Sunday 12 May 2013

Metal forming practice

If you had told me a year ago that I will be metal shaping down in the shed, I would of shook my head in doubt "what me? you cant be serious! how does a bloke my age learn a centuries old craft"
I really hope that somewhere out there, this page is read by someone of similar mindset wanting to give it a crack but not believing they could do it. I can honestly tell you now to fuck that idea right out of your head, if you've got the passion and want your half there already.
The cost to set up was minimal, English wheel was $275, shot bag and hammers $180 or there abouts, All ive been working with is commercial 1mm Aluminium, real nice to start on I feel focusing more on just getting used to the tooling and what it does.












Below shows the long awaited shot bag and 1 of 2 mallets fresh in from the states, about 60 bucks each and I think the shot bag was 60 bucks as well which included a sweet little hand held bag and a piece of sacrificial leather for protection .  Money well spent, so nice using the correct tools for beating metal.


 
 
Belows pic is a fine example of someone with 2 months welding experience trying to tack 1mm aluminium! Man did this fight me, even after doing reasonable test pieces prior. since then ive read
a lot of forums and was lucky enough to find one where a bloke had written in with my exact problem, the replies are from experienced tradesmen that are great so ive got a bunch of settings to try, the one in particular iam interested in seeing is using the largest shielding cup and dropping the
argon back to 5 ltrs / min., anyway, it will get sorted with more TIG time in the chair
The overall  look of the tank is sweet, graceful shape,


Heres a scale tank using 1mm steel which I havnt worked with before so it was a good little project where I used hammer and t-dolly, English wheel, TIG welding and linishing


 
 








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