[TheForge] Grape Leaves

Sat Mar 1 13:09:01 2003

        Bob, Stupid question here(what's new), but in nature grape leaves
are usually 2-5 inches large.  Are you shooting for a mini version? or would
it be better to apply a 1/16 - 1/8" stock - be it cut out on a nibbler, by
plasma, with beverly? and hammer textured?  Then forge, mig, tig, or gas
weld them as to your preference for clean up.
        If you have a power hammer and start with  a decent amount of stock
you can get the whole leaf forged off a stem that's drawn, especially if you
have  a set of floral dies that are shaped/sharpened like english wheel
rolls.  These tend to yield high spreads in different directions(with decent
blending support just beyond the high impact area - but the odds of getting
it so right as to not need a grinder or shear to put back the rough spread
forging to a leaf definition would be slim.  If someone can do that, my hat
is off to you, I'd love to watch and learn.


Ralph
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bob Ehrenberger" <[email protected]>
To: "theforge" <[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, March 01, 2003 10:09 AM
Subject: [TheForge] Grape Leaves


> I recently had a request for some towel bars with grape leaves on the
ends.
> I had never made a grape leaf so I started doing resarch on the form and
> discovered that there are a dozen different varieties.
>
> I picked one of the simpler ones and started banging away. I started with
> 1/2" sq stock to make sure that I had enough material.  The first one
didn't
> come out so nice and had to be salvaged with a lot of grinding and
fileing.
> Since the towel bar was going to be out of 3/8" sq I decided to try
folding
> the end back and welding it. This was not quite enough material so on the
> third leaf I folded it back and welded it, then I spread it to about 3/4"
> wide and folded it back and welded it again. This gave me a good amount of
> material and was roughly the right shape. The third leaf came out much
> better than the first two. But unless I get much faster there is no way I
> could make this a regular part of my product line. Of course as with most
> new form it takes for ever at first and then with practice gets faster and
> looks better.
>
> Have any of you made grape leaves? Do you have any pointers on the
process?
>
> Bob Ehrenberger
> Shelbyville, Mo
>
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