With Wings As Eagles: Craig P. Steffen's Blog

bookmarks and gussets

2008 September 07 09:29

I seem to be in an art class. On the instructor's invitation, I enrolled in a local school in a jewelry making class, which teaches basic metalworking.

Our first project is a bookmark. We started with drawings, then made a paper template:

(this is supposed to be a depiction of our cat Jasper in his bed).

At the left here is the metal piece with the template traced on it. On the right is the metal saw that I'm using to cut out the piece. In the middle is what's called a "bench pin"; it's used as a back stop for the saw to brace the piece against.

Here's the piece with the outside edges cut. The inside shapes are cut by drilling holes and then uncoupling the saw blade from one end, inserting it through the drilled hole, and then re-setting the saw and cutting from there. The bench pin is particularly useful when doing this, because it braces the flat material all the way around the blade.



Here's the subject. You can decide if my drawing is a good depiction.

Now I'm not likely to start making sheet metal book marks for a living, or jewelry for that matter. However, knowing how to work with metal is definitely something that I want to be able to do better than I can now. Finishing metal surfaces is something that I particularly want to know how to do better. As I file and sand and finish this bookmark, I'm starting to learn that. Finishing is, I think, the specific skill that I will take away the most from the class.

However, there are certainly things that are directly related to things that I've at least thought about doing. In Jim Bede's book on "Build your own Airplane":

here are two pages of patterns for the fuselage gussets for Jim's BD-4 design:

with my bookmark for size comparison. The process of producing the gussets is exactly the same as the bookmark. The templates are supplied with the plans. You transfer the template and cut and file the part to shape. The final part doesn't have to be polished to a mirror shine like the bookmark, but it definitely needs to be smoothed all the way around.