Contact me

Friday, January 6, 2006

Stainless steel lesson

I've been chipping away at the Bender project all week with slow but nice progress. For the curved part of the head, I made a resin casting out of the bowl but decided to use the bowl over it since it matched the tube part of the head. The only problem was the rim of the bowl. The shape of the bowl with the rim and the tube kind of looked like a certain part of the male anatomy so I decided to try and cut the rim off the stainless steel bowl.

What I didn't realize was stainless steel is crazy strong. I tried to grind it off with my table belt sander and it heated up red hot but barely made a difference. I then accidentally burned my fingers pretty bad. So the next experiment was to cut the rim with my band saw. That did nothing more than dull the blade. So I guess I won't use the bowl on top of the head and will just finish the imprefections in my casting. A lot of work.

Most of the week I've been working on the eye part of the bender using laminated 1/2" mdf and several applications of styrene. It turned out better than expected. I brought some curtain rod round ends home to cut into eyes but they were too small and didn't look right. My wife suggested using wooden decorative fence or staircase rounded pieces. They were a little too big but with a little sanding they will be perfect.

After I get a decent bender head, I'll get back to the remaining B9 projects.

No comments: