My cousin is getting married in a few weeks and like me he's into his metalwork & woodwork. I wanted to make him something out of metal & I came across a bag of horse shoes I bought a while ago. Then I remembered some horse shoe art I'd seen on the forum, a pair of entwined hearts.
First job was finding a decent picture of what I wanted & printed it out A4 size. Next was finding 4 matching shoes - not easy. Out of a 25kg bag I only had 2 sets of four!
I got my oxy/propane cutting torch set to a nice flame & clamped it into my workmate leaving both hands free to work. It worked quite well though I had to keep tweaking the propane reg as the bottle is nearly empty!
I made the first half heart by heating the shoe and hammering it on a short section of railway track. To get the correct shape I used the printed picture as a guide. When I was happy with the shape I then made 3 matching halves, remembering to make a left & a right side so the nail grooves all end up on the front!
I tig welded one pair together, looped the other pair through, welded those and finally welded both hearts together. Cleaned it up with a powerfile & wire brush, gave it a coat of wax & ended up with this.
Quite pleased with the result, though my arm is still suffering from all the hammering! This is the first time I've used heat to make anything decorative and I found it very therapeutic and relatively easy. My grandfather was a blacksmith so I may have inherited some of his genes. The bellows, anvil and tools from his forge were sold at an auction many years ago & I would like to track them down and bring them back into the family.
First job was finding a decent picture of what I wanted & printed it out A4 size. Next was finding 4 matching shoes - not easy. Out of a 25kg bag I only had 2 sets of four!
I got my oxy/propane cutting torch set to a nice flame & clamped it into my workmate leaving both hands free to work. It worked quite well though I had to keep tweaking the propane reg as the bottle is nearly empty!
I made the first half heart by heating the shoe and hammering it on a short section of railway track. To get the correct shape I used the printed picture as a guide. When I was happy with the shape I then made 3 matching halves, remembering to make a left & a right side so the nail grooves all end up on the front!
I tig welded one pair together, looped the other pair through, welded those and finally welded both hearts together. Cleaned it up with a powerfile & wire brush, gave it a coat of wax & ended up with this.
Quite pleased with the result, though my arm is still suffering from all the hammering! This is the first time I've used heat to make anything decorative and I found it very therapeutic and relatively easy. My grandfather was a blacksmith so I may have inherited some of his genes. The bellows, anvil and tools from his forge were sold at an auction many years ago & I would like to track them down and bring them back into the family.
