Here are a few pieces of metal I had lying around. OK, they were failed projects, but since I don't throw anything away, especially metal, I had them in the garage still. The piece of copper is left over from my failed pouch experiment: landsknecht-pouch-fail.html. The piece of brass is a stylus that I was fashioning for use with a waxed tablet. It was intended to be a gift for somebody, but long story short... I still have the piece. I don't really care for the stylus. I think I'll make a bone one instead (someday). In the mean time I had the brass in the garage and I had filed it to a point in the past. It took little effort to hammer both pieces out into a relative arrow shape.
After the piece was hammered out I hit it with a sander to see if I like the look. By the way I'm making the pointing device which will sit atop the balances I'm creating.
So far so good. I took my small set of files to clean the piece up and refine the shape. Trying to shape it with a slight shoulder at the bottom. I plan on punching a hole in the cross bar and making a sort of mortise and tenon to insert the arrow piece.
Here is a rare pic of me at work. I just so happened to be working at the kitchen table, much to my family's dismay and my wife walked by. I asked her to take a pic since I only get about 1 or 2 pics of me in action per year.
I am sawing the edge of the shoulder piece.
here is the piece with the sawed shoulder which was cleaned up a bit with a file.
Here is the piece very roughly filed to shape.
After going at it with some finer files and very small grit sand paper I got it to a good shine. I then hit it on the buffing wheel for about 30 seconds.
Similar idea with the copper piece. Since the copper piece will go on the scale with the copper pans it needed to be slightly larger. I also decided to add a little character to the piece in shaping the arrow. I took a small semi-circle of material off each side with a round file. Both are ready for assembly. On to the cross bars next.
