How its made...TV show

[Swagerman]

Was watching a TV show called: How its made.

They were showing how aluminum can be spin turned on a lathe to make a bowl or cooking pot.

Any of our resident lathe turnners ever do any spin turning on flat piece of round shaped sheet aluminum.

One could make some great powder drop funnels.

Jim

[Bret4207]

Lindsay books, www.lindsaybooks.com has a couple titles of metal spinning. I've never done it, but it looks cool.

[Buckshot]

.............You can spin most any soft metal, like copper and brass. You can do mild steel too but I think there is some additional annealing (besides the regular for the other metals) to do. It's pretty much how they did that stuff before stamping. As Tpr Brett suggested, Lindsay Books has books containing info on spinning and English wheels and plansihers.

................Buckshot

[Swagerman]

Now we know how they made all them WW-2 airplanes nose spinners.

...and Madonnas braws. :mrgreen:

Jim

[MtGun44]

If you really want to try this, just understand that the metal will
harden as you deform it. At some point it will be too hard to continue
forming, and will crack if you force it. At his point you need to
anneal it to remove the hardness that working the metal has
put into it. This is pretty tricky with aluminum as you can easily
melt it by accident when using a torch, as most of us would do.

An old trick to anneal aluminum without melting a hole in it is to
set an acetylene torch on pure acetylene and smoke the aluminum
black with the soot. Then add some oxygen and make a carefully
neutral flame and GENTLY with the far tip of the flame heat the
opposite side from the soot until the soot just disappears, then
move on, keeping the flame tip moving all the time. When done,
the aluminum will be pretty much dead soft, ready to form some
more.

Good luck.

Bill