I just finished a 1/8″ plate steel base for my friend Alice.
She brought a table back from Africa, she did not like the base that came with it.
I wanted the base to look “hand made” to go along with the character of the table top (not shown). And decided upon sheet steel to give it that “made in India” flavor. Let me say that cutting steel into curves etc. without some high tech solution (plasma cutter, laser, etc.) is for the patient birds.
I must have been hunched over that band saw for 4 hours, cutting curves out.
I’m not sure that I can say it was worth all the effort, but I am intrigued by the outcome. I do like the freehand steel metal formed look. It brings to mind all sorts of possibilities, if only the cutting could be easier. I had to file and grind the lines to give them a grace the band saw could not impart. All just a part of working with metal I guess.
I do like the character that sheet metal shapes make, the crudeness and folksy nature of the freehand volumes is exciting to me.
I discovered a nice “blend” of old raw scaled metal, and new cut metal that is exposed… I gun blued the shiny new cut metal edges, then Bri-Waxed the entire piece. I have worried that my “tooling” i.e. grinding welds etc. could stand out as too overt on my metal work. The gun bluing on the shiny spots seems to obscure the contrasts. A simple fix.
The top pictured is a small concrete slab I’d made previously as a sample… works well with Alice’s table base I feel.
