Rounded, not flat

[msc]

Greetings,

I have had several requests for rounded objects such as various fish. My only thought is maybe heat the steel and try to bend it over a pipe or something. Right now I have a request for a tarpon fish with the body rounded so it doesn't sit flat on the wall.

Any guidance will be appreciated.

Thanks, Mark

[radicalrescue]

i did a sanddallor i used a hammer an put the steel on some plywood work ok ..or u can use a english wheel ..u will not need to go to the gym

[msc]

Lol. Not going to the gym saves me some time. What gauge steel did you use?

[radicalrescue]

i do them out of 16ga an 18 ga

[whiskeymike]

A fun and organic method is a sandbag and hammer for auto body work like this. http://www.eastwood.com/panelbeater-san ... t-kit.html

You can make your own on the cheap if you want to play around. I think it works well for things like a fish, where things don't need to be perfect. Check out YouTube for Eastwood videos on how to use it. You'll want to understand how to shrink and spread out the areas for inside and outside curves.

For more symmetry, you can use a slip roller (mainly one direction of curve) or English wheel all directions. A bead roller can also put a nice edge, or you can draw a pattern with a sharpie and trace it for scales, gill, etc. again, YouTube is great for this.

[Bobcat320]

I do a lot of this type of work using a swage block with various circle diameters in it as well as tear drop shapes. Most of what I do is 14ga and 12ga. When they want thicker (3/16 or 1/4) I have to heat it up in the forge to be able to neatly hammer out the curves.
Either way, like Radicalrescue says, you will not need to go the gym!
Carl

[Shane Warnick]

If you have any used gas cylinders, you can use those. The bottom of them has a nice dish in it, and you can flip it upside down, and shazam. I would get a short one (empty) and remove the valve, fill it real damn full with sand, then insert a plug into the valve hole. Flip it back over, add 3 legs, and then (this is the important part) wrap some chain around the outside of the cylinder, start at the top (the old bottom) where you will be hammering, and work your way down, the more you wrap it, the quieter it will be. Tack one end of the chain on, and wrap it as tight as you can, then tack the other end. The chain absorbs the vibrations, and keeps it from ringing. Same thing blacksmiths do with their anvils. Quiets them down a ton. Just fyi, acetylene bottles are not empty on the inside, they have an asbestos lining, and not only will they not take sand etc very willingly, you don't want to mess with cutting one up either, that stuff (if you manage not to become a grease stain) will get everywhere.

Around here, the local scrap yard takes the decommissioned bottled from the welding supply, and you can go buy them for scrap price. I use an old tri-mix bottle, and it works great. Look for different sizes, they have different sized dished out spots on the bottom, much like the swage block that was mentioned above. You can get several and cut the bottoms off, and just use them on the fab table, but the lack of mass makes them noisy as hell, and also makes them bounce around and move a lot, so you are always chasing them.

If you want to dish a large piece and work it all at once, you can make a spot on your fab table, use some 2x4's or some such and make a frame that will sit flat and hold some dirt or sand in it. Fill it up, and lay a large piece of vinyl sheeting (shower curtain) or mud flap, or some old conveyor belt (the best) over the top, and get down on it with the biggest hammer you wanna swing. It will dish out nicely, then you can finish it up with a smaller hammer, or move to a sand bag or the cylinder bottom for the finer work.

A little tip here, if you are going to be doing it a lot, get a shop hammer, and round the face on both sides with your belt grinder, or a flap disc etc, and really smooth out the transition between the flat on the face of the hammer, and the sides / edges of the hammer. ONce you get it smoothed out, it won't leave marks where the edges were when you whack the crap out of whatever you are dishing. Easier to blend in and smooth out the curves etc without the marks there.


Shane

[Bobcat320]

Very well explained Shane!
Carl

[msc]

Thanks for all the advice. I will be trying out some of these methods.

[littlefatbuddy]

Thanks for the techniques and ideas.