At the beginning of the race series, Mike asked if I was interested in making some trophies for the overall winners. This was something I was dead keen on so I began planning something that would be awesome, but simple to make….I couldn’t come up with anything that was going to be easy and time started to run out. So I had to do something awesome, but somewhat difficult to make, instead.
Making the numbers was the first thing I took on. Brazing the 1s for a nice gold finish and stainless steel for the 2s. I drew the numbers using a stencil and cut the shapes with an angle grinder. Then did the final shaping with a linisher (basically a sanding belt)
The 3’s would take longer. I wanted a rusty finish for the bronze effect, so I had to leave some steel outside in the rain. I added salt into the equation to try and speed things up a bit.
Tubes were the next things on the list, lucky we have a bit pile of offcuts to dig through!
3 stages of tube preparation
From left to right:
Straight from the scrap bin, Notched and dirty, Finished tube with both the inside and outside polished before welding.
I used The Notchmaster, our homebrew tube notching machine, to create the shapes in the tube. And a sanding attachment for the drill to clean the scale out of the inside of the tubes
These tubes were chewed up by the lathe 🙁
All the tubes for the First place trophies ready to go. This took a long time…
All tacked together and ready for welding, First place trophies
I used a stainless steel filler rod during the welding process. This was to try and get a bit more colour into the weld and hopefully make the overall trophy look a little cooler. I’d say it’s worked pretty good here!
Second place trophies finished welding. Need to figure out a cool place to connect the numbers and mount it to a base now…
The steel had rusted enough and looked pretty good. I drilled holes and did the rest of the shaping with a dremel.
Tacking the 3’s into place and welding on the pillar was the job undertaken the day before the race. Cutting it fine.
The finished article, about 4pm on Saturday afternoon.
Time to pack the van and hit the road!
Keep ‘er Sideways
Burf