Forged Plant Stand Part 3

The leaves and vines are welded together and have entwined themselves around the legs.

After forging the base and stem I weld them on to the back of the flower. Then I will forge the stamen and weld it inside the flower.

Scale forms on the outside of all objects that are forged so I strip it off with a two hour bath in muriatic acid.

I apply several coats of patina to the raw metal to get the flower the color I want.

Now that’s what I call a flower! Tomorrow I will weld them to the vines and patina the vines, leaves, and flower stems together. Later in the week I will patina the stand one more time and then finish it with several coats of clear polyurethane. It's almost done!

Forged Plant Stand Part 2

After I finished forging the other two legs I forged the cross braces.

This is the first test fit-up for the major elements.

To create the illusion of thickness I emboss some flat bar and curve it to fit under the top.

I forged the ends of the cross braces and weld everything together then moved the stand outside into the bright sunshine. I really like the combination of the rough surface texture and changing contours.

Today I finished forging the vines so I made a symbolic offering of thanks to Vulcan and ask him to guide me on my final quest. Tomorrow the flowers and leaves will begin to become part of the vines that will encircle the legs of the stand.

Forged Plant Stand

This is the concept drawing that I used to get this commission. It’s missing the placement of the flowers that were added at the meeting with the client.

The legs will be forged from 1” by 1” by 12” long solid stock.

I had to turn the forge up to twice its normal operation pressure just to get this amount of steel soft enough to forge.

Most of the forging was done on the fly press with tooling I made for this job.

There’s a lot of straightening to keep the part under control.

Top half of the first leg is done. This end starts off as 1½” by ½” and tapers to ¾” by ½” in the middle.

Here I’m heating the other end of the leg. This end starts off as 1” by 1” and  tapers to ¾” by ½”  in the middle.

One leg done with two more to go. Wow! That was a lot of work!

I finished the day by forging half of the leaves that will be used on the vine that will circle the stand.