Back again
 

I have been active in metal shaping groups in the past, but not recently. A few of you might remember me from a metal meet or forum. I am a metal sculptor living in Colorado. I work primarily in sheet metal, hence metal shaping applies to me.

Richard Ferguson

Welcome back Richard! I was wondering about you the other day. Richard goes WAAAAAY back to the MSA days and he (I helped a tiny bit) measured ewheel stiffness back in 2002 at the first MetalMeet. These measurements validated a spreadsheet that Richard developed to calculate stiffness in Ewheels. When I owned Imperial, I used that spreadsheet a lot and when someone would ask about what size machine they should build out of whatever material they had found, I used the spreadsheet to predict the feel of the machine for a given throat. It was a very big deal for me and indirectly at least, for the community.


What have you been up to?

Welcome to the forum, Richard.

Thanks
 

I figured some folks would remember me. Great to see Kerry is still around. Thanks Kerry for the endorsement.

I will give you the quick version of what I have been doing.

On the personal side, my first wife died of cancer, but I did get married again; my second wife is excellent. If you want to look at the Bible, she is like the good woman in Proverbs 31.

We moved to Fort Collins Colorado about a year and a half ago. I have a really nice shop, an attached garage of around 800 square feet, a huge improvement. My shed is 600 square feet, for storage of boats and other stuff. With more space, I was able to buy a few new tools, most notably a mill-drill. I have been spending more time fixing up the house than in my shop; tomorrow I will be rebuilding 100 feet of fence. :-( I signed up to make a copper mask as a fundraiser for the local museum, which is why I signed up here again. I am going to ask some questions about flexible forms. I will have to post a photo of my copper baseball cap, as I used my small ewheel to make it.

Baseball cap photo
 

I hope that posting the photo worked this time.

Attachment 53663

Looks fantastik

Welcome back Richard. Your E-wheel spreadsheet is a classic piece of work and many must have made good use of it. I'm jealous of your workshop space as someone who works from a small shed.