New guy from northern California
 

Hello,
I'm brand new to the site. Like many of you I've been playing with metal most of my life. for almost 20 years I designed, installed and manufactured air suspension kits for mostly custom trucks. Nine years ago, December 2012 I sold everything to start a new chapter as a full time artist. Since then I've been learning from trial and error how to shape metal. I use mostly 18ga-16ga stainless steel as you know stainless is much harder than mild steel, making everything I build more difficult. I currently use a variety of hand anvils, a TM Technologies pneumatic hammer with multiple size air units, 14 gauge Baileigh shrinker/stretcher, 36" Mittler bead roller.
In the near future, I plan to build a reciprocating power hammer with thumbnail dies, and a new English wheel using the Hoosier profiles.
Happy to be here and learn from everyone. Also happy to share any knowledge I may have to help others.

Your art
 

Hi Steve,

Glad to see you on the forum. You should put up some pictures of your projects, you've done some amazing work.

John

Welcome Steve, I'm wrestling with stainless steel in a few threads. My main weapon is that on stainless steel you have to be careful with punches and never hard. Then it is obedient to you.:)

Thanks Jon. I appreciate it. I'll look for a few pics to share.

Thank you and yes, you got that right. Stainless has been a challenge, in most every aspect, from cutting, shaping, drilling etc. For me, its always come down to countless hours of trial and error, as well as researching the best tooling for the task at hand. I'll exhaust every possibility to make something work with what I have to work with. Which usually leads me to learn something new. Many times realize I just need better equipment to achieve the results I'm looking for. A perfect example is the 14GA Baileigh shrinker / stretcher I bought a few months ago. Its saved countless hours already.

Stainless steel walleye sculpture
 

Here are a few pics of the walleye I built back in 2017. I used 16 gauge stainless steel. Took me over 700 hrs to build, sand and polish. Knowing what I learned from that project, helped a lot in understanding what worked and didn't work using the tools I had at the time, and it opened my eyes to what equipment I needed to acquire, to make shapes easier with a lot less time involved. Being able to shrink and stretch stainless was one of my hardest obstacles, before acquiring the 14 gauge Baileigh shrinker/stretcher.

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That took some thinking.
Beautiful work

Very, very cool. I like that.

Steve, that's just beautiful. Wonderful result. Glad to see it.:)

Equipment is not everything, it takes an idea of the procedure. I often use rubber or polyurethane extensions. I can handle stainless steel up to 3 mm.
But I have a powerful machine.

WOW
Looks great Steve thanks for showing us.