[TheForge] Gas welding

Sun Feb 3 23:44:01 2002

At 11:39 AM 2/3/02, you wrote:

There is a whole group of folks who are really good at running a torch. 
John Mehan who sells at Ragged Point Ca is quite good. Perhaps the best I 
ever knew was  Jeremiah Keys...who was spectacular. He once made a little 
deer in silicon bronze for me using a # 5 Victor tip. The deer 
was  about  an inch high and had a distinct nose and brow ridge, ears and 
multi-point horns. All the proportions were about right with the limbs 
tapering to distinct knees and bulging calves...and little tiny hooves. 
That is a pretty big tip and bronze is much faster and trickier than steel. 
He also used to do  little hands about 1/2" across in steel...right and 
left, knuckles and fingernails  and joints...and all in passable proportion.
In the 60s, in Santa Barbra, there was a guy named Stewart Carslile who did 
torch- built  figures, busts etc that had great class. He was real 
inventive and influenced a bunch of guys to take a fiery path.

>To take the concept of building up a shape with an oxy/acetylene torch to
>the n'th degree, you need to see the incredible mini-sculptures that Peter
>Renzetti does.
>
>At the 2001 Bill Gichner Hammer-In on Maryland's Eastern Shore, Peter
>demonstrated how he took a micro oxy/acetylene torch with 1/16" copper
>coated weld rod and using a jewelers/engravers vise was able to fashion tiny
>stick figures by building up the weld puddle droplet by droplet.  The
>results were tiny stickman, standing about an inch and a half to two inches
>tall.  I remember in 2001 he made an acrobat, balancing a chair in the palm
>of his hand.  Peter was there again this year, he made some more of these
>sculptures for the auction. One was a group blacksmiths striking at an
>anvil, with a dog sitting in the corner. When done, the sculpture would be
>mounted on a small block of wood.
>
>To watch him work, he goes surprisingly fast, but then he had said that he
>has made hundreds of these tiny figurines.
>
>Albin Drzewianowski
>Westminster, MD
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Peter Fels and Phoebe Palmer" <[email protected]>
>To: <[email protected]>
>Sent: Sunday, February 03, 2002 12:17 AM
>Subject: Re: [TheForge] Gas welding
>
>
>-------
>SNIP
>-------
>
> > Given practice, it is possible to build up almost any shape using a torch
> > and filler rods.
> >
>
>
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