Palm Sculpture and Spring Delights

Today I worked on a coconut palm sculpture most of the day.  The clients who commissioned it visited the studio in the afternoon and we discussed the progress.  They gave me the go-ahead to finish it along the line I am heading.  This has been a very interesting and challenging project for me and I feel I have learned a lot and there are still a few experiments I want to do.  I don’t charge clients for my learning time.  I got that notion from Francis Whitaker.  He said something like this.  “A person comes to you and requests a job.  That person expects you to know you business.  If you need to study and figure out how to do it that cost is on your time - not their time.”

It was cloudy, cool, windy and we got a little bit of rain today.  Spring arrives it “fits and starts” - whatever that means.  We might yet get a dusting of snow, but the march to summer is inevitable.  Is that why we call it March?  Oh well.

Behind Fall I favor Spring most.  I think that I watch every detail of the arrival of the new signs of life and growth.  The first green buds.  The first bloom of this and that.  Now baby squirrels are scampering throughout the tree branches,  Baby bunnies are bounding around the garden border.

I have seen the house wrens this week and orioles and a wood thrush.  The turkey vultures came back a couple of weeks ago.  But, the two snake hibernaculums I watch are still closed.

Betty is cutting fresh asparagus every day and it is delicious.  This bed is only a few years old but it looks like it will be a really good one.  Two previous attempts in other locations didn’t work well.  The peas are growing but the spinach is similar to the Kansas wheat crop - spotty.

A robin pair has nested on the east end of my studio north porch on the east side in a 100 pound roll of 12 gauge wire.  Momma flew off when I approached but I took a photo of her three eggs,

American Robins are thrushes and abundant in most of the US.  Several pair nest on my property each year and some overwinter down by the river.  They seem almost social.  I can be watering and a worm-stalking robin will come up within a few feet of me.

All my cognizant life I have known robin eggs were blue.  I could pick that blue out of a lineup.  But when I heard Francis Whitaker say “quench it when the color is robin’s egg blue” that color took on a different meaning in my mind.  My long time love of nature had one more link to my love of the blacksmithing craft. 

This morning we leave early to attend the BAM conference in Sedalia, Missouri.  We will begin the four-day adventure with a day trip with dear friends to a site which is significant in the history of my Father's relatives.

Friends, Crawfish and Shrimp

So, how is this going to relate to blacksmithing?  Well, If I hadn’t been a blacksmith and put some pieces into the PrairiePasttimes Gallery these people would likely never have found me and become my friends.

A couple from the gulf area drives to a rural central Kansas town a couple of times a year to visit friends, relax and hunt.  They have purchased a number of the things I make for the gallery and commissioned several botanical sculpture pieces.

One of the annual events they host is the Crawfish Broil.  This year, Betty and I were invited.  On Sunday afternoon we drove a couple of hours west to a small town I had never heard of until I became acquainted with these friends.  Actually, the site is a quarter mile east of the town cemetery on a rock road, north side.

The owners of the property are lovely smart, professional people, now retired, still vigorous and charming. Their homestead is a testimony to something like a frontier mentality of carving out a paradise from the prairie.  They live in a beautiful limestone home (stone they set themselves), have manicured gardens and host a colony of martins.

The couple who provides the gulf food feast of crawfish and shrimp are my clients.  They too are smart, charming professional people. They brought a monumental supply of the seafood with the equipment to broil and season and serve.  Tables were lined up on the drive covered with newspaper and stocked with melted butter and shrimp sauce.  Everyone brought their own brand of beer and their were many sides and deserts including home made ice cream and a special chocolate treat from New Orleans.  I think it was called Doberge cake. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doberge_cake

There were some thunderstorms in the morning bringing less rain than we hoped for but the afternoon was sunny, warm and breezy.  Betty and I met almost every one of the 30 or so guests for the first time and found them to be a very convivial group.

The event was one of those social treasures.  A friend once advised me, “If you ever have to pick between justice and grace, always choose grace.”  I don’t know if we justly deserved an invitation but we gracefully accepted it and will remember it fondly.

I have been working on a botanical sculpture for these clients and intended to have it finished for them to take home this week.  I could list the excuses for why I might fail this deadline by a few days but that would waste our time.  All the elements are finished but there is the assembly and tweaking and finish details that remain.  These things can’t be rushed.  This is a piece of work I want be proud of it.

On the other hand, the client might find it is not what they want.  That is OK with me.  In fact, I believe the most important thing is that the client gets what they want. Delivering that satisfaction is what establishes a successful business.  Even more important, delivering what clients want could make them friends.  We’re especially lucky if those friends know where to procure great seafood.

Crawfish & Shrimp broil.

Palm trunk test piece.

Preheating Welds

I’m assembling a 6’ tall coconut palm sculpture and the assembly is done with MIG welding but I’m trying to make those joints nearly invisible.

