Custom Bird Bath - Hand Forged
I hope the title of this post doesn’t end up misleading…while I did hand forge most of the components for this bird bath, I did also “cheat” here and there, and used some modern processes to help the fabrication along.
So, about a month ago, I had a customer approach me to replicate, to the best of my ability, a birdbath that she had wanted for literally years. To that end, I suppose that would make this a hand forged forgery?
This is the photo I was working from…
Grainy and not completely clear, but more than enough to give a great jumping point for this project.
When trying to form metal, and not working from a position of having big metal forming jigs, it’s often necessary to flex the creative, “if it works, was it stupid?”, part of your brain. Blacksmithing a one-off isn’t terribly difficult…blacksmithing multiples of something, and aiming to have them all be identical? Well there you’ll find one or two challenges. A simple arch, to bridge the vertical supports of this bath, had me wracking my brain for the better part of an afternoon. An anvil’s horn is great for consistent curves when working on small metal scrolls and bends, but how do you get consistency on a 24” span of metal that needs to perfectly encircle a bird bath? Well, my solution was to clamp the metal to and antique steel wagon wheel, torch the crap out of it with an oxy-acetylene torch, and whack it into shape with a hammer.
And what the hell, it worked.
I’m pleased to say, my caveman, just clamp it and send it, style of metal fabrication actually work out quite nicely!
To be honest with you, that was the grandest adventure of this whole process…figuring out how the hell to make a straight piece of metal round over and over. After this main skeleton was complete, I dove back into the basics of blacksmithing, and forged about 40 scrolls to fill in the blanks of this bird bath adornment. Scrolls are the first thing just about every blacksmith learns to forge with a hammer and anvil, and this project sailed out to completion, smooth as silk.
