This is the most complex one I’ve done so far, and I almost ran out of material (single straightened coathanger), so ~8 letters max. Coathanger is surprisingly difficult to bend into such intricate shapes. It took me around 2½ hours to do with two different types of pliers plus hand bending.

I literally freehanded this though, no predrawn pattern or anything, just following as close as I can to my own freehand cursive writing. I’m thinking about making a bit of a side job out of it, like $5 a letter…

What you folks think?

Edit: I made a point to weight balance it at the tip of the T for hanging on the wall or wherever.

Edit 2: Criticize me as necessary, my cursive is still slightly rusty…

https://www.superteacherworksheets.com/cursive.html

  • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    4·
    2 days ago

    You might want to look up a “wire bending jig”. They’re not very expensive.

    Some come with some predefined shapes, like a semicircle, triangle, and some grooves:

    Others just have a bunch of holes and you can insert pegs and different size bobbins to make your own custom shapes:

    You can also consider whether something like a wirebending mandrel would be useful to you:

    Or even a swaging block:

    Pliers are good, especially if you have a few different kinds (you can do a lot with just a pair of chain nose and a pair of round nose, but there are also fancier ones like wirewrapping pliers and “half round/concave pliers”). But for getting precise shapes, it’s nice to have a jig of some sort.

    Oh, and if you don’t already use smooth-jaw pliers, I would definitely recommend switching to smooth-jawed.

    • over_clox@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      3·
      2 days ago

      Now that’s definitely a useful set of tools advice! 👍

      Yeah, I do have some decent high school education in Metal Trades, but even with that said, we didn’t exactly have these sort of specialty tools to work with.

      I am familiar with some of these tools though, but this is a nice menu of tools, some of which I haven’t seen before (but are fairly obvious how to use).

      For right now, I’m somewhere between piddle practicing my skills with what I have, and seeing if anyone really wants to pay for my skills and time. If I start properly earning money from it, I’ll start upgrading my tools a bit…