Slippery Anne update

[Mark Atkinson]

excellent panel beating, is it your trade or did you learn from books?......if so can you recommend one as the only ones i can find use English Wheels.

I am a complete amateur muddling my way through, I do have one book, which is OK, but I honestly cannot recomend it. I have been on a short course, which was fun and I also spent a weekend along with a few of the Friends community under the tutelage of  Duncan Grimmond at his work shop, which was very informative and useful. Duncan was talking about doing the same again, so it may be worth speaking to him.

I think everyone running a training course will do so based around all the 'exotic' tools, most especially the English Wheel, but I have found it is possible to bash things to shape, and planish the finish - which is how I think Slippery Anne was originally made. However, it takes a very long time to planish something, I have attached a picture of my basic tools along with the first thing I made, which is part of a mud guard, this was bashed to shape and planished using hammers and into a wooden block and shot bag, but took me the best part of a week to do. 

   

I celebrated my birthday in the summer and was very pleased to receive a Metz English Wheel from my wife Helen, which has revolutionised panel beating for me, using it, I made the two fairings in this picture within a few hours.

   

Perversely, I then lightly planished them to ensure they looked like the originals - slightly tatty.

I was very jealous of Bills (All Alloy Cup) shrinker, which is a very usefull tool, I also keep perusing pneumatic planishing hammers on ebay at the moment, which are often priced between £80-100, they look very cost effective and useful, so may be worth a look.

I am unsure if you are even in the UK, but, if you (or any other Friends) are within a comfortable distance of the the Lancashire coast, then please do PM and arrange to come and visit me, and I will pleased to show you how I muddle along.

Kind regards, Mark.