August - The Month Of...

Metal Art!

(So, we didn't get this posted IN August because the end of the month was very hectic and stressful for us, but we promise the whole project was done by the 31st)

Jon was given a small brazing torch for his birthday in April and we hadn't had the chance to use it yet. Jon has always wanted to do welding and metal art projects, so we decided to do a simple metal sculpture for our first practice in metal working.

The only metal work I've ever done was some soldering in high school, so I really didn't have any vision for this project. Jon suggested we make an owl - I was down with that!

We found a cool owl drawing online (someone fantastically talented on DeviantArt) that had simple enough main shapes that we could cut them out of metal with the torch.

If we were REALLY into it we would have cut out each feather and layered them on, but that was a little far above our skill level for beginners.

I cut out the owl drawing and then traced the shapes onto a sheet of metal.

Then came the torching!

The hardest part was getting the gas and oxygen to balance right so that the flame would neutralize. Once we had it going though, it was a lot of fun!

I cut out the body and Jon did the face and tail feathers.

Once the metal pieces were cut out, we picked some hardware from a collection of Jon's grandpa's old tool box to make the eyes and feet - getting creative with ball bearings, gears and wing nuts :)

After marking where we wanted the pieces to go and lining them all up, we drilled holes to make space for the screws.

Everything was assembled...

And ta-da! Owl sculpture.

Although it was super basic and rough, I just liked being able to use the torch and see a different kind of creativity! I love being able to use things that are otherwise separate and unrelated to bringing them together and make something totally new. And I kind of like that the edges are uneven and have bubbled parts where the torch melted the metal. The flame made really cool colors around where it burned the metal. I really like the dimension it brought to the project. It was a really fun new project for us and I'm super proud of how it turned out!