When I first started welding, I bought a MIG welding setup and started welding.  I didn’t own a torch and never had any lessons.  I turned out some pretty ugly welds but I got a shop going.  It was some time before I caught on to the advantages of preheating welds.

Today I seem to divide my MIG welding into two general categories - welding which is part of a product and welding which part of a jig or other shop fixture.  In the products I do preheat because the weld metal flows so smoothly and blends with the base metal to hide the weld.  In the jigs I usually don’t preheat.  The welds don’t have to look good and they are easier to cut apart when disassembling the jig.

I keep a small cutting tip on my torch setup most of the time.  When I’m assembling sculptural elements (usually no thicker than 1/4”) I use the torch with a neutral flame to preheat to just about a welding heat then put in the MIG bead.  If the weld needs a little more dressing I turn the torch to a reducing flame and melt the bead and let it flow more.  It takes practice to not overdo it.

There is a lot more to good welding technique which I don’t know and don’t need in the type of work I do.

http://www.lincolnelectric.com/en-us/support/process-and-theory/pages/preheat-detail.aspx

How to Draw a Volute or Acanthus Scroll

This is not something I have ever needed or used but I collected a few references - just in case.  

How to Draw a Volute or Acanthus Scroll

http://surfacefragments.blogspot.com/2011/02/how-to-draw-volute-or-acanthus-scroll.html

http://www.thisiscarpentry.com/2009/07/15/drawing-a-volute/

http://chestofbooks.com/crafts/metal/Metal-Pattern/The-Volute.html#.Uw3iJ3lEBpo

Scroll Maker - 2D with SketchUp Scroll Maker

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mES14SnIAP8

Scroll Maker - 3D with SketchUp Scroll Maker

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxXdXy9Gdes

http://www.classicaladdiction.com/2013/08/the-classic-acanthus/

The Portable Hole

I have a half a dozen Tiki lamps which I place around our deck area in the summer to discourage mosquitos and provide a little night lighting.  The ground is so hard they are difficult to set up by digging holes so I forged an alternative which I call the portable hole.

It is stake with two aligned loops which can be driven into the ground or pushed in with foot pressure.  The base of the Tiki lamp pole easily slides into the loops.

The stakes also serve as hose guards protecting the small shrubs planted around the deck.

I used 1/2” round stock only because I have a lot of it.  3/8” or 7/16” would probably work as well.

This is my list of instructions:

1. Cut 48” (or more) of 1/2” round. The length determines the height of the handle.

2. Draw tapers on both ends.  Scroll the top end for a safety finial.

3. Coil around a 1.25” mandrel about a foot from the ground spike end. 

 and make another loop in the same plane so there is an interval of 10” or so between them.  For aesthetic reasons it’s probably best to wrap both loops in the same way and align by either CCW or CW bending and not a combination.

4. Lock the ring in vise and torch heat the shaft on each side and bend 90º on each side in opposite directions to align the hole at 90º orientation.  Do the same with the second loop and check alignment.

5. Bend the top end to form a teardrop crook handle.  

It’s a handy garden device and could be used in other circumstances.  I’d make a jig if I were going to do a bunch of them.

A short version of the lamp holder/hose guard. Natural rust finish.

Portable hole sketch.

When bending the hole to the perpendicular the shaft can be aligned by bending CCW or CW to match.

Farm Mechanics

A couple of deadline projects have me pinned so there is no time to think about writing.  I did stumble across one interesting old time reference.

This is a free online book. The first chapter relates to blacksmithing and woodworking and has a lot of nice line drawn tool illustrations.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/39791/39791-h/39791-h.htm

Pipe Texturing Dies

I often make hollow formed branches in various things i make such as table legs.  In most cases I begin with either 12 or 14 gauge sheet about 4” wide and 3’ in length.  I put on the bark texture then roll the sheet into tube.  Most of the work results in limb-like stock less than three or four inches in diameter.

However, I sometimes start with pipe or tube when I’m making 1/2” to 1” diameter elements.  I have made some dies to create the texture without creating excessive collapse deformity.

I begin with two mild steel blanks about 5/8” x 2” x 3”.  I chose a round bar mandrel slight smaller that the tube to be textured.  I position the two die block blanks to allow easy insertion of that mandrel and hold them in place with a couple of small pieces of welded flat bar scrap and add a porter bar handle.

The assembly is heated evenly to a high forging heat and placed in the hydraulic press.  Usually one squeeze finishes the set if the heat was right.

The finish work shaping is done with the angle and die grinders.  The hyperboloid cavity shape is a type of complex surface that I really can’t illustrate well with SketchUp 8.  Probably the Pro version would do it better.

The final step is to run several long MIG beads longitudinally.  These are the ridges which do the texturing. The dies can then be joined is some facing to keep them reasonably well aligned.  In this particular type of die the alignment is not really very critical.

Because the die working face is only a couple of inches in length the tube can be textured, tapered and bent all in a single process.

I’ll add some images of the dies later.