Customers always have away of expanding our horizons.. often I shy away from things I have not done before, but some of my best work has come from tackling new styles and materials.. I do a fair amount of Art Deco designs.. (wood) This new client loves metal.. chrome or other similar alloys. My potential design is going to have a detail taken from an antique.. Picture here
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small strips of metal rapping around the sides.. I'm also thinking of some sort of metal strips on the base.. I have no experience with metal and I'm hoping for some suggestions from the group and how to do this. One possibility is to find someone local to work with (metal worker) Or maybe there are products that I can easily use ???
This stuff is aluminium extrusion ('50s onwards), or pre-war it's commonly brass or bronze and then nickel plated. You can still buy the extrusions in aluminium today, but you either need to deal with an expensive architectural trim supplier, or you have to read a lot of random catalogues and borrow suitable shapes from other trades. Boat trim can be useful too, as can the inlay strips for kitchen fitting.
Usually the section you'll use is a heavy-headed T shape, with a barbed rib at the back. Curving it is best done with an adjustable rolling mill (an MDF sandwich and roller bearings will do), and doing it in stages. For corners you can also do it by hamering (soft plastic hammer is best) over a round anvil, but be careful not to kink it. Tight corners are easier if you saw the fin into segments first, to allow it to curve without the fin buckling. Don't cut all the way through the fin though, or it'll start to kink at the cuts
The strip can be polished with a set of Garryflex blocks, something every workshop should have. They're a set of three or four colour-coded ruber blocks filled with graded abrasive grit. You might anodise them again afterwards - web searching will show you how, but this is a nuisance for these long strips!
To install the strips, cut a groove. Easiest way to do this is to clamp a guide bar in place and to cut with something resembling a thick veneer saw. Make this yourself from a piece of heavy sawblade steel, shaped with a deep curved belly to it and cut and sharpened into teeth. A "Swiss Army Knife" sawtooth shape is good.
Funny thing is that you can't give this stuff away locally. Lots of lovely period pieces still show up in the junk shops and no-one wants them.
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