Beautiful Birds made from Vintage Cutlery, for Mark and Leanne - Part 1
Вставка
- Опубліковано 30 лис 2024
- Beautiful Birds made from Vintage Cutlery - part 1
Part 1: Showing the prodution process of one of the birds.
Each bird consists of :
1 grapefruit spoon, 1 soup spoon, 2 dessert spoons, 1 teaspoon, 3 forks, 7 patterned handles, including Oneidas classic 'Cantata' design.
Mig welded and made from 100% reclaimed & repurposed materials.
Part 2 linked here: I mount the birds on a 'leafy / branchy' stainless feature that wraps around a central wooden piece of Ash - • Birds Made From Vintag...
Subscribe and hit Notifications for a reminder on upcoming part 2 and all future videos. Also like and share to really do me a favour.
Thank you, Enjoy the video
John
If you would like to purchase one of my creations, there is a small selection currently available on my website @ www.johnnorrismetalsculpture.com
You can also find me on Instagram and Facebook
/ johnnorrismetalsculpture
/ johnnorrismetalsculpture
Considering doing some regular live streams from the workshop. If anyone has any thoughts on that please drop a comment.
Exquisite as ever. I can only 2nd the comments regarding the inclusion of your website address. As with a vast majority of creatives they struggle with self-promotion but your work is worthy of a much wider audience so to not ever be afraid to advertise/shout about your skills and wares. Kudos to you and your unbelievable talents. What is your background and when/how did you come up with the idea of crafting from old cutlery? Superb
Hi Stef, thanks for the kind comments, very humbling and energising, cheers!
Background and how did I start doing this?
I guess I've always been quite practical. Lucky to have had a father who was / is a talented engineer and would never be shy of taking something on that needed designing / building / fixing / improving etc. I always liked working with my hands and with tools. Had a lot of cars and motorbikes over the years which I've generally done most of the work or maintenance on and always enjoyed a bit of DIY. Creatively I think I always had some vision and perhaps some ability, I could draw pretty well if I took the time or whittle a bit of wood in to something neat but I never really had the belief or confidence to do anything with that ...
... then quite randomly I did some work as a gardener a few years ago. From working in Banking and then in Computer Networking I was suddenly working with my hands full time and absolutely loved it. It was hard graft but very satisfying to see the fruits of your labours create / upkeep beautiful things and to get paid for it. It gave me a whole load of confidence that actually my hands were pretty good tools. I have good 'feel' and 'touch', always been half decent with a ball or a bat / racket / cue etc. So anyway, I ended up buying a cheap gas MIG welder with a view to fixing something that was broken. Randomly I found myself at a car boot sale the next weekend and just by chance a guy there was selling a plastic bucket half full of cutlery. I looked at it thinking nothing more than 'sweet ... cheap metal to practice welding!' and went away happy.
What happenned next was quite random. I picked up a handful of spoons that were to be the next attempts (victims) at some pretty basic and shocking welds. As I picked them up 3 of them just fell in to a shape in my hand that looked like the form of a birds back and beak. I believe the term is 'pareidolia' ... like when when you recognise a shape in a cloud or a face in a knot of wood. It just stood out to me and I felt compelled to tack weld them together. The first 'kingfisher' was born. It was very very rough, I have a photo of it somewhere, I if I can find it I'll stick it up on the community tab ... but never the less it planted a seed in my mind that grew and flourished and branched off in ever more creative directions. A couple of weeks later I put together my first 'Jackdaw'. Not that tidy but (even if I say so myself) it was elegant, the first piece I stood back from and had a real sense of pride. My only gauge were my friends, who would look at it and couldn't stop praising it. Then (about 5 weeks after buying the welder) I saw a guy make a 'Predator' on a youtube vid and (always loved that movie) I thought 'yeah I fancy having a crack at that'.
