What I have now is effectively a big heavy tube.
I could have left it at being a tube and found a simpler way to make the top into a usable hot plate.
An easy way is to attach two bars to either side of the cylinders top, this gives it three points of contact ( on which to place a pan ) another is to fix a flat plate directly to the top of the barrel, both these methods are well used and work well, but I wanted a more stable surface with better heat distribution. I did briefly consider hammering flat the top of the tube to give me nice level surface, but as this is 2mm steel I decided on a less noisy route..
Sawing a tube is always pain in the proverbial.
The best way I've found is to clamp the barrel between two large bits of wood using the workbench jaws, both bits of wood are at angles to jam it firmly down onto the bench, it does keep working loose. A feature of all circular / round things is they always want to roll away, I just kept sawing, re-tightening, sawing, re-tightening.
Hacksaws and bow saws have a inbuilt design flaw.
They can only cut so deep before the saw can cut no deeper, the frame will restrict the depth you can cut. I found you can extend the cutting range a little by reducing the cutting angle as you get further and further into the cut.
When it came to cutting the barrel ( this is my fourth ) experience has taught me that once the cut is right through.... the whole thing will go wobbly and generally becomes an unstable pain to deal with, the very simple solution is to leave a bit attached along your cut untill your ready to take out the final pieces. In this case I left about 5 mm uncut to keep the thing as stiff as possible until I was ready to remove the panel..
When its nearly there...
Take out the first bit of support metal.
And then, the other..
So now I've pretty much destroyed the Fire Extinguisher.
I need a way to put a flat top back onto it, I had some flat steel that I found which is just about the right size.
So to make a contact between the barrel and the top I bent the edges of the barrel to horseshoe-ish shape ..
I bent the edges with a small vice bit-by-bit, gradually teasing the curve upwards and outwards until I got it into the shape I wanted
And then tried the top on ..
I'm discovering working with metal is a slow process, with wood things happen quickly, repairs are easily dealt with and measurements can be a little less precise.
It's interesting to find out the skills needed to work a different material.. I did have sketches of how I thought this was going to be made, I'm finding that adaptation is important and necessary as the process progresses...
Errors eat huge chunks of time when working metal , I'm finding I do a lot more forward thinking...
More on making errors later.
Some adjusting still needed to do to get the metal faces tighter, but it's pretty close.!
I could have left it at being a tube and found a simpler way to make the top into a usable hot plate.
An easy way is to attach two bars to either side of the cylinders top, this gives it three points of contact ( on which to place a pan ) another is to fix a flat plate directly to the top of the barrel, both these methods are well used and work well, but I wanted a more stable surface with better heat distribution. I did briefly consider hammering flat the top of the tube to give me nice level surface, but as this is 2mm steel I decided on a less noisy route..
The best way I've found is to clamp the barrel between two large bits of wood using the workbench jaws, both bits of wood are at angles to jam it firmly down onto the bench, it does keep working loose. A feature of all circular / round things is they always want to roll away, I just kept sawing, re-tightening, sawing, re-tightening.
Hacksaws and bow saws have a inbuilt design flaw.
They can only cut so deep before the saw can cut no deeper, the frame will restrict the depth you can cut. I found you can extend the cutting range a little by reducing the cutting angle as you get further and further into the cut.
Halfway there !
When it came to cutting the barrel ( this is my fourth ) experience has taught me that once the cut is right through.... the whole thing will go wobbly and generally becomes an unstable pain to deal with, the very simple solution is to leave a bit attached along your cut untill your ready to take out the final pieces. In this case I left about 5 mm uncut to keep the thing as stiff as possible until I was ready to remove the panel..
When its nearly there...
Take out the first bit of support metal.
So now I've pretty much destroyed the Fire Extinguisher.
I need a way to put a flat top back onto it, I had some flat steel that I found which is just about the right size.
So to make a contact between the barrel and the top I bent the edges of the barrel to horseshoe-ish shape ..
And then tried the top on ..
I'm discovering working with metal is a slow process, with wood things happen quickly, repairs are easily dealt with and measurements can be a little less precise.
It's interesting to find out the skills needed to work a different material.. I did have sketches of how I thought this was going to be made, I'm finding that adaptation is important and necessary as the process progresses...
Errors eat huge chunks of time when working metal , I'm finding I do a lot more forward thinking...
More on making errors later.
Some adjusting still needed to do to get the metal faces tighter, but it's pretty close.!
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