Christine Williams

Jill began the workshop by saying there were no rights and wrongs in corrugating, but there were ways to make things easier. She encouraged us to experiment, explore and play.

We mostly used 0.127mm copper shim, which was soft tempered and so did not need annealing to be soft enough to work (also known as ‘5 thou’ soft temper copper sheet). Jill showed us some 0.25mm thicker copper, which she also uses for corrugation when something stronger is required. More delicate effects can be obtained with thinner copper foils. Woven copper mesh can also be corrugated, either alone or on top of shim, as can wire.

Working with shim

Shim allows you make interesting shapes without using heavy-duty metalwork skills, however thin edges can give really nasty ‘paper-cuts’, so:

• always wear leather gloves when cutting and working shim

• use scissors with slightly serrated blades to avoid leaving burrs

• use a burnisher or flat spatula to smooth down edges.