Metal cleaning & cutting in Southampton

[Jonboy_t]

I bought 3 metal beer kegs with a view to filling them with homebrew, but I've never got round to it and thought its about time I put them to good use.

I'm going to turn them into glass topped tables for sitting outside on these *ahem* balmy summer evenings we're having! What I really want to do is get them cleaned so they look nicer, but I also want to chop the top 3 or 4 inches off and hinge them so I can fill them with ice and have little outside coolers too.

I could do it with an angle grinder, but I don't think I could be accurate enough. Anyone know anywhere round southampton that can clean and cut these with more precision?

[zed4]

A friend of mine worked at Frontline Sheet Metal, they do everything to do with metal! I know they’re usually pretty busy with big contact stuff, but they might be able to help

[jamienshelly]

If you wanted to do it yourself its not that difficult, use a piece of masking tape and either mark the tape for your cut line, or use the edge of the tape as a guide, use a thin cutting blade and take your time, and for polishing it up they do metal polishing kits on the bay for reasonable prices, I got one to polish bits and bobs and I think its very good.
whether you do it yourself or get someone else to do it I'm sure they will look good and the ice box is a great idea.

[normalbloke]

Mortimer and Spake, Hazel Road. Get them to pop it into their small lathe and nip the top off.

[Crafty_]

do the kegs have any swage lines in ? cut to that, makes a good reference point for the cut.

Failing that you want to find somewhere with a big bandsaw I reckon. Not quite sure how you'd mount a beer keg in a lathe and it'd have to be pretty big too. I guess it'd be possible on a milling machine ?

[Jonboy_t]

Cheers chaps!

The kegs do have swage lines, but I've done angle grinding before and the results were less than pretty. Basically, anything that involves a steady hand, I'm pretty shocking at! Although the cleaning stuff does sound like a go-er, I'll have to take a look at it!

[Crafty_]

For cleaning get a polishing wheel and various "soaps", like this stuff http://www.screwfix.com/p/metal-polishing-kit-150m...

Find yourself a nice big torquey motor (old ones off an air compressor work well) and just polish them. You probably want to even use some wire wool to begin with. I'd then get them lacquered to prevent them going back to how they are now.
Depending on how anal you are you could get them to a mirror polish, but it will take ages and your arms will be about 8" longer from holding the keg so long

[normalbloke]

Crafty_ said:

do the kegs have any swage lines in ? cut to that, makes a good reference point for the cut.

Failing that you want to find somewhere with a big bandsaw I reckon. Not quite sure how you'd mount a beer keg in a lathe and it'd have to be pretty big too. I guess it'd be possible on a milling machine ?

That's why I mentioned Mortimer and Spake. I had my Unimog rims cut by them, to change the offset. The rims were 20" and went into their small lathe. They can turn stuff up to 7' in diameter. Big boys toys......