Water spout

[chunkolini]

I was asked to make a fish shaped water spout to go over a pipe that allows spring water out of an old stone wall.
the customer saw this and liked it and asked for something similar.

Hmm, I cant do copper but I can fabricate it in steel and get it galvanized.
I said yes, but was concerned about how to make the mouth, the main body is a fairly simple set of single plane curves. But the mouth involves compound curves
I looked at making the mouth in sheet metal and gave up after a few minutes, and decided to make it out of 3mm mild steel bar tacked together like set of close fitted bars with a ring at the open end and surface weld it then grind it back to a smooth finish.
To my surprise it worked perfectly and only took an hour and half from starting the mouth to finishing it.


Customer loves it, off to the galvanizers next.

 

[ChrisJ]

Nice work chunko

 

[strada]

Lovely work as usual
That's a great idea how you did the mouth

 

[pondman]

Looks great Chunko'!! You've done an awesome job with the mouth, did it take a lot of grinding to clean it up like that?

 

[chunkolini]

Not as long as I expected, each side took about 45 minutes from laying the first weld to being finished.
The key is getting the small bars laid out accurately, get the gap right and the welds flow beautifully into each other, should have taken a photo prior to grinding.
It does involve a lot of yelping as I spot weld the bits together, the heat builds up in the structure.

 

[Robotstar5]

Nice work it will be interesting to see how the details are affected by the galv coat.

 

[Metalsculptor]

Good work Chunko',

I used a similar method to make these...

 

[blacksmithstris]

That is a neat process, I do like how it looks on the inside of the mouth, gives it a nice contrast.

 

[pondman]

Good work Chunko',

I used a similar method to make these...

Is that made one bar, spiral?

 

[Metalsculptor]

It is spiralled, but took a few bars to do it.
Mostly formed cold around itself, but some heat used on the ends then hammered them into place.
I hate waste, even if it means more work!