[TheForge] Roses

[Bob Ehrenberger]

I'm trying something new, to me at least.  I've been meaning to try my hand
at making roses for a couple years but always seemed to have something else
that had to be done.  Things have slowed down a bit so I had a go at it.
There were paterns in the "Best of chapter news letters" book. So I traced
them and cut them out, this is one of those times I wish I still had access
to a co. copy machine.  I then traced the patterns onto a piece of sheet
metal and cut them out.  I used 22 Ga instead of the recommended 18 Ga and
was glad that I did, I don't do much sheet metal work and my hand was really
sore after cuttung out the 5 pedal blanks and the leaf thingy that goes at
the base of the flower. The instructions said to texture the pedals cold but
the stock I was using was painted so I textured them hot and burned off the
paint at the same time.

Making the stem of the flower is basically just a square tennon on a 3/8"
rod. I didn't have a tennon tool for something that small so I did it free
hand and cleaned up the sholder with a file.  When I went to set the pedals
I found out that I really needed a monkey tool so I ended up making one
after all.

After setting the pedals on the stem and piening down the center I started
to fold them up. It was here that I discovered that I didn't cut the pedals
far enough to the center. So as a result the center of the flower is more
open than I would have liked. I spend quite a bit of time futzing around
with the shape of the pedals but finally ended up with a flower that I
liked.  For a finish, I put on hot bees wax.

The next one will be better, I cut one out today from 20 Ga and it went
faster than the first one.  I also made a nice set of templets from 24 Ga so
I wouldn't have to mess around with the paper ones.

As a side note, since I don't do much sheet metal work I'm not very good at
identifying stock size.  To help with this I collected as many samples as I
could find in the shop and cut them into 1"x2" tiles.  I measured the
samples and stamped the thickness and Gage on each one and then put them on
a wire hoop to use as a reference. I should be able to get pretty close when
trying to identify an unknown piece of scrap/salvage material.

Robert Ehrenberger
Shelbyville, Mo.