I'm new to iForge Iron and I'm not having much luck finding a basket forming jig. I have about 50 of them to make would like a fairly simple way of making them all look alike (or as close as practical). I'm pretty sure this has been addressed before but I can't seem to find it. Can anyone point me to ideas on making a basket jig? My stock will be about 1/4" to 3/8".

Thanks for any help.

Please define *basket forming jig*.


You mean a basket to hold magazines, books, newspapers, logs, or what?
fire basket by tzonoqua, flower basket by tasmith, basket by Hofi, rope woven into basket by primetechsmith

If you're talking basket handle, it's just twist, untwist and tweak.

This one is $1.89 from King Iron Works:

Edited December 24, 200916 yr by nakedanvil

Thanks for your responses. The basket handle is what I was talking about. To expand my question - one method I'd heard about was to bend each piece into an arch shape and weld them together, then heat and twist. A fixture to make the arches identical would be one fixture.
A second method I'd heard about was to build fixture to control the amount primary twist and also control the reversing twist amount. Those are the kinds of jigs/fixtures I was referring to.

Here's a suggestion. Do it by hand-if you are selling stuff as handmade, you don't want to have the machine made look. Take a bundle of 4 and either forge weld the ends together, or arc weld, and just grab it in a vise to twist and untwist. You can do it quickly without a jig. Just count your turns as you twist. It'll look a lot better than machine made twists. As for the forge weld vs arc weld, forge welding is actually pretty fast-no grinding before or after to make it look nice.
Mark Emig

I saw a Modern Marvels where they tack welded the ends together and chucked in a lathe equipped with two 4 jaw chucks.
Used the straight line-up of the bed to align and manually spun chuck to twist. This was at a high production light maker.

I made these Basket twist Christmas tree ornaments for my wife. I used 8 pieces of 1/8" square stock and a 1/2" long stub on each end in the center. Just tack welded them together on the ends and then forge weld each end and draw it out. Heat and then twist and untwist in the vice.

http://s758.photobucket.com/albums/xx224/Curly_George/?action=view&current=BlacksmithItems044.jpg

http://s758.photobucket.com/albums/xx224/Curly_George/?action=view&current=BlacksmithItems045.jpg

Not machine looking. But they aren't suposed to be. They are hand made!! :D