Introduction & Greetings from AZ
 

hi, I'm an artist from arizona and have been doing some metal working lately in stainless steel. I am looking for advice from people more knowledgeable than myself, and this looks like the best place I've found for that if I can manage to get in. in particular on forming machines, power and planishing hammers.

Welcome Jason. What gauge stainless do you normally work? I've got a customer doing some 16 gauge and it's slow going...

stainless
 

well 16 gauge is what I'll do using also, however there's no real reason I can't go smaller like 18 gauge, other than wanting something more substantial for the sculpture I'll be the working on for this client. I been looking at Kent White's products and like the fact you can do almost all the work with 1 tool. however price is an issue, what other products are out there are there any other products that can do the same thing? there's a picture on my site of the type of piece i'll be working on, called evolution of flora, at jasonstillmanart.com, thanks for the advice it's much appreciated, J

Which of Kent's products are you looking at? That is, what kind of machines are you considering.

Nice work on your web site. Is the tree the kind of thing you're wanting to do?

Welcome to Allmetalshaping Jason!:)

Jason, welcome, very nice site you have. Hope you find the site helpful with your work. Thanks for joining us.

Thx everyone. Kerry, i was interested in his model 1 air hammer, the basic dies of course, as well as the roughing, reverse and several other of his dies. Yes, I'll be doing a similar tree, but larger. The trunk skin/panels r what i'd want the hammer 4. The trunk will b about 8 ft tall, with a base diameter of about 17-18". As u can c from the previous piece, it's all curves with a number of reversed sections. It was all done with a rounded “dolly" i made with scrap steel, angle iron cutoffs, welded together and filled in then welded to the top of the water heater guard pole in my garage then ground smooth. That and the cheapy planishing hammer from Harbor Freight. Pretty crude setup aye? So I'm looking to upgrade to at least the 20th century, and refine the work considerably(makjng the curves more continuous looking, better reverses etc.) while also gettjng it done faster. Kent is supposed to call tomorrow to talk about this with me. Any thoughts? Thanks again for the help and advice.

Kerry, i just looked at ur site and had to say, wow...ur wheeling machines r frickn beautiful!

Welcome to the site!

David