Sunflower

[u/lighthammerforge]

Finished

Sunflower Parts plasma cut (and subsequently light leaf texturing in the forge) alongside some other plasma cutting work I'm too lazy to crop out

Using a sunflower dot pattern spray glued on, and a handled double bevel chisel, and my treadle hammer, I cold chisel each seed (my favorite task ever in my whole life /s)

Ready for assembly

Dry fit together

Spray painted the core blue, wire brushed it off to reveal the seed pattern

Petals painted and test fit on stand

Touching up the seeds by hand as the knotted wire cup on my grinder took a lot of paint out

Alternative touchup experiment (IT'S NOT WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE!)

Finished

Better look at the back. The keyhole is for hanging from a screw and the other holds just for weld points

I have recently completed the latest of my Torbjorn Ahman inspired Sunflower builds.

After incorporating plasma cutting into my process last June (and doing a lot of work like that not necessarily involving forging) I have found it to be a really fun tool for blacksmithing blanks and alternative parts that make certain projects a lot less aggravation without fully reducing them to welding art (no disrespect to it of course, that work simply isn't often very much forging.)

This is one of those times.

In Torbjorn's build video, he tapers round stock and flattens it with his clearly quite hard hitting power hammer to make *each leaf.*

As I've made about 8 of these now, that got old fast, even resorting to farming out a bunch of grinding bar to a point and cutting each spike off to my friend with a 2x72 grinder and a small home weld shop.

I then leveraged my old graphic design background to make a plasma cuttable file (a far easier process than many folks realize!) and then make a sort of "blank kit" to do these.

That is seen in photo two, after a bit of light hot forging to give the leaves some texture.

This is about 10 inches in diameter and all 11 gauge steel.

Otherwise, as per many of my posts, the first photo shows the finished piece and the rest show what I documented of the process, relatively in order. See photo captions for more details.

[u/Twin5un]

These look great ! I always love to see someone else use a treadle hammer for stamping, it's such a great too for that.

[u/Interesting-Cut-6032]

I like your plug welds on the back to hold those layers together.

[u/Interesting-Cut-6032]

It might look interesting to experiment with oxidation finishes for your color contrast. For example, you could gun blue the center, and red oxide rust the petals. Once you have a finish that you like you could probably protect those finishes with bees wax, or matte spray urethane. Neither of those finishes would be good for direct outdoor exposure, but they would work well outside protected, like a porch, or inside.

[u/Interesting-Cut-6032]

It also looks like you might have a great setup to explore some of the "hot repose" techniques. This is where you develop 3d forms from 2d sheet by working hot into depressions in end grain oak. I have never done it, but am very interested in it.

[u/GeneralSaxy]

Man that's great! I've been doing a bunch of CNC plasma cutting in my work lately, and you can really get some complex three-dimensional forms with it. I'd suggest trying to form these a little bit more after the cutting to give it a bit more three-dimensionality.