SC - FO: make your own specialty shape cake pans, cookie cutters, etc.

[Gerekr at aol.com]

"FO" is "Finished Object"; term picked up from H-Costume list.

We have an eight-year-old birthday party coming up on Saturday, so Gerek 
made a Pikachu "cake pan" tonite.

Well, a cake-sized, Pikachu-shaped rim, with aluminum foil wrapped under 
and up the outside of the sides, to bake on a cookie sheet.  He used the 
Pikachu cookie cutter he made last fall from a metal Planter's peanut can 
for a model.  We're not great at soldering, and don't know how it would 
react with cake mix, so we'll see how the foil floor works, and probably 
not bother about doing anything more permanent.  Oh, Gerek just said he 
got the idea to try this from seeing spring-form pans, that don't have 
built-in floors... 

Obviously he's both very good with his hands and artistically inclined 
(that's Meistari Gerekr, OL, OP), but practically the only tool he used 
was a needle-nose vise-grip pliers.  Cut a 2" wide strip of steel (well, 
he did use the beverly shear to cut the strip) from an old water-heater 
jacket; wire-brushed it clean (and I guess that's a "tool").  Cleaned up 
my measurements and just started bending.  Riveted the ends together (OK, 
add a small anvil, a punch and hammers to the tool list).  Took him about 
a half-hour/45 min. for the wire-brushing (it was pretty grotty, had to 
take paint off as well as rust); straightening out my number crunching 
took about 30 min; the actual bending and riveting took about 20 min.

I've been meaning to go look at the cookiecutter.com urls, but anybody 
could probably rev' up their local armor-maker to this level, especially 
if you provide the design, 8-)!!

Chimene