oh!…maybe…the drive shaft has a “flat side”…and the crimper wheel holes have a corresponding flat side…so they don’t spin…
silicone rings (or tight fat o/rings) on each side of the wheels to keep them from sliding…fit tight but could slide on and off…
or just spacer discs in between…or better yet, the spacer disc is just part of the crimper wheel…
then…like Rob’s draw bench, you could have a built in spool to recieve the finished wire…maybe that spool has a crank too…it is that too much tension on the crimp…?
I just use the gears on my old economy rolling mill. They have enough clearance so that the metal isn’t cut. I also use a paper crimper that I bought at Michaels. I have been looking for a set of plastic gears to make a variety of crimp sizes, but for now, what I describe above works for me…Rob
Julie, I took a workshop from Victoria decades ago. A very good workshop!. I went home and started to practice. I have sold so many of my filigree pieces over the years. To me it is second nature now, and I look at things as how to change a design, and make it filigree centric. Maybe it comes from the females in my family all doing fine crochet work and making delicate laces. I can do the thread laces, but the filigree I make I can say the blow torch lace makes me happy.
As for Victoria’s video and you tube video’s I can say they are good starting points. I highly suggest taking a workshop with someone who teaches the nuances. Like anything, it is more than what the video or printed page shows. It helps when you run into a problem, and you have the master at your elbow to show you why and how to get around it. It never hurts to learn from a master. If you have question, I can answer what I know. Which is quite a bit, but others may have things I don’t know. Never stop learning. Like Jo and Rob, I’m in my 70’s and still enjoy learning new aspects of this art form.
As for her repousse work, at the workshop with Victoria, I held many of the pieces she has in her books and videos. They are beautiful. My style is different, more to my heritage. But that is what makes learning fun. Making art your own. Now if gold would come down in cost!
Rob, I have an old hand mixer kitchen tool from my grandmother. It was probably made back in the late 1800’s. It has the perfect gears on it to crimp thin metal. Cheap too. You should check out yard sales and see what you can find. I got the idea for using that old mixer (hand crank) from sitting at the opposite side of a jewelers bench over 50 years ago. The Navajo gentleman use the gears on his very old rolling mill.
Sorry to take so long to reply. A long planned cochlear implant surgery got in the way. I know the egg beater gears of which you speak. I do look at yard sales for items that can become tools in my shop. I also just bought a Little Machne Shop 5100 lathe. I really don’t need it, I just want it. I have made some small brass, steel and delrin mandrels and other tools with it that I have had planned. When I needed something like this in the past, I would go to a local retired machinist. He is always fun to deal with, I enjoy making the easier pieces now myself…Rob
They were on the way out to the Appalachian Craft Center where I started learning metalsmithing decades ago. Email or call them and see if they have any pieces you might want to make a tool out of. I would grab rod of delrin that were sometimes 2 feet long. To them it was just trash. Lots of us students made our own delrin tools from what I grabbed.
Sorry for the slow reply. Life is throwing things at me faster than I can react lately.
Thanks for the suggestions! I’m very familiar with Lansford’s work. It was her videos on Russian filigree that got me interested in creating my own.
Thanks also for the suggestions on the crimper wheels. I’ve cut shaft flats on steel shafts for instruments, and I’ve used Woodruff cutters to mill recessed areas to receive Woodruff “spline” keys on larger machinery transmission parts. Old-school machining is a subtractive process where one starts with more raw material than needed, the creates parts by removing material.
The lovely thing about 3D printing is the fact it’s an additive process that allows one to design a 3D model, use Slicer or similar software to create the tool paths to control the 3D printer, then just send the file to the printer and sit back and watch while it does all the work…
Congrats on the lathe purchase! I can relate to the comment that you don’t need it, you just want it. That’s how I ended up with a well equipped machine shop. I kept adding machines and tooling over time and now have significant manufacturing capability in a basement workshop. I wasn’t even sure I’d like metalworking, but it turned out to be relaxing, fun, and surprisingly useful.
The eggbeater idea is interesting. I have a cheap toothpaste tube wringer that got me started on making filigree wire:
During my childhood there were junkyards in every town where one could get a ton of raw materials at scrap prices. But in later years when I became a home shop machinist and went looking for local junkyards, I discovered they were all gone. All metal scrap and most other recyclable materials are now being bought up by the train load and shipped to China on container ships, and they come back to America in the form of cheap new imports.
My late friend Guy Lautard wrote a series of three books for Home Shop Machinists (HSMs) titled The Machinist’s Bedside Reader. Early in Volume I he said the first skill a HSM must acquire was Scrap Patrol to source low cost raw materials.
Local businesses can be an excellent source of raw materials ranging from cheap to entirely free. When I first got started I would often be turned away because the manager didn’t want to assume legal liability should anyone get hurt while digging through the business scrap pile, or dumpster diving for scrap materials. I’ve learned to take a small tool or other project I’ve made in my workshop to show the business manager what sorts of things I make in my workshop. This serves as an excellent social icebreaker that can make all the difference when trying to establish a new relationship. In the past a business would throw out scrap and I’d never know until it was long gone. But once I began using this icebreaker, managers would actually save a list of materials for me and call me to come pick them up. I’ve come home with incredible hauls of both metals and plastics this way.
For projects requiring materials that can’t wait for Scrap Patrol finds, MSC Direct is an excellent supplier, along with Enco, Grainger, Online Metals, and even Amazon can occasionally be a source of low cost deals…