[Woodworkers] Copper metal working

chuck.steger at gmail.com chuck.steger at gmail.com
Wed Mar 31 01:20:19 PST 2021


Wow, you all are great! Thanks for the quick responses. I thought copper would be too hard to turn. The spheres I bought have two small flats (die cast?) so it would be easy to clamp and drill. If I drill it and epoxy a rod into the sphere, could I mount the rod in the spindle chuck on the lathe and turn it that way? What speed would you turn?

 

Gary, the extruder might be a bigger bite than I can chew.

 

Chuck

 

From: Woodworkers <woodworkers-bounces at lists.sawdusters.org> On Behalf Of Greg via Woodworkers
Sent: Tuesday, March 30, 2021 4:24 PM
To: Sawdusters <woodworkers at sawdusters.org>
Cc: Greg <dasnipa at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Woodworkers] Copper metal working

 

How about a homemade extruder?

 

On Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 5:23 PM Jason Beam via Woodworkers <woodworkers at lists.sawdusters.org <mailto:woodworkers at lists.sawdusters.org> > wrote:

I like this suggestion of drilling on the lathe a lot more. The grabbiness of the copper is a lot less of a factor when you're feeding with the tailstock of a lathe. 



Jason Beam
Beamer's Brands <https://beamerweb.com> 

On 3/30/2021 2:18 PM, Richard Allen via Woodworkers wrote:

I have turned copper on a wood lathe before.  I would take a 7/8” rod about 2” long an turn a sphere at one end.  The end being held by the lathe could be turned down to a suitable diameter so the sphere would be attached to the rod as a single piece of copper.  Another option would be to drill and tap the 1” sphere and thread some of your 3/8” rod to screw into the taped sphere.  Copper drills fine.  Plan on discarding the drill bit as sometimes the copper will “weld” to the drill bit.  I would do the drilling with the 1” sphere in a chuck on the lathe.  I would turn down the 1” sphere by mounting the 3/8” rod in a chuck on the lathe.  Copper turns with a scraper.  It is a fairly slow process but 10 minutes of scraper work and 15 minutes of sanding and polishing should give you a sphere shape to your likening

 





On Mar 30, 2021, at 5:02 PM, chuck.steger--- via Woodworkers  <mailto:woodworkers at lists.sawdusters.org> <woodworkers at lists.sawdusters.org> wrote:

 

Hope everyone is safe and healthy!

   I need some advice on working solid copper. I’ll give you some context on what I’m doing.

   I designing and building a Heritage Box for someone. Everything that goes into the design and construction will have some elements from their cultural background. Their mother and grandparents lived and worked in a copper mining town in Chile and copper was a big part of their lives. To bring copper into the design, I will attach the legs to the box using copper rods. Since the legs taper, I will use 1/8”, 3/16”, and ¼” rods and leave a ¼” gap between the legs and box. But this is subtle and I wanted to add something else. So I want to add a copper sphere at the top of the box. I drew up the design full scale and the sphere looks good at ¾”. So, I started researching copper spheres and what I found are jewelry spheres ½” and less or solid spheres 1” and greater. I ordered the 1” spheres which are actually used for plating copper.

   So here are some of my issues/questions/concerns:

*	Is there any way possible to reduce the diameter? I thought about some kind of holding contraption on a lathe and then using files but that just sounds like a bad idea.
*	The sphere weights in at 3 oz. Now that may seem light but it’s a little heftier that I wanted because I don’t want it to tip the box over when hinged open. The box footprint will be 8”x12” so it may be OK. I will build a prototype as I always do so I’ll find out. Also with a prototype it will be easy to see if 1” is too big. A ¾” hollow sphere would be perfect but I can’t find that.
*	Will solid copper drill OK? I would like to drill a hole for a rod to anchor the sphere to the box. I will epoxy the sphere to a cradle but a rod would be so much more secure IMO. And, given the weight, I would feel better.
*	Here’s another take …. Is there a way to cut the sphere in ½” I only have WW bandsaws so even with a metal blade, WW bandsaws run too fast, don’t they? The thought process here is maybe I take the two half spheres and attach them to the side of the box as an adornment. The design will be mostly Asian so spheres might look good. 

   So you can see the design is in total flux. I’ve started building the prototype out of pine.

 

Chuck

 

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