Took me a couple of months in my spare time to put it together (75 hours I think and 100 or so spoons) and it turned out really well. Not sure why but I'd started filming (badly) what I was doing and so I had these videos of me building this kinda cool thing and I'd put them up on a UA-cam channel ... this one!. A website called 'People Are Awesome' contacted me and they wanted to use my videos. Anyway, long story short they put up a heavily edited 3 or 4 min clip and it got 700k views in maybe a week. I couldn't believe it. So many views and likes and positivity, people calling me a 'talented artist' asking me how much it was, something I'd never even considered. So many other compliments that, to be honest, I kinda laughed at and shook my head ... I still laugh when people say those things haha ... but it did make me 'believe' to the point where I put a few things up for sale, and people started asking me to make things. I did a few public displays and they went very well.
I'm still very much on the first few laps of my race I think. Have been tweaking the car a bit, learning a lot, working out where I want to take it and what its limits and possibilities are. It's only really the last 6 months where i've started trying to take it somewhere properly, professionally ... better designs, better finishing, better organisation, better social media etc etc. Right now it's pretty humble beginnings but I do very much hope I can take it somewhere special. I'm really enjoying designing and making these latest vintage cutlery birds so expect more of them and numerous spin offs in similar styles. I have so many ideas which excite the hell out of me, some big showy complex pieces to come in the future. I keep promising a Dragon and honestly its still very near the beginning but that one is my little baby right now. Been on the back burner for a while but its been simmering away nicely ....
I'm going to pin your comment Stef because I get asked those questions a lot and it's nice to have a chance to answer them in depth here. Thanks again for the nice comments, they truly fill my tank, cheers! Namaste.
YOU KNOW WHY WE HAVE DOCTORS AND LAYWERS AND PIPFITTERS ETC.....................BECAUSE THEY CANT WELD.............AWESOME JOB BUD
Hey SCJ, coming from an actual welder! .... that means an awful lot! Thank you! Hope you are well
Awesome job! That little machinist Vice on the Lazy Susan is genius. That’s the best thing I’ve seen in a long time. I’d love to see the mechanism underneath it. I’ll have a look at your videos and see if you show it. 😅
@@cconnon1912 instagram.com/tv/CYC_mXVlj7L/?igsh=c2t4NTdkNWN1cTZs
GOD BLESS YOUR HANDS, YOUR JOB IS PURE ART!!!!!
That's a really nice comment, thank you, and yes ... right now ... god ... please bless my hands!
Very nice. 👍👌
Brasil, São Paulo, zona norte, maravilhoso trabalho
very nice love birds cant wait to give it a try.
i wish my welding was as tidy as yours,
some thing i need to work on,
your a natural when it comes to making those birds
and the finish is always superb.😊😊
cheers buddy
nice bro
So Awesome!!!!
Thank you for all your hard work.
beautiful
Cheers m8.
Your creativity and craftsmanship are astonishing. Beautiful!
Thank you!
No problem, if you need any tips give me a shout.
beautifully done,
Cheers!
Wow, your info is really appreciated….you spent a lot of time educating me! I copied your whole thing and printed it out…thank you x10!
You're welcome
Nice
Very good, very nice!
ty sir
That is beyond superb! Wow, incredibly beautiful art. I’m now rushing to the thrift store to grab a bucket of cutlery. Thank you so much for sharing, man. I’ve subscribed to your channel. All the best, and cheers from mighty Alberta, Canada!
Go for it! Cheers
You are so talented John, I love to watch you work :) you should always include your web address in the product description bud. I automatically went to look for it, i'm sure others would too! great work keep it up :)
Thanks Doc, good comment, i'll add that right now.
Love your work. Can i ask the settings you use. I am learning and need the advice. Thanks in advance.
Hello Alan, thanks for the comment. I hope this long and lengthy reply helps you out!
Depends on a number of factors: wire thickness, material thickness, tacking vs running a bead on thin material etc.
First off, I should start by saying that I am far from a good welder! I have some reasonable experience with cutlery these days and that helps, but quite honestly I just watched a few 'basic welding tips' videos on UA-cam and started experimenting. You will find that trial and error will serve you well, there is no substitute for this experience. Having said that, here's a few pointers ....
