Excellant day...

About 3 years ago, my company (a major telecommunications firm) was facing a possible strike.  Because of that, a large number of the managers (myself included) had to take training to act as fill in labor during the strike.  Go ahead, call me a scab but its better than being fired.  Well, the job I was trained for was home installation of phone lines.  As a part of that training, I had to buy a pair of steel toed work shoes.  Well, after the accident yesterday, I decided to dust them off and use them to protect my already injured foot.

I started the day by finishing the forming of the finials.  I got done with them just in time.  The fuller that I fixed last weekend at an SCA event was beginning to give out.  In addition, I noticed a stress fracture on the backside of the finial die.  I'm not sure home much life it has left.

Still, the making of the finials went pretty fast.  I had some time left and decided to go ahead and attempt to get a finial on one of the corner posts.  I took one of the corner posts and cut some of the metal in order to form a thin post that the finial would sit on top of.  Surprise, surprise it worked.  Here are some pictures of the first post to get its finials.







I did some preliminary cleanup with a file but I'm very happy with how its looking.  As a reminder, here is a picture of the original clock.



So, things went very well.  The other posts should take just about an hour a piece to get their finials on.  The last thing I need for the corners is to file some decorative motifs into the post.  The motif is called "pregnant lady" mainly because it looks somewhat like a pregnant woman in profile.

Because of the difficulty I had in coming up with a workable technique for the finials, here is a recap.  All of the steps assume the metal is hot unless otherwise noted.

1) Start with 1" stock.  This is fullered with a 1" round top and bottom fuller.  This gave the metal a "waist".





2) Top half is cut off and discarded.



3) Bottom half is cleaned up and filed.  This forms what the top of the finial will look like.

4) This piece is hammered into tool steel to form a die.



5) Steps 1 and 2 are repeated to form the first finial.

6) The finial is cut off from the stock about 1/4" back from the start of the curve of the top of the finial.

7) The now separated finial is placed point down into the die.

8) A pointed 1/2" wide punch is used to start forming the socket.  This is alternated with a square 1/2" wide punch.  I found alternating back and forth between these two gave the best results.

9) The thin post on the corner post is slight upset on the end.  This causes it to be slightly wider on the end and gives the finial something to grab onto.

10) The cold thin post is hammered into the hot socket of the finial.  Then the sides of the finial are hammered causing it to grab onto the post. 



11) That's it!