Original poster: Stan <wsmg@xxxxxxxxxx>A friend of mine with a fab shop makes SS flowers and uses the gazing balls for the center. When things are slow he lets his CNC turret punch punch out leaves and then spot welds them together. Anyhoo the gazing balls look like they were stamped out on a punch not spun. If you saw one raw(not polished) you can see the stretch marks. The punching probably hardens them some. You can get them unpolished as float balls. If you have trouble drilling them try a masonary carbide bit. It helps to put a better edge on the carbide. You'll know if you got it to hot with a standard bit when the tip of your drill burns up. I drilled about 400 1/16" holes for a SS strainer I built yrs ago, when a spot got to hot I threw in another bit and moved on to the next one never looking back. We might become a distributer for the gazing balls. I'll post it if we do.
Stan Tesla list wrote:
Original poster: Terrell Fritz <terrellfone@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> At 01:48 PM 10/21/2006, you wrote:Original poster: Stan <wsmg@xxxxxxxxxx>When drilling SS you need to go slow and keep from heating, the heat hardens the SS as your drilling. What I found to work best is using a hand drill and inching it.Gosh!! I can't imagine it being any "harder" than it is now!! The metal actually seems to "chip off" like glass!! These spheres appear to be already molten metal spun as is... But they are in two halves that seem welded together and then ball polished to final shape. Since they are very popular I guess they can justify sort of exotic processes to make them. Rather than "dent", I wonder if they would not just "crack and split" if hit really hard...BTW - Be sure to wear safety glasses and all for sure!!! Cheers, Terry