Custom metal found object sculpture

I have been wanting to experiment with metal sculpture since I was in college 24 years ago, but the art department didn’t have a strong sculpture background. So the desire has remained dormant until now! A repeat customer and friend has commissioned my first metal sculpture of a lifesize fox made of garden tools based on this image…

My main tools to accomplish this are…

This heavy duty bench vise. I use this to bend and fashion the wires and the parts.

A mig welder to join all the pieces…

A siphen fed sand blaster to clean the metal where the welds go.

Angle grinders, one with a cut-off wheel and the other with a grinding wheel. Most of the metal parts are cut using the cut off wheel. I use the grinder to clean up the welds and the cuts.

I have been saving up metal parts since the fall. I went shopping at local antique stores for old tools as well as some modern retail stores for some new tools.

  

I started with a 1/4″ rod to get the proportions set in a simple skeleton.

Next, added a shovel and trowels on the head as well as tomato cages for body fill.

Added piano petals for feet, hole maker for a snout, and mini rakes for a tail.

Added saw blades and sickles for legs, a cultivator to define the curve of the back, shovels for shoulder blades, a shovel and hoe for the rear end, some trowels and saw blades for the body and two eyes made of strange nuts I found in my shop.

Here are the finished pics after I burned and sandblasted everything to give it a uniform aged and distressed look.

Now it’s time to clean up my mess!

Thank you for taking the time to look at this. If you have a sculpture you would like made, go to http://www.customwoodcarvings.com and click the contact page to get in touch. If you enjoy these posts, click the “follow” button to recieve a notification when a new post has been published.

I have been meditating on this scripture – “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only True God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” There is eternal life to be experienced NOW while we are alive on the Earth. But it only happens by cultivating a relationship with the invisible God of all creation as well as a relationship with the visible body of Jesus found in His committed followers whom He has sent. It appears that real eternal life is only found in these precious relationships according to scripture. From my experience, I can say that this is true and it only gets richer and richer with time.

Kris