18 from a Turkish blank –

Here’s an 18 Turkish blank I recently worked on. The initial weight is 2011 grams … fairly hefty for an 18.

Here’s my step by step process for this cymbal –

I started out hammering in a circular pattern close to the bell starting from the top and frequently turning the cymbal over and hammering the same area from the bottom. I like to equalise the tension as much as possible and this process also has an impact on the developing shape.

After a few rounds top and bottom I used the spokes method over the entire surface, hammering each spoke from the top and then retracing my hammering from the bottom of the cymbal for each spoke.

The spoke stretches from the line of the first circular hammering session, to just inside the edge. At this point the method is as Mike Skiba describes in his article.

I continue until the cymbal stretches and begins to take shape.

Then I do some localised hammering, focusing on specific shape issues. I try to do this as minimally as possible and if I feel I’ve hammered some areas fairly heavily, I’ll mark those with a sharpie so that I can avoid overworking those areas in the future.

A few more rounds of spokes method follows.

At this stage, (an hour or so into the session) I’ve got an inverted profile (edge curvature pointing up instead of down).

Here it is after the first shaping session, still un-edged, unlathed and with the smaller centre hole -

After letting the cymbal rest, I completed the shape and profile and fine tuned the playing area. Here’s the bottom after edging, lathing and installing the 1/2 inch centre hole -

There’s now enough of a profile that I can invert the cymbal into the edge flange either pointing up or down. I invert the cymbal into a normal shape (edge flange pointing down) and continue with the spokes hammering. There may be (as was the case with this cymbal) a need for some localised hammering to address the shape, again with a focus on doing minimal localised hammering.

Getting a feel for the amount of consistent hammering and the amount of minimal localised hammering is something that can only be developed by experience.

After a little under 2 hrs of work I let the cymbal rest, tapping it every day until there were 2 days in a row of sonic stability. 5 days in this case.

Here’s what the blank looked like originally (with just a few hammer-marks at the bridge) -