Best Piece of Metalworking You've Seen?

I have more respect for the spammers that don't attempt to use tricks.

This has always been one of my favorites:

http://www.photosjunction.com/photo/4863.aspx

is there anything there besides the statue of liberty ????

Lasers don't "work" metal. The can cut and join pieces together.

They cannot work it, in the sense of deforming it into a different shape as jewelers, and blacksmiths do.

Yes, I'm old school.

Two threads, and they both lead back to a laser cutting outfit.

He may not be aware of it, but the "scupture" in the link can be done by scanning a photo into a computer. The laser does the rest.

Big deal.

Agreed, they lead to his company and don't really offer any real help to anyone.

Same with tomgnds. His posts all lead back to his company, too.

I don't think either are really spammers, at least the kind we love to torment. More like marketeers.

Maybe they should move to the commercial section, but I'll leave that up to

When I spam the front page, I'm gonna do it and be honest about it.

No time for web page building this week, but I haven't had a smoke since Monday morning.

Those vapor things really work...until we find out that the Chinese are slipping poison into the juice.

If there were three of them, would they be the Three Marketeers!?!?

Drew K

I'm with you on forming/deforming being a requirement to be considered 'metalworking'. One good example of metalworking that I find intriguing is metal spinning:

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I agree. This is more of an art then many people realize.

And fascinating to watch.

There may be the occasional exception in which welding alone qualifies as metalworking. Specifically when the welds do something more than simply join two pieces of metal...

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Or, art.

I built a fence once, and whenever I go back to look at it I know where the pretty welds are. Those are the ones I look at.

Totally agree with you there.

How many times have you seen immaculately cut laser profiles ( the easy bit ) being totally butchered by people who lack the tactile skills to weld them together.

I am not referring to backstreet outfits here but rather the large ISO9*** accredited companies.

This is metalworking at its finest........

Google Turkish Shotguns, there are a few vendors that I have seen that do some beautiful carving.

This is some of the best metalworking I have seen. I think it is cool when they take metal and make it look organic.

https://www.google.com/search?q=blacksmith+rose&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=4u6hUoLKIcL4yQHvrYB4&ved=0CCkQsAQ&biw=1422&bih=659

Drew K

I've always thought this: was really neat.

I hope to make some knives like this some day. I have one piece of hand forged damascus at home, it was left rough so you can see the hammer marks on the blade.

At a show, I saw a piece that was only partially forged. It was just a square block but the smith said it was cheater damascus. He had made it from a steel cable and you could see the cable on one end opposite from where it had been squared. He showed a knife made from 'cable damascus' and said it was nearly as strong as folded damascus but it was harder to get the right kind of steel in a cable.

https://www.google.com/search?q=cable+damascus&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=1_mhUru_BInmyQGo-IHYAQ&ved=0CDcQsAQ&biw=1422&bih=659

Drew K

There's something about the combination of beauty and strength in damascus, that puts it top of my list, for sure. I especially like the really old ones - the true damascus - for the very fine grain. Variable grain is pretty amazing as a work of art, can be so nice looking but I'm not sure if it really has the same strength that a tight grain implies (or am I reading in too much from woodworking!).

These by Ariel Salaverria are very nice:

http://www.knifenetwork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=42473

The most beautiful piece of metal working I have ever seen is some expertly formed and welded (not soldered) copper piping we had to commission from a certified copper welder and pipe fitter for a 100ft long conveyorized machine to wash animal cages used in a biological warfare decommissioning lab. We (my Father's company) had built the entire machine from 316 Stainless steel, including the piping. But before acceptance, the Army came back with a change order to make all of the plumbing copper, because apparently they needed the trace elements in the water for someting (they of course would not say what). Since the machine was already built, all the new plumbing had to be done on the outside, it was too impractical to rip it apart again. We also had to use a certified copper welder, a rare art as it turned out. We found a guy who took on the entire project, not just the welding. When he was done, it looked like a piece of art sculpture, it was absolutely beautiful. Wish I had pictures, but we were not allowed to take any, and that was 1975, no cell phone cameras back then.