Recently I attended a workshop to make my own copper miniature Concorde. I've never done any metal work before and was really looking forward to it. Working gloves, google and ear muffs were provided for our safey. As was a piece of round copper to make the Concorde. I thought the googles and ear muffs were a bit over kill.
Then I saw all the tools, hammers, pliers, saw and files, it's all heavy duty stuff. Maybe the googles and ear muffs aren't that overkill after all.
This was a tutor led session, I put my googles on as instructed, but I didn't bother with the ear muffs. First of all, we were instructed to fold the copper piece in half in the vice, and hammer it closely together. Then slot the spine firmly into the vice, and wedge open the two sides with a screw driver to make the wings. Next, we had to hammer the sides flats. Imagine the sound of five people hammering like mad inside a small room, it was absolutely defeaning!! And that's when I realised the ear muffs are required!!! The hammering was fun, great to relief pressure, but boy, I was sweating so much from the hard work!
After all the bashing around, next we had to saw the wing shape. Trying to saw a tiny piece of copper was quite tricky, especially during the first few times when the saw keeps slipping away. Once I got a grove is was much easier, I just had to make sure to follow the template line I drew to keep the wing shape. It took me a while, but I got there in the end. Ignoring the fact that the two wings aren't symmetric, I think individually they look ok...
Next stage was to file them down so the two wings are symmetric. The vice was really helpful to hold the small item allowing me to use both hands to file the wing in shape. The only problem is that I can't see the other wing and I kept filing off too much,
In the end I had to hand hold my Concorde to avoid me filing off all the wings, and slowly file the final touches.
Ready to see the final product? Here's my Concorde 🙃......
and here is what it's supposed to look like 😂
and here is the real Concorde which I shall show you in my next post about my visit to the Aerospace museum.