Joel OF

My first sculpture. Following on from my old thread asking "what animal is this?" (http://www.iforgeiron.com/topic/42578-what-animal-is-this/) at the stage when I'd finished the frame. Commissioned in secret by a client for his wife's birthday, which is tomorrow. I installed today whilst they are en route to their holiday destination, (another surprise to the wife), and by request of the client I am emailing pics and a video of the bear in situ so he can say...look what's waiting for you when you get home. Mostly designed by me but with important input from the client. It has quite a lot of personal/emotional significance to the pair of them so I hope she likes it!

The personal pronoun "I" is meant to be a capital

Wear shin pads if you go knocking on farmer's doors, border collies can be quite zealous guard dogs. You might also want to try commercial agents and agricultural agents. You've probably got a nearby agent that runs agricultural auctions, they're the sort of well connected people that are worth giving a shout. Separately, boat yards might also be worth a bash.

This is quite timely for me because I've been looking for a new workshop since last November. I've had 2 places lined up for several months, both of which fell through, now I'm on my 3rd prospect which fingers crossed is going to work out. I reckon if I was giving advise to myself in hindsight I'd say save yourself a load of hassle and just go down the farm route. (Even better if you can get a spot on farm that has a farm shop for sake of the word of mouth). Industrial units are very dear, they are in my neck of the woods anyway and at the end of the day all you want is a place to smash some metal about and not get burgled. Farms will be cheaper in rent and tend to be 3 phase. Regardless of where you end up you probably won't pay business rates anyway due to your workshop size and rent amount, but the good thing about farms is that as it's an agricultural location the council might stick their nose in a bit less. Down where I am there's a buyer's group called Southern Farmers, (cheaper steel if you're a member), I expect you'll have something similar in your area, they'll have some kinda newsletter which might be worth sticking an ad in.

Thanks again for the input folks. I think the meeting went well though some of it went straight over my head. The electrician has asked me to email him a list of all tools I'll want in the future and said he's most interested in the kw specs. There seemed to be 2 boards in the shed where the 3 phase enters the farm, the first said 100amps but was already quite full and the electrician said he didn't feel comfortable coming off that. The 2nd board seemed to be an auxillary of some sort that was fairly empty, he said he could come off that and run me a supply of about 50amps. Does that sound sufficient bareing in mind I'm a one man band that will only be doing lightweight forging and fabrication within the next 5-10 years? It'll probably be 5 years before I can afford a bloomin' power hammer!

Thanks for the replies everyone. Gote - thanks for the generous explanation. Well, the 4 of us are meeting this evening on site so fingers crossed. All being well this place will serve me well into the future and give me more than enough room to expand as it's 11m x 6.5m and only £2,500 a year, all in!

Thanks for the replies folks. A gerbil on a treadmill would power the gear I've got at the minute but I can nip round some mates places and scribble down the power requirements of some of their 3 phase tools which I'll possibly want in the future (drill, compressor, MIG, plasma cutter etc) but the thing I'm hitting a dead end with is the juice requirements for a small power hammer. Can anyone help with some educated guestimates? I've tried Googleing Anyang power hammers as a starting point but it seems their UK distrobutor(?) isn't doing them anymore so I can't get any info on them, and I've really annoyingly misplaced (i.e my girlfiend has "tidied them up") my copies of BABA magazine which have the details of single phase power hammers for sale in the ads section.

Yeah, true. Sorry, I should have added that the cable was overhead.

Hi folks, any chance that someone with a bit of 3 phase knowledge can offer me some advice? At the minute my knowledge of electrics is a bit woeful, I'm afraid. In a few months time I'm meant to be relocating my workshop to a disused farm barn. At the minute the barn is in a bit of a state so the farm manager is hiring a builder to make it usable, one major aspect of the work will be extending the 3 phase supply from a nearby shed into the barn. Once the 3 phase has been extended into the barn and fuse board has been put in it'll be my responsibility to hire and electrician to locate lights, power sockets etc. The farm manager and his builder, my electrician and me are all meeting early next week to discuss the work involved. The thing that's making me slightly nervous is that I met up with the farm manager and builder the other day (without the electrician) to locate the 3 phase supply and when the builder saw the cable he said it didn't look that big (black in colour and about 1 inch in diamter). This made me wince a little because in my naivity I thought all 3 phase was the same, but from what he suggested it might not provide as much juice as I expected. When we all meet up next week my electrician is bound to ask me how much power I'm going to need to run my tools. That's where I fall flat on my face because at the minute all my gear in single phase and I don't know what sort of strain I'll be putting on the supply when I do finally upgrade to 3 phase tools. In the future I expect I'll want a reliable compressor for painting and a bit of blasting, a big drill, a small power hammer and a decent MIG. I'm not asking for exact power consumption figures of these tools, but I'd really appreciate it if anyone can give me some general information about the day to day running of these tools that the electrician may find useful. I expect he's going to ask something along the lines of "what kind of supply do you need to be able to run a small power hammer, a single phase forge blower, a grinder and lights at the same time?" or something like "what kind of supply do you need to continuously run a compressor for spray painting for an hour?" A fabricator mate tells me his workshop is rigged up this way: 13 amp single ring main, 3 phase individual circuits and a separate 240v supply which he runs a 110v transformer off. That seems like a tried and tested setup that's worth copying if appropriate. I expect in the future I'd want four 3 phase sockets. Sorry that's all abit vague but if anyone can offer any general info the electrician may find helpful I'd really appreciate it. All I really need to be able to do is help the electrician determine whether the 3 phase supply that's available is up to the job. Cheers.

