Fabricating the World’s Coolest Fantasy Football Trophy from Aluminum on the English Wheel
So, like every other dude on earth I play in a Fantasy Football league, our’s happens to be called the “Outcast League.” We’re just days away from crowning our inaugural champion, and we’ve got no trophy. I couldn’t bring myself to buy a cheap plastic thing on a wooden base, so I headed out to shop and got to work.
I found a pattern to make a fabric football online. This should work fine, since patterning cloth is essentially the same as patterning metal. From there on out I was just going by “feel” and kind of winging it. No real plan other than the “real” Lombardi trophy in the back of my mind.
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- Original pattern for the football quarters
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- Pattern trimmed and ready
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- Annealing the alumoinum by burning off the sharpie ink
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- Rolling the compound curve into the aluminum with the english wheel
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- Trimming each quarter with the beverly shear
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- After shrinking the edges the quarters are ready to weld into halves. Using a clamp to hold them steady
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- Welded football half
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- Patterns for the base
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- Fabricating the World’s Coolest Fantasy Football Trophy from Aluminum
The football is made from four pieces of .063″ aluminum and the base is .090″. To make the ball, I annealed the aluminum once by marking with a sharpie and burning off the ink with a MAP gas torch. After a few rounds rolling the entire sheet of four football quarters on the English Wheel, I annealed again to soften the metal. Next, I trimmed the individual pieces and gave them a healthy round of shrinking on the perimeter. I actually took two passes with the shrinker, once at full depth and another at half depth, this gets that “pucker” to bring the parts to an arch. After another pass on the English Wheel to smooth the metal the football quarters we’re ready to weld.
I fully TIG welded the quarters into two halves and did a little more trimming to make the halves match perfectly. After welding the halves together I began to work on a plan for the stand while he other pieces cooled. I did a quick sketch and made the pattern from three pieces of construction paper. A few bends on the sheet metal brake and it’s good to weld also.
The real time consuming part of this project was dressing the welds and sanding the scratches from the ball. Total build time 4.5 hours
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