Ring(s) of fire

This week I had the chance to help out Simon and Adam to create about 15 steel rings made from flat strip stock.
I watched the guys do a few rings before Simon moved on to welding each pre bent piece together to give me a go at assiting Adam. The first two rings (usually about 3 heats per ring) felt a bit tricky as speed and the right position of the clap as well as bending forks was important and I was not quite sure of what to do when.
Adam cleared things up very quickly giving me pointers of where and when to move and what to look for, which made the rest of work a lot easier and faster as I wasn’t slowing things down.

The rings were made for an artist to use in a sculpture of sorts.

 

 

Shortly after lunch all rings had been bent, welded and the welds smoothed out by grinding. I roamed around the shop for a bit looking at all the equipent that Antonio has collected over the years, interesting stuff.

I also watched Adam for a good while as he made more pieces for the big gate Antonio is making at the moment. It is very organic looking like a sort of ranked vine hedge with flowers. I’ll check with Antonio next Friday if I can show a photo of it here.

The last hour and a half I spent redressing and old hammer head and making a new handle for it. The old one had broken of what seems like a long time ago. I find it quite difficult to hold the two hammers mainly used for forging at the shop due to their fairly “skinny” handles. The must have worn down quite a bit over time and are still a bit thicker at the very end, but I don’t have the strength to hold them comfortably that far down and they still don’t seem thick enough even that far down. No drama though, in time I’ll built enough strength to use them properly.

The new handle I tried to make progressed really well until I did the final check on the shoulder part near the head, and then in some onflight of stupidity rasped off way too much in the final pass. I might be able to chop that bit and make a new shoulder, but I’m not sure how well that will go for the hammer length/balance. We’ll see, if it doesn’t work out it’s a lesson learned.

- Ben

 

~ by Ben on March 10, 2008.