February 2002
Balcones Forge Meeting at Tom Leining's Shop
(photos and descriptions by Jerry Achterberg)
(in the background you can see some of the letter openers that were made for the trade item)
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February 2002 Balcones Forge Meeting at Tom Leining's Shop (photos and descriptions by Jerry Achterberg) |
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Tom made a real neat Butterfly Hinge
out of 16 Ga. steel. (He said if you stack 16 layers, it would be one
inch tall.)
He erected his Demo Tent so we would be in
the shade and constructed a one-of-a-kind vise hardie for his anvil just
for this demo. He curled the "pin" edge of the
hinge over the edge of the anvil, then rolled (hammered) it over an
1/8th (I think)cold rolled rod while in the vise. He cut two notches
with a hacksaw in the first half of the hinge, so that he had three
rolled flats. After the notches were cut down into the hinge, he
cut them off with a chisel. He then lined this piece up with theother half to mark it for the
cut. The other half had
two rolled flats that matched up rather well with the voids in the first half.
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| Charlie Stolte showed us, as promised at the Robb Gunter demo, how to make his Braided Cross. He made it look easy once he showed how make two halves first and then braid them together. He started with about 1/8th wire and before the demo, made a test piece to see how much wire it took to make one inch of braid. From this he determined how much wire to start with to make the top or bottom half of the cross. (He had the bottom half completed before he started his demo.) He bent two pieces of wire in half and welded them together in the center. He placed 3/4 of an inch into the vise and left the loose ends sticking up. He used a torch to heat and braid the wire to the desired length and left them at right angles to the braid. | |
| He then took the two halves (top and bottom) and laid them in a small piece of angle iron with a notch in one side for the wires to stick thru, and began braiding one arm of the cross. | |
| When both arms were finished, he cut them the same length as the top and placed the cross
in a wooden stand. Larry Crawford bought the finished cross at the
iron-in-the-hat auction.
(in the background you can see some of the letter openers that were made for the trade item) |
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| Gary Hilton's candle holder inspired by Robb Gunter | |