Sexy Armour

The first ten whacks of the hammer indicate how things are going to go. The second ten put those tell tale flutes and wrinkles into the metal.

Below you can see where I have "set" the edges of the wrinkles. After which the steel will simply oil can outwards under the push of a 16 ounce hammer.

Flattening the wrinkles doesn't really take all that long...but the hammer arm gets a good workout. The wrinkles are almost all gone on the edge closest to the camera, and I need to work on the far edge.
An examination of the profile. Not near enough by a long shot. Oh well, perhaps some more metal bashing is in order.

And another pass of the heavy hammer makes the profile look a bit nicer. It needs to be tighter at the right, and only a couple of passes with the hammer bring us a much nicer profile.

The below picture shows the semi-finished piece after yet another pass.

The piece is now ready for the wheel. Here, I use a two inch radius wheel.

It puts a nice shine on the metal too. This is about as tight a radius as it is possible to create. now, lets check it against the first one I made. Right...they have to be identical, but opposite.

a close up side view shows that the right hand cup needs more hammering still!

So I hammer it some more. This can be depressing when you are so close to being finished, and you discover that one more pass needs to be done. On the other hand, it is only after the piece has been wheeled that you really know.

So after another hard wheeling, I am happy that the pieces are identical. They are made a little large, about a half inch in all dimentions, to allow for trimming. Below you can see the application. I am using this as a wallpaper for my computer.

Of course NOW, I have to see about decorating them all, and creating all the "add on" bits.

comments are welcome.

(image used by permission, copyright Clyde Caldwell 2009. Check out "clydecaldwell.com", and "southtower.on.ca" )