tool moves forward in a smooth glide causing the form to receive an engraved line along the course the tool travels. In most of the hammering operations this rhythmic movement is the key to success.

Such is the case in planishing. Planishing as a rule follows forming and shaping or may be done after chasing, depending on effect desired. Simply explained, it means that a highly polished ball-peen hammer is beat in this rhythmic tattoo against the metal's outer surface giving it a hammered appearance. The ball on the hammer is highly polished. Scott often spends the best part of a day polishing a hammer head, for the many facets of hammer marks which catch and reflect light on finished work are another phase of handcrafted work. Small areas of a fraction of an inch are done at a time. It takes patience and mastery comes through practice. Scott rejoices that machinery has not been able to reproduce the brilliant results this type of hand planishing does.

Another method of placing a design on the surface in part or whole is tapping. Tapping is using a punch like tool with a blunt head, which when tapped with a hammer leaves a distinct design. Tapping tool heads come in various designs. Tapping can be said to be planishing using an intermediate tool to leave marks on the metal instead of the hammer head. Ii allows for a more intricate pattern to be worked on the metal's surface.

COPPER AND silver adapt themselves well to forming, planishing, chasing and tapping and Scott sticks to these methods mostly. Both these metals become hard and brittle under repeated or steady hammering. Cracking of the metal is likely to happen then, unless the metal is once more annealed. This is accomplished by placing the metal object on a fireproof block, heated with the acetylene torch slowly and evenly. Copper is brought to a bright red and slipped into a container of water. Silver treated the same with heat is allowed to cool slowly in the air. Annealing knowledge comes with experience. Scott's designs are usually so arranged that the minimum of annealing, if any, is necessary.

Sometimes overlaying is needed. Overlaying is the fastening of another piece of metal to the original object. Sometimes it is a scroll worked in round or flat wire. Often it represents appendages to birds, animals or fruits such as wings, ears or leaves. Riveting is a common method and self-explanatory. Scotts most used method is soldering.

Before soldering, the metals must be clean and free of handling as fingers leave oil stains which nullify soldering action. Cleansing is done by submerging the object in a solution of boiling sulphuric acid, one part acid to fifty parts water, for a few moments. The acid is boiled in a brass container and items are handled with pliers or gloves.

The bottom of the overlay is then covered with a coat of pure silver melted with an acetylene torch. This is done slowly as silver which boils causes air bubbles, making a weak spot in the joint. The piece to which it is to be attached, usually the larger one, has a commercial borax type paste spread with a fine brush over the area to be soldered. The two items are pressed and held together over a flame until the solder melts and joins the two pieces together. The overlay area is then carefully cleaned before further work is done. Pins, fastenings and other things such as chains are fastened on in the same manner and at the same stage in the manufacture.

WITH ALL the soldering done, the metal work has now been completed and is ready for cleaning and polishing. So far, in describing the work in detail it may appear that days have been spent to make a single item for a final sale price of $3, $4, or $5. True, Scott has spent days making a prize bracelet for exhibit, but even though the work originally started as a hobby designed for relaxation, Scott realizes that production efficiency must be reached if he expects to make enough money to make his work profitable.

Short cuts are the ones used in assembly and have little to do with craftsmanship. Scott may cut half a dozen blanks for a good selling brooch, but must still hammer it into form without using stamps or dies. When fastening overlays and pins, he will save up and do them all at the same time, saving the mess of fluxing and lighting his acetylene torch too often. In this way he may do the work on the parts of a dozen items in one day and not have one all completed. But like a motor car assembly line, at the end of the week he may have numerous units completed. Unlike such an assembly line, each item as it is completed is assembled from hand crafted parts.

The final processing, cleaning, polishing and coloring is well adapted to this assembly. Craftsmanship is not apparent here, but practical experience teaches something not found in books nor so easy to describe in detail.

Finished metal work is pickled to remove dirt and foreign matter collected while work was in progress. Once again the article is dipped in boiling sulphuric acid solution under watchful eyes. It may take twenty minutes to clean, but care must be taken to see that the metal is not affected by the acid. As soon as clean, it is rinsed in cold water and wiped clean with a cloth. If the work is especially dirty a quicker but more dangerous solution may be used. This is sulphuric solution to which a few drops, of nitric acid and salt have been added, and it works in a few moments.

