Airyk21

Jake, just last week I bought one in Dallas Texas for 50$, mine is about 3ft long, when I bought it there were about 6 or 7, some that were 5ft were going for 100$, I think I got a good price and besides those I haven't seen many elsewhere. Mine does not have that bolt/slide but I was already thinking of fabing something similar.

Thank you for your quick reply Frosty. Luckily (in my opinion) my client does not like guns and doesn't want it to resemble a gun, just wants the steel used somehow. Here is a similar bowl I recently made. I am thinking of doing something similar for this with a star as the main shape. I've included a bit of brainstorming that hopefully explains my idea. The final bowl will probably be around 6" diameter (my client said, 'a cereal bowl's size).

I have a request from a client to make a memorial to her brother who passed. The client wants me to use the barrel and slide from her brother's Glock 22 in the piece. My plan is to make a small bowl from a star shaped piece of metal and then use the barrel and slide to forge a ring around the outside similar to the Texas Ranger's Badge. My research shows that the barrel should just be steel with a special heat treat process. My question is has anyone tried to shape a gun barrel into something else or have any experience with this? I have access to a large power hammer so if it's just a matter of heat and force I won't have any issues but I don't want the metal to crack or split either.

I am currently trying to forge a bottom fuller. In the picture you can see the black top fuller I have already made/found, and the grey bottom fuller. The bottom fuller is coming along but I can't seem to get rid of the bend in it. The ruler is there so you can see how it's not straight. I spent a good amount of my forging time today just trying different things to get this bend out. I tried hitting "the high side down", I tried tapering out the high side. Is it just because it is so thick and I just need to keep hammering? part of me just wants to grind out the high side and match it to the top fuller but I feel like that wouldn't help me in the future. basically do I just need to keep hammering on it or is there something I'm missing?