Quote Originally Posted by Local_Custard View Post
I was working on making a bell in class- thought to share the process.

I started by making a template. Created in ProCreate. I printed it out to be a little less than 4" x 4"


next I begin sawing it out. I thought segmenting the sawing would make things easier. By the very least I could pick one of eight segments to work on and take breaks if needed.


once cut out I can work on drilling the hole. I beveled it using a bur. I then proceeded to begin filing.


sanded up to 1K grit.


I also went ahead and made two halves of a brass bead (the bell is made of copper). I included a notch for each one so that it will not explode while I solder it. It'll be the charm that goes inside.


This is as far I could get before I had to go home and eat. I plan to make more bells- right now this is a prototype to see how small it'll end up.

I put the bead together by soldering it and then polished it. Polishing a sphere can be challenging. It isn't like polishing a flat surface at all. After that I worked on pounding the bell net into shape (with multiple sessions of annealing). I had to sweat solder on the little loop on top before I put in the bead as it would undo all of my polishing. The loop soldering took a few times and more solder than anticipated.... the bead was put in after pickling and rinsing. The bell has an unfortunate feature, however. It sounds like a cow bell... maybe I'll like it more after I polish it later. Well, I have more bells to make first- I would have an easier work flow when I polish everything at once.