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

  • over_clox@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
    131·
    30 days ago

    Shit’s hard to bend at the scale to cram 8 letters in, but I hear ya. I do have smaller wire bending tools than what I used for this, but the toughness of the coathanger would probably break my smaller tools almost instantly… 🤷

    Like I said, this indeed is a bit of a practice session, that’s the tightest I’ve been able to bend letters in a single coathanger. 6 letters or less is easier to define, but by 8 letters, I was more worried about running out of material, which I almost did…

    Practice practice practice…

    My mom wants one sometime soon too, but her name is only 6 letters…

    I dunno, playing it by ear right now, but yeah I might need to look into other sorts of pliers or tools to better define the curvature of the R…

      • over_clox@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
        7·
        30 days ago

        Thank you for that. Cursive writing is becoming a lost art, plus it’s difficult to bend by hand tools in metal.

        I did my best, I’m practicing, and I’m open to constructive criticism…

        • thedarkfly@feddit.orgEnglish
          3·
          28 days ago

          I could clearly read the ‘r’. I don’t think your cursive needs much improvement :)

          That being said, I think your earlier comment was downvoted for being a bit too aggressive. You get to choose which advice or criticism you take, but it’s graceful to keep it cool.

    • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      4·
      29 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·
        29 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…