Tucking question

[louieb63]

I finally found the secret to tuck shrinking. Practice, practice, practice. At first the tucks also slipped away. Tried all sorts of hammers, trapping and locking techniques. Nothing was reliable. Kept on practicing and then practiced some more. Now I twist in a tuck or it forms in the stump or on the bag. I just whack it down and it is actually as simple as when Wray demoed the stuff years ago. He made it look easy and it is easy; with lots of practice. No special hammers anymore, just smash the tuck with whatever is handy.

[mr.c]

Louie: You seem to have had a struggle with the tuck shrinking method. I am very familiar with the frustration of the trap, tuck and hammer it out in this sequence technique. I hated it. We used to "try" to teach the method using tucking forks at the Sun-n-Fun Flyin Metalshapers workshop. Not too many of our students could grasp the concept. You could see it in their eyes. Starting in 2007 we abandoned the entire method for something else and have never used a tucking fork ever again.
Take a look at this thread on stump shrinking and view the videos in the links in the second post. It really is easy and no practice necessary. You can use a piece of paper and push it down with your finger and a tuck will present itself.
Here is the link to the thread on this site:
http://allmetalshaping.com/showthrea...3773#post13773

[mikebarg]

I formed some bowls from small 2" aluminum blanks by making a small bowl in the side of a 2 X 4 and clamping it down to my bench.

[mr.c]

This is the smallest bowl that I have ever made. It is brass and was braze/welded to the end of the handle for my stainless steel dustpan. It was done on a stump a week before I made the first TuckPuck.


Finished.


This last one is Sherman admiring his reflection.

[louieb63]

Originally Posted by mr.c

Louie: You seem to have had a struggle with the tuck shrinking method. I am very familiar with the frustration of the trap, tuck and hammer it out in this sequence technique. I hated it. .......................

Mr C.

I have no struggle whatsoever with tuckshrinking. I favor tuck or stump or bag shrinking as it is the least destructive and most controlable method I have found.

I do have a question. When the stump, shot bag or Tuck Puck is used for shrinking; a band of metal behind the shrink gets stretched at least a slight bit most always. When doing bowls or circular work this stretch zone is not apparent. However when shrinking the edge of a panel such as the corner of a roof over the A pillar the hump of stretched metal becomes a problem to deal with. I shrink the hump down with a metaal slapper. Wondering what others do?

[Marty Comstock]

Originally Posted by louieb63

However when shrinking the edge of a panel such as the corner of a roof over the A pillar the hump of stretched metal becomes a problem to deal with. I shrink the hump down with a metaal slapper. Wondering what others do?

Me, I use other processes other than bag/stump/puck as not to stretch the area you are referring to. I use thumbnails, tucking forks, or even the eckold/marchant dies, whatever works best and is handy at the time.

Marty

[mr.c]

Louie: Sorry. I misconstrued your message.
I have found that I get very little of the stretched lumps if I use a mallet head with a large radius and make that first hit have some velocity. It seems that the path of least resistance to absorb that shock goes to producing the tuck and not so much into making a dent. I now use a mallet with a larger radius than what I used in the videos
Your use of a slapper to shrink the lumps from the backside is good. I have a technique to planish and reshrink the edge with the E-wheel. That only works to about 2 inches in from the edge. Yes, I did say shrink with the wheel, but that may become another thread.
I am pretty sure that those lumps can be shrunk back with a washover pass on the wheel using almost no pressure on the wheel. So light that a quick push with the metal slips rather that spin the wheels. That is not enough pressure to stretch in any way.
I suspect that there may be a bit of difference in how much of a dent is made due to the difference in friction between wood and metal(stump) and UHMW and metal. The UHMW is very slippery and the metal slides easily. It would be an interesting comparison. Perhaps I will make a wood TuckPuck to see if there really is a difference.
Also the angle of the tapered depression of your stump/TuckPuck will make a difference. We used the low crown model to do a very minimal shrink on the edge of some wingtips that we made at Sun-n-Fun a couple of years ago. Dents were not an issue. And those pieces had very little shape other than around the edge. And they were .030" aluminum.
I really need to do another video to update what I have learned about my own product the last couple of years. Perhaps in the next few weeks when I have the mallets and other products ready to put on my website, I will do a new video. Converting from analog(hi8) to digital is such a pain. I need to get a digital video camera.