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 really interesting sound sculptures using a variety of shapes such as conches and birds to great effect. I have begun to experiment with different geometric shapes such as vessicas, ellipses and triangles, and in combination with a lot of forging these are yielding some really interesting soundscapes.
Inevitably however there are still a few smaller pieces left, and I am using these to make jewellery.