Yesterday I found an old mini scaffolding pole stand, and it's the same ID as the diameter of a small Radius spirit can! I tried it as a die with some tinplate scrap to see if it would make end caps for homemade cans. It worked a treat with an aluminium plunger compressing the blank in an engineering vice. So using new clean tinplate cut accurately into oversize circles, clean round end caps can easily be made. Then the can body is cut to size and wrapped around the end caps, clamped as before with hose clamps and soldered with a combination of heat gun and iron. Then finished with a plumbing fitting spout as before. Gives a neat result, which fits into the windscreen and into the tin. Compares nicely with the original
Hi @Twoberth . What a great post to start the day with! Great work and an inventive mind. Best Regards, Kerophile.
@kerophile Thanks George. I have mentioned it before that when I first read your post here I began looking at everyday items with my 'stovie' hat on. So spotting things with fettling potential was a trick (one of many) that I learned from you.
Very impressive, that has come out so nice. Great idea with pressing the end caps thanks for sharing it with us. What did you use for the fuel cap?
Thank you for sharing your methods and work. You make hard work look easy. I want to try my hand at something similar, as a result of reading your posts on tin smithing.
Thanks everyone for comments. @Kiwi NZ , I made the fuel cap as shown here, but ground the hexagonal nut round before soldering on a circular cap.
@Twoberth I asume you mean that you spent time carefully working the points off on a grinding wheel. It would be great to figure out a way of mounting it up so as to turn the outside on a lathe and maybe add a bit of knurling.
You can actually hold the nut in a three jaw lathe chuck. I have done it to turn the nut down to round on previous small cans. But since I don't have a knurling attachment, I like to give it a rough ground finish afterwards anyway, so I just use the grinding belt rather than set up the lathe. I put a small bar through the nut to apply and hold pressure onto the belt when grinding, or you end up with burned fingers and/or flying hot nuts! On larger cans a hexagonal cap looks OK anyway.