This chemical treatment and the chemical treatment used in coloring copper for that "burnished" appearance is well adapted to short cut methods. To color copper, it is dipped in a solution of liver of sulphur with a few drops of ammonia added. Cleaning is again done by washing in warm water. Highlights in colored copper can then be brought up by buffing the raised surfaces which will remove the color in spots. Scott will charge $4 for a colored article as compared to $3 for its uncolored counterpart.

THE LAST operation in a sense is the first operation repeated. Polishing begins with the highly polished tools, the first polishing of the blank before the tool touches it. At the end it reaches a high science, with Scott having ideas of his own on the subject.

Polishing divides into two main phases. Abrasive and high, lustre polishing. These in turn divide into intermediate phase where an abrasive type of polish also produces polishing effects as well as the cutting action of an abrasive.

Abrasive polishes are aluminum oxide; emery; silicon carbide and steel wool. Crocus cloth is a finer abrasive for finishing off metal after too direct an abrasive action. Pumice is another abrasive which has polishing qualities. Each has its own action. Crocus cloth, for example, is said to burnish the metal surface and give it color.

High lustre polishing compounds themselves usually impart color too. Tripoli, a first polish application, is as a rule followed by rouge, which produces a high lustre color, as anyone who has polished buttons can tell. Final polishing is done with whiting, the finest compound of all.

Separate cloths and wheels are used for the various types of polishing. Buffing wheels, so called because they are used on the abrasives, are usually made from rougher cloths than used in polishing. Buffers too have a solid, harder grouping of the cloth on the wheel, whereas the polishing wheels have softer cloths, looser and more pliable. Hard to get at crevices in some jewelry are polished by a stick with the abrasive and polish applied to its tip.

Polishes and abrasives are cleaned off by washing in cold water after which lacquer is applied to preserve the high lustre. The metal is warmed slightly before a good quality of commercial clear lacquer is applied with a single thin stroke of camel's hair brush. Some items are dipped in lacquer instead. Drying takes place at room temperature.

Boxing the jewelry in attractive jet-black boxes completes the job. The sheen of the lacquered jewelry is displayed well in these boxes and makes an attractive appearance. It reflects the hard work spent in fashioning the pieces and polishing them to a high lustre with the hundred and one little tricks and tools of the handworker.

"The tools I use are not expensive," says Scott, "but one must keep adding, or forever sharpening or polishing them. This too must be considered part of the effort actually placed into the production of the finished article. The price received must then be fixed so the time spent on tool maintenance is amply repaid. Sometimes, one must be ingenious and bold in making new tools, like the time I chased a roofing man in Toronto to get some pitch from the boiling cauldron he towed behind his truck.

"I needed a pitch bed but to procure one locally was impossible, and waiting for delivery from the United States was trying. I knew what the ingredients were, but the makings were hard to buy in small amounts. Visiting Toronto one day, I saw a roofer towing this boiling cauldron of pitch and I took off in hot pursuit, no pun intended. When I caught the roofer and explained the reason for the chase, he thought it a very funny joke, indeed. He gave me a pail of pitch and refused payment. This I combined with plaster of Paris from the hardware store, and the tallow I rendered from the lamb chops we had for supper that night. I filled a square bake tin with pitch, plaster of Paris and tallow to a depth of two or three inches and completed the project. It works fine, and before using, it is made pliable by heating with an acetylene torch."

EQUALLY CASUAL is the way Turner Scott finds ideas for designs. On a walk once he spied an old weather vane on a barn roof. The, racy looking jockey and horse silhouetted against the sky was sketched and became a sleek looking silver pin about three inches long. An apple grown in the back yard became another ornament in burnished copper, complete with wrinkled skin and leaves. Dogs, horses and things in the field are all objects transferred into permanent silver and copper. Sometimes a strange animal seen in a book or magazine is sketched and transferred to metal with a little subtlety which gives it a puckish quality.

"I am kept busy meeting demands," says Scott, "and often my wife must call me on my little phone rigged between house and shop or I may forget my dinner. We call it our 'ship to shore' phone."

An apt description, for all alone in his little shop, away from the house, Turner Scott, craftsman in silver and copper, like the captain in his ship, is master of his own destiny. He has made his hobby profitable, both in money and self-satisfaction.