Friday 13 September 2024

Metal Dragonflies

Apropos of yesterday's post on felting, while at the gift shop I mentioned we also spotted some dragonflies made from cutlery. I'm definitely going to have a go at making some of these and managed to obtain a good supply of 2nd hand cutlery from our local 2nd hand emporium for under a fiver, but lacking the knives. Essentially it's cutting with a disc cutter and a touch of tacking with my MiG welder.



I have all the necessary tools, so away I went on fashioning a body. I selected some rather nice looking forks and cut off the ends of two and tacked them to the remaining one, less the tines.


Not a bad 1st attempt on a body and tail - the metal being thick does help - now to find some knives. I'm sure I saw some in Hay's cutlery drawer......

There - knives included. Stitched together athwartships, but not yet fixed to the body.



Need a head and some ball bearings for eyes. Don't forget this is a 1st attempt, during which I learn what not to do.

Given the thickness of the metal, I did think of using my spot welder and may give that a go too. A spot welder doesn't spatter and the weld would be much cleaner.

Below are the wings welded to the body, but they gave me enormous problems. First and foremost spatter, but that's primarily because I've run out of shielding gas. I also tried to give the wings some texture by abrading them with a Roloc grinder, but it was far too coarse, but it's a prototype so not critical. I decided to overlap the 2 sets of wings slightly, which improves the aesthetic.


For legs I need forks with very long tines, which I currently lack; however, I had a spare door knob and spindle from the shed and thought I'd use that as a somewhat wobbly stand. The wobbliness was cured by grinding the end of the knob a little to create a small flat spot. That said, I don't have an endless supply of doorknobs to use for the next refinement.


Next is the head, which will counterbalance the whole thing. I've ordered 100 x 10mm ball bearings from e-Bay for £4.75, which won't arrive till next week.

I really need a metal buffer. 


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