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Videos of general theory + techniques


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I am working on this Art Nouveau / Industrial design gate which is full of rivets and upset end finials. I've used it as a vehicle to produce a few videos, mainly on riveting, but also accurate bending of steel around jigs. The videos are very much intended for newbies looking for some general info, the videos aren't slick by any means but they hopefully contain some useful theory/techniques. The gate itself is almost irrelevant and if nothing else, you can enjoy watching me struggle.
I am self taught and I've never done this before so any viewers are effectively learning at the same pace as me. I don't know if my methods are "industry standard", but regardless, what I'm doing is working and should work for others. My setups are very low rent and duplicateable, (if that's a word?), I don't have any specialist gear other than an oxy propane gas torch and MIG welder.
There will be a video of collar making using my very basic adjustable jig under my flypress (this jig can also be used on an anvil, for those without a flypress) when I get to the collaring stage.
Hopefully these are of use to someone...

Trial and error figuring out rivet tail lengths:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIikn0XOG5g  Language 

Riveting setups and heating rivets:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1r8kNiBXlM

Cold riveting small rivets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cT0P43Xh1Ro

Upset finials and bending using jigs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2YbfAkp1es

Sauve-Rodd-001a.jpg

 

 

 

 

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As a self taught person and relative newbie (forged first taper in May 2013) I've come to the conclusion that anyone with patience and the knowledge of a few principles of how metal moves can be a blacksmith. You can scale the principles up or down and tackle things you've never done before with confidence that it'll work. We haven't got to worry about esoteric complications like wood grain and knots.
The vast majority of work I do I've never done before, I've certainly never done any riveting like this before. Where there's a will, there's a way.

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Honestly, I don't know how you'd get better than that.  

You're spot on when you say that it's nothing more than patience, attention to detail and understanding the basic principles.   Everything boils down to those three things and you did a great job of illustrating just how great a work you can build if you just take it one bite at a time.

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I found that I needed a 12mm protrusion for the 10mm rivets. If you're buying rivets with pre-formed heads I suppose the length required is going to depend on your supplier. A friend on Instagram who specializes in riveting buys 3/8th rivets from a different supplier to me & the 10mm ones I buy because he says the 3/8th head is more hemispherical.

I've yet to go round & close up any little gaps between the vertical upset bars and the bars they're riveted to.

The bottom right corner. The pre-formed head is the internal oneFB_IMG_1490510348824.thumb.jpg.77f7b9e325b599e91f2d219f9a60da42.jpg

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On 3/25/2017 at 1:20 AM, Joel OF said:

As a self taught person and relative newbie (forged first taper in May 2013) I've come to the conclusion that anyone with patience and the knowledge of a few principles of how metal moves can be a blacksmith. You can scale the principles up or down and tackle things you've never done before with confidence that it'll work. We haven't got to worry about esoteric complications like wood grain and knots.
The vast majority of work I do I've never done before, I've certainly never done any riveting like this before. Where there's a will, there's a way.

The skills are part of it but there is more to it than that.  There is also vision and you also have that, in spades.  I could never even visualize a piece of work like this, much less make it. 

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Thanks, I think maybe an extra word that should have been added into to patience and process paragraph is 'determination'.
I don't want to embarrass myself by admitting how long that took to design do, but it didn't happen over a weekend I can assure you. An complete inability to visualize anything more than a bit of a blur or transfer ideas onto paper is constant source of frustration and the only way I can work around it is by working on designs every evening till late, getting up every day at 5am (or earlier) to carry on drawing, working on them at the weekends...

You could make it, and easily, there's very few techniques in the gate. Learning the techniques required by yourself would take longer (shorter amount of time if you watch the videos and learn from my mistakes, because I make mistakes and show them), but I know I could teach you all the techniques required in to make that gate in 3 hours. There's only upsetting, short tapers, accurate bending and adjusting your hammer blows to keep a rivet tail straight. Trust me, I also give 1 day lessons to complete novices and they've successfully made items with 100 times more techniques involved without any prior experience.

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 4 months later...

Thanks all.

7 hours ago, BIGGUNDOCTOR said:

What was the total time spent, and what is the weight?  My only design question is to the decision to just wrap the collars as opposed to welding the seam.

A month to the day. At the time I was on Instagram and followed a guy called Inconoclast Constructs who rivets in seconds with the big boys tools and puts videos up showing his setup...we became online friends and I sent him a message saying if you could see my setup and how long it's taking me you'd fall over laughing.

Approx 80kg from memory.

if you don't like collar seams you can forge them with tapered ends so that the seamline becomes very discreet/invisible. Personally I like collar seams because I think it shows their mechanics, I don't think welding them would gain you anything aesthetically (as you wouldn't be able to weld the sides of the collar nicely) or gain you anything structurally.

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