I got a book at Christmas, "Professional Sheet Metal techniques". I have wanted to build a t bucket for some time. It would be cool to do it out of metal so I have been studying.

Anyway, I know what an English wheel is. I have never used one. Are they hard to use? It would be hard to justify the expense just to play with it to see If I could pick up any skill on it.

One thing I read was that the English wheel was not really used much in the United states until the 1980's. What did people do before this? Would person just build a hammerform?

I wondered if a person could weld together a metal "buck" of a T bucket, tach weld sections of sheet metal to it, then heat the metal with a rose bud tip to make the sheet metal "bend" in the proper areas so the metal would lay flat against the buck?

Again just trying to learn from you expert metalworkers.