Working with rebar

Steve

I have a blacksmith friend who bends/turns this stuff out all day everyday. Near his coalfired forge must be a 100 hammers and as many tongs. I am not sure he completely realizes his talent. Never an extra swing with a hammer and never has to go back and rebend something. A few days ago he had just finished a real fancy grill for a wrought iron door. One would never realize it was just =EF=BF=BD" bar stock a few hours ago. I have seen him do the same with rebar.

Bob AZ

Both. Have a look at some sculpture technique books at the library. Karl

--For a good time check out a gang called the Flaming Lotus Girls. They're a bunch of girls (and guys) from Oakland, CA and they've done some truly monumental stuff.

I don't even want to think about calipers and 'anatomically correct' in the same sentence.

:-/

I suppose its possible that someone did the design with some sort of CAD s/w and spec'd all the bends from that. But I've seen artists work in different mediums and produce some remarkable art by eye alone.

You could try making a full scale sketch on some butcher paper and use that as a template for laying out the bends and cuts. I've seen sheet metal art 'prototyped' with construction paper and Scotch tape.

Remember the old "Magic Lantern", where you put a picture under the projector and a mirror would pick up the picture and shine it on the wall?. The closer to the wall, the smaller, the farther, the bigger. Trace the outline with a felt tip, lay it on a piece of MDF, put in some pins and bend the rebar around the pins. You can buy butcher paper from Smart and Final cheap enough. Comes in various widths and about 300' long. Make a shitload of templates this way.

You can do the same with a statue, toy animal etc..and an old slide projector..just shine the beam at the item and trace around the shadow.

It WILL be in the proper proportion to the item/picture. The rest is up to you. BTW...5/16 or 3/8 rebar is much much easier to work with and if need be, you can make up rebar patterns and use them for the templates if you are going to use heavier stuff. Heat the 1/2" -3/4" rebar with a rosebud and bend it around your lighter duty pattern.

Simply C-clamp as you work around the pattern heating the straight end and bending it as you go.

Gunner

Good luck with getting a (previously mentioned) moose to stand still for measurements, but if you rub his belly it will put him into a trance-like state.. or maybe that's gators.

The craziest moose scenario I've ever seen was in a nature program where muskrat confronts a moose. The muskrat wanders near the moose, they both seem to be curious about each other. The muskrat gets closer and the moose puts his enormous nose down to the muskrat's level. The muskrat reacts by biting the giant moose nose, and the moose reacts by rearing it's head up and back, flinging the muskrat thru the air at an over-the-moosehead height, and at a fairly rapid speed. The muskrat lands apparently uninjured, and continues wandering along, away from the moose.

No rebar was brutalized during the recollection of this event.

I've done it to gators (little ones). I'm not about to try it on a moose.

Pete Keillor