Copper Fireman's Helmet

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Copper Fireman's Helmet

This is a photo taken from my camera phone of a copper fireman's helmet/weather vane that I am working on, still a long way to go.


Paula's picture

LOOKING GREAT Paula Guthrie,

LOOKING GREAT
Paula
Guthrie, MN


warren's picture

Good so far

Actual that does not look to bad, very nice so far. Just for what it is worth the part of the hat with the ridges is going to be a whole lot of fun to plannish real smooth. What you probably need to do is make a stake at the whole profile of the side of the helmet. This way it will be easier to keep true. Once you start smoothing out the ridges things will move a lot. I wood go with a wooden or rawhide hammer over the largest section to get smoothed before plannishing. Anneal for sure.
Since all you have are the HF hammers you can make those into a fairly decent hammer. If they have a wooden handle I wood remove, fiberglass leave in I guess. They are a little soft and if no handle you can super quench to face harden. Any how make yourself a couple of templates out of sheet of copper like I mentioned earlier. Now file to the correct profiles. Then sand with 150, 220, 320 then using black compound buff on a yellow buff until mirror finished. You also need to do the same to the stake. Then just hammer away and hammer, hammer, or a tap, tap tap until your are done. Note just to make thinks simple use a wooden hammer on a wooden stake and true up the best you can. If annealed it will smooth out fairly well and no hammer marks.
Now if you search somewhere on this site is a good picture of hammers. hmmmm

www Metalrecipes -- heat and beat to the desired shape, repeat as necessary.
warren


marilyn's picture

It would be a lot easier to

It would be a lot easier to planish the parts before soldering them together. Exellent picture from a cell phone, by the way.

marilyn