Studio Scenes...

by Roy Mackey

 

 

Vintage electric metal shear, flamingsteel.com, steel sculpture, steel art, roy mackey

     Here is my 1947 Black and Decker metal shear about to go to work. More sheet steel soon to be sculpture.



polished spike, flamgingsteel.com, steel sculpture, steel art, roy mackey

     Here is a spike anvil I polished up for Andy, a silversmith here in the building. It is for hammering silver on and thus had to be a lot smoother than it was.



multitool belt sander, flamingsteel.com, steel sculpture, steel art, roy mackey, Vancouver bc
     Here is my multitool I bought from www.tricktools.com. This is a remarkable tool that I use all the time. You only use one of these once before you throw out your old bench grinder. Trouble is this one had a cheapo new bench grinder on it. Since I don't allow cheapo new stuff in my studio it had to go... Not to mention the open cut off blade was a little exciting to work around. A guy snag his shirt on that sucker and shez bone saw time real fast. Mind you since my life is so dull this is the only adrenalin I can get lately. Either way it had to go.


Vintage bench grinder, flamingsteel.com, steel sculpture, steel art, roy mackey
     Thus after a ton of hunting around I finally picked up this vintage Black and Decker 3/4hp 3500rpm grinder. Special thanks to Clarence for holding this beast for me while I found someone to con into helping me dragger home... which turned out to be none other than Mr. Blades himself. After a bit of work I was able to move the belt sander over to this new old one. This one runs so smooth it is unreal. It also has tons of power which makes the belt sander even better. Below is pictures of the finished project. I did some rewiring on this one and of course got rid of the old, useless, stones.

 

vintage bench grinder, flamingsteel.com, steel sculpture, steel art, roy mackey

     Here it is with a fresh coata grey on the base and the belt sander installed. One dream machine now. I also added the thin cut off blade. At least this time it has a bit of a guard around it.  The previous cheapo grinder that ran this belt sander was supposedly 1/2hp but this one being 3/4hp makes a HUGE difference. This thing now takes off metal like you would not believe with zero bogging down either. Another fine vintage score to the collection.  


bench grinder belt sander, flamingsteel.com, steel sculpture, steel art, roy mackey

     One of the reasons I don't get into fabrication is I am lousy at it... you gotta be smarter. As it turned out the sander would not quite bolt on. The inner hole on the mounting plate as you can see below was too small. The green one on the left was the original one. Thank god I don't have common sense or I would have never bought a cnc plasma table. Thus I dived into cutting out a modified replacement. I got lazy drawing up the part so opted to just grind the little notices on the outer diameter. Anyway the part worked and the above pic shows it installed...  Without the cnc I would have been hooped as it appears they don't make other plates. Before taking it all apart I checked everything but as usual what can go wrong will go wrong. In the end though I got to play with my cnc and actually save the day.

cnc cutting, flamingsteel.com, steel sculpture, steel art, roy mackey





bench shot, flamingsteel.com, steel sculpture, steel art, roy mackey

 



small weld job, flamingsteel.com, steel sculpture, steel art, roy mackey

     Here is a small nut I had to weld to a smaller machine screw. Tricky job yet got it the first time miraculously. You have to look closely to get a grip on the size of this weld by realizing the size of the nickle. A bit of a zoomed in shot here.



Vintage black and decker grinder, flamingsteel.com, roy mackey, steel sculpture, steel art, vancouver bc, live work studios

Late fifties Black and Decker grinder. Works like a dream.

 

Clean CNC cut plate, flamingsteel.com, roy mackey, steel art, steel sculpture, robotic cnc plasma cutting, vancouver bc

     Here is a piece of ten gage plate right off my PlasmaCam prior to clean up.

 

Thin gas weld, flamingsteel.com, roy mackey, steel sculpture, steel art, live work studios, vancouver bc

     Here is a test weld I did with my new vintage Jet Avaitor gas torch. What a beauty to weld with. I now have seven different gas welding torches I use.