Trapping a tuck

[Bill Harrison]

I don't know about anybody else ,but I for one don't crush tucks often enough to elevate myself to an expert level . I just haven't had the need. I decided to try to become more fluent in my methods . The problem I have is chasing my metal all over the place trying to trap the tuck with my hammer and secondly tearing the heck out of my hammer. So, this little idea pops in my head , I don't know if it's been done before but, I personally like this method better and it saves my hammer. Below is a pic

As you can see you just insert your metal and then give it a little twist.


you can see the results below

I still have to do a little more polishing to stop the scuffing , but so far it works fairly well. Bill Harrison

[sleepy]

Bill
that is just too cool! while i was hammering tucks today,and destroying my chisel point. i thought there's gotta be a better way
the later in the day the worse my aim is with the hammer

thanks
brian

[Kerry Pinkerton]

Bill, it took me a while to understand how your tool works but I think I finally got it. I think you are on to something! The trick will be to minimize stretching while you try and create a 'lock' at the end of the tuck. The smaller you can get the gap between the ends, the better in my experience so perhaps a smaller short piece or even one that is flat or oval so you can get the gap smaller. I sometimes get the end gap nearly vertical or even beyond by hammering but, as you state, it eats hammers alive! The tuck will spread out as your hammer blows get close so I don't worry about driving it over on itself.

Hummm.. I probably won't sleep all night. Dang You Bill Harrison!!!!

A sudden thought may be to build this tool into the hammer handle...

[Bill Harrison]

AAh, Kerry, Thats why I made the post. Two heads are better than one or in this case many heads. I just love it when a plan comes together Bill

[Peter Miles]

OK, Bill, Kerry may have figured this one out, but I haven't.

Obviously, the two tines are of different lengths, but I don't see/understand the difference in effect or behavior.

Could you please elaborate a bit?

Thanks, Peter Miles

[Kerry Pinkerton]

The short pin is the pivot point. The long pin, drags the metal down when you pull the handle, effectively closing the mouth of the tuck.

Stare at the photos that Bill posted for a while. Thats when it became clear to me....

[Gene_Olson]

Peter,
It took me a bit to figure out what he was doing too.

The tool is a like a little bender used to put a dimple in the outside edge of each leg of the tuck. That stiffens the edge so it doesn't collapse back to flat sheet as you pound the top down.

It is a variation on the "trap" the outside end of a tuck before flattening the rest of the tuck. Trapping would consist of a careful blow to the peak of the edge of the tuck, thus collapsing, folding the edge down to the base level and creating two smaller tuck peaks on each side. Those in turn would be crushed as well. This leaves the large bubble of the tuck trapped with no place to go but smaller and thicker as you pound it out.

others find this a redundant step.

G.

[Bill Harrison]

Hi Peter, Kerry has explained this better than I ever could . But if you still are foggy, I can take another picture later this evening . Bill

[FriarTuck]

I have yet to trap my first "tuck", or even really understand why it would be necessary, but I have to say, this discussion has pulled me a whole lot closer to understanding it. So far all I have ever ended up with is a fiercly hammered "flat" sheet of steel. I'm hoping MM05 will fix that little problem. And some of the other ones too!

[Dutch Comstock]

Tuck shrinking is the simplest way to get the metal to flow together and creating one side of shape.This is also one of the hardest things to figure out by your self.low carbon steel easily flows in both directions but you have to convince it to flow the way you want it to.To shrink it you have to "trap" the metal to convince it to flow together.You trap it by folding the tuck in a tepee.When you hit the top of the tepee it will flow together because the seep sides keep the metal from unfolding and laying flat.If you can get to a show or someones regional meet they will show you how to do tuck shrinking in about 5 minutes and you will be all set.
What Bill has made is a tool to put another angle in the tuck to keep it from unfolding when he hammers it down.When I do a tuck shrink I add this little wrinkle on the tuck with a hammer blow to the front of the tuck and now it wont unfold.As If you do enough tuck shrinking it will get soeasy that you wont enen have to do this but for the people who only do shrinking once inawhile putting in the extra crease in the front will keep the tuck from unrolling.Dutch