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In conventional gong making , the material grows harder and harder the more that one hammers, and this can lead to brittleness and even cracking if taken to extremes. Brass and bronze alloys are therefore frequently re-heated and slowly cooled in a process called annealing. This returns the metal to its original softer nature. With titanium this is not possible; heating the metal in fact hardens it! However, when all the cold forging is complete, the stresses in the metal

All of my gongs are hand cut and cold forged from large rectangular sheets. Hence there are always several offcuts left over. Being such a valuable material, I have been experimenting with ways to use as much of this as possible, designing and making a range of new sound therapy instruments. One of the paradigms that I have questioned, as well as the one that the best gongs must be of particular alloys, is that gongs have to be circular. Steve Hubback and others have made

The reason that I call my gongs ELEMENTAL I have played percussion for all of my adult life. Cymbals and gongs have always had a hierarchy of alloys as they increase in price and quality. Basic ones are brass (an alloy of copper and zinc), more expensive are bronze (an alloy of copper and tin and sometimes nickel) In the past I have made conventional gongs in these traditional materials, plus a few experimental pieces in stainless steel. A few years ago I purchased a large sh