Hotfoot
02-06-2008, 07:09 PM
Hey, Knowledgeworker! I just bought the HF Planishing Hammer, and had to give it a quick try-out before dark, so I grabbed an old license plate and attempted to copy your excellent face. I could not get the chin to shrink down, it just keep staying rounded, like the top of your head, but not "closed up". Did you slice yours so it could form that shape?... or maybe I'm holding my mouth wrong!:confused:
http://i27.tinypic.com/2rzyyaq.jpg
Knowledgeworker
02-06-2008, 09:59 PM
Hey, Knowledgeworker! I just bought the HF Planishing Hammer, and had to give it a quick try-out before dark, so I grabbed an old license plate and attempted to copy your excellent face. I could not get the chin to shrink down, it just keep staying rounded, like the top of your head, but not "closed up". Did you slice yours so it could form that shape?... or maybe I'm holding my mouth wrong!:confused:
http://i27.tinypic.com/2rzyyaq.jpg
Greetings Hotfoot. When I first started this little project, I had no idea it would end up as anything. I started by hammering out the raised letters on the plate, using the flattest of the dies, starting from the middle and working my way out. Then I kinda just tried some of the moves of Jesse James, that I saw on one of the Motor Mania shows when he was working on his 'copper' bike. When I saw that I was actually shaping the metal, I got adventurous and changed the die to the one with the roundest surface, working from the inner part of the plate toward the outer edges. I thought that I would go ahead and try to hammer out a miniture version of a motorcyle fender.I had previously made the eyes, glasses and the nose (cut from angle iron) for a hubcap face. I burnt the hubcap beyond repair, so the other pieces were laying around. I just happened to place eyes with glasses and nose on the plate and held them in place with a magnet. I showed the wife and she loved it, so I tacked the items in place. After a few days of it being propped up on her iron, I made a quick stand for it.
The license plate is solid. I didn't make any cuts in the metal, except when I trimmed off approximately 2 inches from the top of the face. The license plate was a 1975 plate, and the significance I think that this made was the plate was mild steel instead of whatever metal they have been making them out of for the last several years.
I think my experimenting with the hammer and plate was just kinda a trial and error thing.
Hope you have the best of luck with your new plannishing hammer.
Jim