Four foot diameter copper bowl ?????

R

rebush

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The woodworking shop I work for has a contract to build a Holy water font for a church. They are looking for 4 ft dia. four inches deep hammered copper bowl. No one in our area has any desire to give it a try. I do the metal work as related to the furniture and cabinets we build, but, this is way out of my comfort zone. I've sent e-mails to steel drum (musical) makers thinking they might be interested. We are located in Naples,Fl. If you know of anyone that would be interested in the job please let me know. The base is going to be six curved white oak legs held together with 1/4 x 3 inch steel bands. We're holding off on starting the project until we can find someone to make the bowl. Thanks in advance for any help you can offer. Roger
 
rebush said:
The woodworking shop I work for has a contract to build a Holy water font for a church. They are looking for 4 ft dia. four inches deep hammered copper bowl. No one in our area has any desire to give it a try. I do the metal work as related to the furniture and cabinets we build, but, this is way out of my comfort zone. I've sent e-mails to steel drum (musical) makers thinking they might be interested. We are located in Naples,Fl. If you know of anyone that would be interested in the job please let me know. The base is going to be six curved white oak legs held together with 1/4 x 3 inch steel bands. We're holding off on starting the project until we can find someone to make the bowl. Thanks in advance for any help you can offer. Roger
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I wonder if you could spin it as they do with aluminum. A wood lathe such as Nova that can be turned 90 degrees from the bed will turn it.
 
But wouldn't you need the tailstock to hold it on the spindle form for spinning, so you would need a real 4' swing lathe
 
The guy who sits in the office 10 feet from me worked in a machine shop many years ago -and all they made were industrial sized mixing bowls. 4' was a small one. He's out of the office today. I'll ask him the name of the company. It was in/near York, PA. PM me if I forget to respond tomorrow.


Ray


rebush said:
The woodworking shop I work for has a contract to build a Holy water font for a church. They are looking for 4 ft dia. four inches deep hammered copper bowl. No one in our area has any desire to give it a try. I do the metal work as related to the furniture and cabinets we build, but, this is way out of my comfort zone. I've sent e-mails to steel drum (musical) makers thinking they might be interested. We are located in Naples,Fl. If you know of anyone that would be interested in the job please let me know. The base is going to be six curved white oak legs held together with 1/4 x 3 inch steel bands. We're holding off on starting the project until we can find someone to make the bowl. Thanks in advance for any help you can offer. Roger
Click to expand...
 
PJRitz said:
But wouldn't you need the tailstock to hold it on the spindle form for spinning, so you would need a real 4' swing lathe
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To me, that's the easiest part of the whole thing. You'd have to fabricate something to apply pressure to the face over the center, but that wouldn't be difficult. You'd have to fabricate the levers used to create the curve of the bowl too, but still, that's just engineering. Knowing HOW to spin that bowl is another story! LOL It would also be expensive since you'd have to do trial runs and copper ain't cheap. I've just always wanted to try it, so of course that's the first thing that came to mind, but at this scale, yeah, not practical if you don't have the expertise I guess.:whiteflag:
 
Just sent my buddy an email and he replied... The company is no longer in business.

BTW: The bowls made by this company were enormous like 10, 15, 20 feet... They had to be seamless since they were all FDA/NSF approved. Most started out life as cylinders with welded bottoms but, you guessed it... they were finished on enormous lathes and mills.


Ray


Ray C said:
The guy who sits in the office 10 feet from me worked in a machine shop many years ago -and all they made were industrial sized mixing bowls. 4' was a small one. He's out of the office today. I'll ask him the name of the company. It was in/near York, PA. PM me if I forget to respond tomorrow.


Ray
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I am not sure but I think spinning is going the wrong way for this. 4" draw over 4' is nothing. The car guys make this sort of curve all the time and can end up with a mirror finish. Have a look at somebody called the tin man for examples of things you wouldn't believe. (https://www.tinmantech.com/ ) If I was going to try this myself I would look at hammer forming it. Basically you would use a CNC router to get a positive mold of what you want in something like MDF and then stretch the copper sheet down into the form.

Brian
 
bhowden said:
I am not sure but I think spinning is going the wrong way for this. 4" draw over 4' is nothing. The car guys make this sort of curve all the time and can end up with a mirror finish. Have a look at somebody called the tin man for examples of things you wouldn't believe. (https://www.tinmantech.com/ ) If I was going to try this myself I would look at hammer forming it. Basically you would use a CNC router to get a positive mold of what you want in something like MDF and then stretch the copper sheet down into the form.

Brian
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I would also be looking to hammer this out. It's a simple shape and not much draw, and it's copper. Should be easy

Richard
 
I am not trying to hijack your thread but for some reason making a hand hammered copper bowl intrigued me. Basically I started with a 4" copper disk. The only tools used were a hammer and a piece of 2x4. Put the 2x4 in the vice and hammered a dimple in the end. Then I started hammering at the center of the disk in a circle and kept enlarging the circle til I hit the edge. Then I worked in reverse. Made the dimple in the 2x4 deeper and repeated the process about 4 times. Came out about 3 5/8" diameter and 1" deep. Took about 1 and a half hours. Already have peanuts in it.

DSC00969.jpg

I figured if an "artist" could do it so could a ATM repair man. :)

DSC00969.jpg
 
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