Quote:
Originally Posted by Vin-tin
What brand of English wheel did you get? I'd love to have one but they're kind of pricey.
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Well, to begin with you need to know two things. First off I am in the poverty class.
So everything I do is on a shoestring budget. So I bought the absolute cheapest English Wheel I could find. It's $134 US from Grizzly. Many metalshapers would probably consider it a toy and not even give it any respect at all. But I have learned over the years that I can often get by using the most rudimentary of tools. I also actually prefer making things in small sections and welding the sections together after they are formed. So for me, not being able to work with larger pieces is not a major limitation.
The main thing I was concerned with is whether this English Wheel would work at all, and it does! I was surprise at how quickly I was able to dome a piece of flat scrap metal. And I don't even know what I'm doing with the English Wheel yet. I just tried a proceedure I saw Lazze do on one of his YouTube video and it worked. So this Wheel will actually raise a panel fairly quickly too.
I got it from Grizzly.
Here's their website link:
Benchtop English Wheel
I think this is well worth it to learn on. I'll keep a look out during my summertime travels for possibly obtaining a larger used English Wheel at some future point in time. But I think this little benchtop will serve as a learning tool. In fact, I could probably make the whole truck with it working in pieces, which I have no problem doing. There is no limit to the length of a piece I can work with, but this wheel only has a 15" throat so that limits me to a 30" wide panel. But actually that's pretty wide. So we'll see how well it works. For $134 I think it was well worth it. It's lightweight and portable which also makes it nice for my small shop space. Plus I'll end up building a dedicated stand for it. But right now I just used it in a bench vice and I was very pleased with how stable it is in that situation.
I think this is a good tool for someone who wants to just try out an English Wheel without making a huge initial investment. It looks like it's going to do the job.