Helter Skelter

It's time to look into how blacksmiths get such repeatable results with their scrolls. As with much of their trade, it's a little by eye and a little with the help of a jig. The jig for making scrolls is a metal conical spiral, much like a helter skelter slide. This is so that the loops do not overlap as you turn them round the circles. They then tap them flat on the anvil. One of the problems with bending scrolls by hand is trying to fit the pliers in between the gaps of the loops without damaging the shape or the wire. I will be making miniature helter skelter style jigs in the coming week

Interestingly, when I found information about scroll jigs, there is much about the 'golden mean', what we call the Fibancci ratio nowadays. Here is a quote in laymans terms on how to use it to make an elegant scroll. Taken from a blacksmithing forum here


"First, you have to understand the Fibonacci sequence. In the "golden ratio" the simplest way to envision it is a line divided in two, but instead of a ratio of 1:2, it's more like 1:craziness. So 1/2 is 1 divided equally into two parts, where as the Fibonacci sequence is exactly 1+root 5 divided by 2 which equals 1.6180339887. But, you might ask, how does that make a scroll? Simply. The mathematics of the golden ratio and of the Fibonacci sequence are intimately interconnected. The sequence after all the maths is as follows: 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34...etc. So to find the golden spiral we do the simplest maths possible, use the first 6 numbers to draw a rectangle, and from that rectangle work down the sequence to form all squares to fill up the rectangle, and from there, draw arcs from the corners of each square till they touch and make a spiral."

This is not, of course, the only good spiral shape, some are tighter or looser depending on the desired look but it's a good place to start.