[TheForge] Re: Aluminum bicycle fenders

[Mike Spencer]

Thanks, Mike Graf & Dave Smucker.  Your comments forwarded to the guy
who wants to make bicycle fenders. 

> Dave,  (32 years as an engineer with Alcoa, Inc. (Aluminum Co. of America)

Yow! So maybe I can ask some questions of my own.

> Aluminum is much tougher to form than either steel or copper
> because...

So: I have a piece around here somewhere -- maybe 2" x 3" x 1/16" --
that I made from a scrap of aluminum, probably formerly a name plate
from a 50 year old fridge or the like.  It was really easy to work
with raising and chasing tools.  I made a nice little seed pod kind of
thing in deep relief.  I assumed that this was (more or less) pure
aluminum.  All the other Al bits I have around are very tough and very
hard to work, hopelessly refractory to hand tools.

So I looked in the book from the metals supplier and guessed that my
really nice, malleable, soft piece was a 1xxx alloy.  The book listed
1100.0 and 1100-H14.  Tried to buy either of those.  Nobody had any,
not even the company whose book I was looking at.  They all tried to
sell me stuff suitable for truck bodies, boat hulls and bulk tanks.
Even after I explained at length that I wanted an alloy that was highly
malleable for hand-working, they said, "Well, availability has to be
worth something, doesn't it?"  ARRRGGHHH!  So, like, you're having
angina and cerebro-vascular dizzy spells and the doc says, "Well, I
don't know how to do by-pass surgery but I'm real good at appendices.
I'll take out your appendix, okay?  Availability has to be worth
something."  Gaaahhhh...

> If you want to work with uncoated aluminum buy 3003 alloy - O
> temper.

Okay, why 3003 and not 1100?  

This bicycle fender project isn't mine.  But I *would* like to be able
to do repousse in aluminum and that single little bit of scrap told me
it was possible.  But I got stuck.

What do "they" make out of really malleable aluminum that I could look
for specimens of in the scrap yard?


- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^