Quick Question on making roses...

[Trollhammer]

I made my first rose this afternoon, and it turned out way better than expected. My only real issue with it is all the scale. I brushed each piece while still hot and think I knocked all the scale off before I put the petals on the stem, but more scale popped up during the heats for scrolling the petals for the finished rose bud. I don't have a sand blaster to get down inside, and the wire brush only does so much at this point. Is there something I missed during the making of the whole piece to avoid this scale? Is there a less time consuming/more thorough way of cleaning the hard to reach places? Thanks!

Mickey

[ThomasPowers]

Like an overnight soak in vinegar and then washing it under the hose with a brush?

[Trollhammer]

Really? Wow, just so happens that I have lots and lots of vinegar at the shop. I'll give that a try. Thanks a million!

Mickey

[Sabre]

how do you make a rose anyway. do you need to forgeweld?

[Finnr]

JJ2k has a bp on eternity roses in the blue print section. there are also a couple over on anvilfire.
Finnr

[Trollhammer]

I haven't even attempted forge welding yet! As far as I could tell, the only forge welding I would've need to do was on the leaves. Instead of forge welding them, I did them with a different shape at the base, wrapped them around the stem, and then arc welded them to the stem with some 1/16" 6013. It worked out ok, but I'm thinking that forge welding them on would've looked better. Oh yeah, I used the rose blanks from Kayne & Son, and I used the demo on anvilfire from Bill Epps.

[Trollhammer]

The vinegar worked great! Thanks again!

Mickey

[ThomasPowers]

I keep a 5 galloon pail of vinegar with a good lid on it out in the shop and most stuff that I wan to "finish" spends some time in it just to speed things up.

Note that after the soak/clean items will flash rust almost before you can dry them so rinse well and go onto to allpy the final finish ASAP!

[triw]

I use to have (before I had computer problems) a template for the cut outs of the steel you make roses out of does any one have a copy of this or know where I can find it? Thanks William

[Trollhammer]

triw, anvilfire has a demo from Bill Epps that has a template that you can save on your desktop. You will have to resize it a bit to suit your needs. Also, Kayne and Son/Blacksmith Depot has the blanks for sale. Under their description of the blanks, they have a picture of the template. Save the pic and resize it in paint. I used the blanks cuz they were only $10, and I couldn't justify sitting with a set of tin snips and cutting it all out for under $10. I'm gonna give it a go at a later date, but figured since I'm still really new to this, all that time would be better better spent at the forge than attempting to cut something out myself by hand. I had also heard something about getting fake flowers from the dollar store and taking them apart and using the petals from that as a template. Does anyone know a quicker way than tin snips to cut out templates, rather than buying them pre-cut?