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Wednesday, April 25, 2012

A Hornet Nest Sculpture


Three years ago I was cleaning up an area of the studio where a lot of small pieces of sheet metal had accumulated.  I tried to think of a project which would make them go away and also be educational for me.  I decided to try making a hornet nest sculpture.
After some image searching on Google and other reading I constructed a wire frame for a full sized nest.  The rest was straight forward but a but boring.  Each skin piece was cut with a throatless shear, swaged to radius, fitted and MIG welded in place.  When fully covered I used the oxygen/acetylene torch to fuse some of the seams to make the surface smoother.  It was finished with a rust patina.
The scrap mess was cleared out but the nest moved around the shop from place to place until last week when one of my assistants, Scott, got out an extension ladder and hung the “nest” in a tree south of the building.  I think it looks pretty cool.




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