Week 4: The Flaws

This week has been a depressing one for my project. It all started once I purchased all my materials and moved on to making the wire coils. First, the steel wire was resilient to being wrapped around a steel rod leaving me with uneven coils with the first couple of springs. In addition, I discovered why it is important to wear safety goggles as well as leather gloves when twisting the wire because as the wire winds it builds tension and once the tension is released the remaining uncoiled wire goes berserk and flails wildly around the workspace. Also, as the deceivably smooth wire slides through your figures in the winding process, little invisible metal splinters begin to slice through your hands leaving my leather gloves much more torn then I had previously expected. However, after I found the right technique for me, the coils began to shape nicely.

The real and most pressing failure however, is the process of cutting out the loops. At my first attempt, cutting the wire (not in a coil) with my decently sharp steel plate cutters was easy, this was a very misleading example. Once the wire was spun (about the third or so coil that was made with a good shape) I attempted to cut each loop, to my surprise, my steel plate cutters snapped at the iron bolt which holds the two blades together. At first I just believed it was due in part to the cutters being old, so I drove back to Home Depot and purchased a second (supposedly stronger) steel cutter. Though to my disappointment, these cutters could barely leave a small dent in the coil. As these where the cutters recommended to me, I need to find some alternative means for cutting the coils…And how is it that Blacksmiths over 800 years ago could manage to do such with the limited technology that they had? I Think I need to do some more research.