The Armour Archive

I have noticed that most folks who use the bottoms of O2 bottles for dishing forms cut them off about 2-4 inches from the bottom of the bottle and set up some way of mounting it on either a vice or an anvil.

Is there a reason why not to cut the bottle at about 3-3.5 feet from the bottom, fill it with sand and weld a 1/2 inch plate to the hole end thus sealing it. This would make a free-standing unit that weighs about 100# or so that a person could stand and dish at with impunity.

Has anyone tried this? I want to know oppinions before I go to the trouble.

I have 1 of mine like this.. it works well. I have seen pictures of someones shop that had a whole series of them like this.

I've got one of each and both work very well. I'm also in the process of making one more and that will be a 3'+ standup form.

Sig~

SilverGriffon wrote:I have 1 of mine like this.. it works well. I have seen pictures of someones shop that had a whole series of them like this.

I think it's Tom Justus's shop that has the taller oxy bottles.

We set ours up at approx. waist height, but there were people of different height using the dish. Recently, we added a large steel plate 3'x3' to the bottom and it keeps it from really walking around the shop. I stuffed mine with old burlap coal sacks to deaden the sound.

As a side note, I also used to use it as a pell to practice my low wrap and follow up shots.

Good luck,

V.

you mean these dishing forms.
http://justus.pair.com/ShopPhotos/slides/Kiln.html

ok. so I am on the right track it seems.

I am thinking of filling the form with sand to both add weight and deaden the noise a bit.

Any thoughts?

adding matereal will help with the sound factor as will being crative with hot glue or calk on the inside. simalar to a helm with a good ring.
adding weight will also help but makes transporting it a little dificulte. if you want to fill and weld a floor plate to yous it will probily weight quite a bit.

the smaller varity are usualy bolted to a work bench or stump. that way you can remove the bolts and just move the thing for those busy shop days when working out side makes more room for those people that like fresh air and such

I am Thinking that since this new stump will be steel, I should polish the bowl to the same level as my hammers to prevent any odd marks showing up in the work. Does anyone else do this?

Sand's a very good sound dampener. Another idea might be to put the form on top of a full sandbag. It'll deaden vibration without stealing the impact from your hammer, which is a reason to avoid a lot of other sound dampeners. They just eat your energy.

I actually more interested in keeping the thing from walking around the shop than sound deadening. After cutting the tank, I now realize that filling it with sand would make it very stable, but also virtually unmoveable except with two people. So, I am going to get a rubber pad to screw to the bottom thus giving some level of stay without all the weight.

Thanks for all your advice on this.

make a hole in the bottom that you can undo when you need to so that you could take the sand out.

I sell the 9" dishes. The 3" cut still costs as much to ship as the purchase price( As far as I know, my cost is half of others). I sell them without a base, a base welded with no sand, or the base not attched where you add your own sand and weld. A 3 footer, either with a base or not would be too expensive to ship for anyone to buy, due to the shipping cost.

www.saxonsquire.com

Ok, off topic, but part of this thread I think. I am having a problem with dishing elbows deep enough. I have a 9" O2 bottom, what is a good size for doing the elbow type dishing? Also, how about breastplates? Still experimenting.

does anyone supply these sort of things?

Alaric

Vasn does, he said $20/each plus shipping iirc. They still need to have the die stamp ground out, but it beats going to the local scrap yard and digging for them - if you have a local scrap yard that is. (I dont)

Here is his web site. http://www.saxonsquire.com/