Be careful what you post pics of online, especially things that sell well. Some people don't respect intellectual copyright and your unique idea can quickly become copied and old hat.

That's really weird because my £5M for £99 PLI cover from Ian Wallace includes demos and teaching, even teaching kids, as standard. The quote E&B gave me for £5M was £270, that included installation cover but as standard their PLI doesn't include "using heat on site"...which for us basically mean demos. I can't remember if that £270 quote included cover for site heat work/demos or not. Either way I thought stuff it I'll go with Ian Wallace again, they're helpful and polite on the phone which goes a long way too. I had a guy come give me a hand in the workshop the other day so I bought Employers Insurance too which only cost 50 something quid for a year. E&B's quote for someone giving me a hand on the odd occassion was £31.80 a day.

If ever there was a magazine that should be used in the Have I Got News For You "missing words from guest publications round", this is it.

They added installation cover to your policy?

FAO anyone with an Ian Wallance 'Craft Insurance' policy, they've recently changed underwriters from Aviva to Hiscox which means some aspects of the policy have changed. After speaking to one of the staff yesterday I understand that policy holders no longer have PLI cover during installation, though your product is still covered during and after installation. I.e if you cause damage to the client's property during installation you are not covered. When I originally took out a policy with Ian Wallace a year or so ago it was explained to me that I would have complete PLI cover for private commissions, but not contract work. Their policy does still have some great benefits over other providers, but that's a kick in the genitals.

Cheers folks that all seems to make sense as there's numbers 1 - 4 on the side of the regulator which relate to how much you turn open/close it.

Hi all, can anyone tell me what's going on here? I bought an oxy-propane kit t'other day (been shown how to use it safely by my fabricator workshop mate who also uses oxy-propane) but this confused both of us a bit... Why does my propane regulator have 2 different numbers for bar on it and why would the instructions suggest a pressure to a decimal point e.g 0.2 when that seems to have no relevance to the numbers on the bloomin' regulator? Hope my question makes sense.

Thanks for the replies folks, the client came in to inspect/approve earlier & was instantly happy & only made very minor comments for alteration. About 10 mins before he came in the local groundworks & demolition guy popped in & upon seeing immediately asked "why the F are you making a bear?" That settled any remaining nerves.

Cheers. Ears, claws, pads on feet etc will get done last.

Cheers, that'll do me, it's a bear. Some bears have very dog like faces/snouts. The carpenters in the neighbouring workshop popped in earlier and they said it's a bear in a flash so I'm at least confident now that it's recognisable. Let's hope the client likes it.

I'm working on the frame of my first sculpture commission, (few more bits to add in), it's a 4 foot tall animal that will be clad with a skin once the frame is finished. I'm blending anatomical correctness with the client's instructions of it being kinda friendly/cute, so some features are oversized. It's going to be abstract but it the client's brief is that it must immediately look the animal it's supposed to be. These pics are very flat looking & not at all as 3D as the real thing, some of the proportions don't look as they do in real life either...nevertheless, what animal do you think it is? If people can tell what animal it is even at this stage (from these rubbish pics) I'll breathe a sigh of relief as once it's clad it'll be much more obvious. I've never done anything like this before so I'm understandably nervous. The client is going to visit tomorrow to approve the frame proportions before I move onto the cladding stage. I have made the client 2 sample ligaments so they know what the end result will look like. Cheers

I'll have to update my tap test before I leave the house...spectacles, testicles, wallet & watch, plasma cutter. You get fined for damaging wheel clamps but folklore tells the tale of a bloke who got one off without damaging it so didn't have to pay the release charge.

...that you're meant to have an orange(?) triangle sticker on the back of your vehicle if you transport gas bottles. It's not law, more of a curtesy to the emergency services in the event of a road accident as it can change the way they approach the situation. But another upshot of these stickers/magnets is that you can't be clamped or towed because then the vehicle becomes the responsibilty of the council, and they don't want anything to do with a vehicle that may have a bottle in the back.

I just chose one at random to link too, there's loads of interesting ones, there's a good one on fixings.

Came across these videos a while back, "Old Education Videos" is the name of the group of videos. If you haven't seen them, enjoy. Watch "BBC Technical Studies Welding Techniques" on YouTube

Well I mentioned the manual forklift idea to the fabricator/engineer I rent some workshop space off a.t.m, he imagined a manual forklift would be very awkward and suggested I make a 10ft wide A frame gantry which delivery lorries could drive under/I could wheel the lorry. He's a clever sausage when it comes to this kind of thing so I'm generally pretty happy to take his suggestions as the best answer. If I bat my eyelids at him he might even design me one on CAD, he loves to extol the virtues of CAD so me asking would probably make him feel satisfied.