Stamping

One of the little metalwork jobs I have been meaning to fit in was to make covers for holes in pillars that house bolt heads. I had some acetylene cutting to do, so I added on the task of cutting four circles like this. The bolt heads are recessed into the wood as the pillars are in foot traffic areas and would snag passersby if left on the surface. One can make a suitable wooden plug for the 6cm diameter holes, but I wanted to cover them with steel plates, a bit like little totems for the home. I made a leaf shaped die a while ago and thought the press might have enough power to stamp that into the plate cold, but it turned out it did not, so I had to get the torch up next to it to heat the metal up until just before the die was forced into the metal. The die wasn't really intended to be stamped into a larger piece, but to have leaf shaped pieces smaller than itself placed on it for stamping. However, it works ok as a kind of Lyme leaf shape.