All togehter and ready to test!

The English Wheel is complete and whole!
Huzzah!

The wheel is done! Now it's time to test it!

The English Wheel is used to manipulate the steel to dome and create the illusion of the breasts for the armor. As the steel is pushed and pulled between the top and bottom wheels, the steel expands and becomes thinner. Since only a selected portion of the steel is being effected, the steel is forced upward instead of outward.

Testing the effects of annealing on a piece of chrome plated steel (upper left) and galvanized steel (lower right). Annealing is when you heat up steel and cool is quickly by dunking it in water (or in our case, tossed in a pile of snow). Doing this makes the steel softer, less brittle, and overall, easier to manipulate. As for the test pieces in the photo, the once shiny chrome steel turned a bluish green color and the galvanized steel lost it's reflectiveness and most of its visual texture.

A photo of Jess and the chain she spent two hours on freeing it from the contraption is used to be attached to (lower right). I think it used to be apart of a mass sorting device in a postoffice.