Today I went to pick up the latest batch of brass spun hood caps from my Spinner mate. I have never seen the process carried out before, but when I got there he was in the process of spinning a large, conical brass pedestal lamp mount for a "stately home". Cannot tell you where or I will end up in the Tower of London! What a skill to watch. The brass sheet (20g) comes pre-annealed. The enormous lathe, with a massive stock post at the other end to the chuck, is set up and pressure exerted against the brass sheet disc which is tight up against the forming tooling. There is a continuous heavy metal bar exerting pressure from the stop-post to the clamped work in the chuck. This is clamped hard to keep the whole job under pressure. This tool bar has a sliding, adjustable and clampable yoke-type fitting, through which the very heavy shaping tool is mounted. Lots of revs! and lots of very tough human physical imput allow the process of skillfully shaping the brass sheet over the tooling. There is really a lot of manual skill involved here. No re-annealing process, which suprised me. The actual heat generated by the speed and pressure applied to the brass seems to be enough to almost anneal the brass in the shaping process. What a delight to watch. Wish that I had taken my camera to show some pics. Maybe I can do that when I get the next order made. My latest "Spinning" adventure is to have some Tilley heat deflector for the IL47 and hood caps for the very early Tilley 246X and SDR made. I will show pictures of these soon and will have some for sale. Steve.
That sounds great Steve ' would love to see the spinning process toooo, try and get some pictures done' sounds and must be a grand sight.
Hello Steve, now that is a process which I would like to see and some photos would be the next best thing, Jeff.
If you put in metal spinning in on you tube there are several video`s showing this magicical art, I once saw production of 60 Gallon hot water tank ends done in copper. A sugestion for you Steve how about PL53-EX100-(KL80,Different holesize) reflectors all the same with different slots often missing on old lamps. Great work you`re doing. Graham
Surprises me too. I would be inclined to look into this closely. Many, many brass founts end up cracked, most likely due to an improper (or perhaps total lack of) annealing process. Brass work hardens and commonly needs annealing to soften back up to prevent residual stress cracking. Will