Ok so ... first off have to tell you about my welder because if you are wanting to weld stainelss steel (cutlery) then you are going to need a shielding gas (typically I use 95% argon 5% CO2 in the MIG or 100% Argon on the TIG). Alot of cheap welders claim to be 'MIG' welders but use no gas, they are using 'flux core' wire which isn't really legitimate MIG because its the flux that creates the gas within the weld puddle rather than an external source that actually shields the weld as intended, thus avoiding impurities etc. Flux core wire is not really going to give you any sort of weld or finish that you'll be happy with, also generally alot of weld splatter and more often than not porous (swiss cheese like) welds that have no real integrity. Fine for agricultural mild steel welding but not this! Likewise, using 'pub gas' (CO2) wont work for stainless and will give the same results.
So what I am saying is ... you need not just something that claims to be a 'MIG' but an actual gas MIG! FYI, my welder was the cheapest gas MIG you could buy online 4 years ago ... its a 'Wolfmig 140x'. Very cheap and cheerful but as (I hope) you can see, quite capable. I think they retail at about £200 now. It really doesn't owe me anything any more but it's still going on like a trooper, I use it for almost everything!
Right on to welding cutlery then ...
Wire:
I use 0.6mm welding wire (generally mild steel to be honest but sometimes stainless), if I use stainless wire in the MIG then I will use the 100% argon bottle. You can use 0.8 but the welds are typically bigger / hotter, easier to burn through and its just an unnecessary amount of material to lay down and then have to clean up. Overall 0.6 is much more precise and better with thinner material (car bodywork for example) You can get small rolls of it at Halfords for £8 and they last a good while!
Materials:
So, cutlery comes in a few different grades of stainless, sometimes it's stamped, for example 18/10, and this refers to the content of chromium and nickel in it. Leave an assorted tub of generic cutlery outside and you'll find that some of it rusts, some of it doesn't, this is due to differing qualities / properties of the different grades used. If you want nice quality stuff then as a general rule of thumb I would say look for cutlery with a brand name on it or a content mark (rare to find but 18/10 is good!)
Second hand cutlery can be expensive. Your best bet is to trawl the charity shops or ... if you can find one ... try and hunt down the main sorting warehouse for charity shops that have more than 1 outlet. Generally they won't sell cutlery because of the nationwide plague of butter knife stabbings!
... joking obviously ... many do sell the nice stuff or silver plate stuff but what you're looking to do is just to make a contact and get an 'in' to sort through their stuff, the bulk of which will generally get taken to the local scrap yard if you dont get in there first. I donate (typically) £15 and walk away with a large plastic tub of the stuff, a few hundreds items. Good for me, good for them! I do also buy the real quality stuff from cutlery traders online (Oneida patterns typically, beautifully ornate handles good for decoration) but these can be anything up to £5 for a fork! Occasionally I'll luck out and find a cheap set on ebay or i'll have a set that a trader wants in return.
Settings:
Ok probably this will be dependent on your welder and even though I'll quote you the settings that I use it wouldn't surprise me if another WolfMIG 140x ran slightly different .. it's not a high quality tool. As a general rule of thumb the word on the street is 30 amps per 1 mm thickness of material. My welder is 140 Amps max and has 6 'power settings', so ... divide 140 by 6 gives me a tad under 24 amps for setting 1, approx 48 for setting 2, 72 for 3 etc etc.
I'f I'm welding a thicker bit of fork to a spoon (like in these birds) then I will often tack on setting 3 which really is a bit hot, so I'll start the weld on the thinner spoon and move quite quickly to the thicker fork as the heat builds up. Occasionally I'll penetrate slightly through it but it's an easy clean up with sanding discs on my die grinders and then polish on the mop. (320 / 600 / 1000 grit). 600 is pretty much enough but if i'm going uber mirror I also have grades up to 2000 but really as long as the spoon isn't badly scratched or dinged then 600 is perfectly acceptable to then mop polish.
You'd be amazed what a good polishing compound can do. (Menzerna do a quality range of professional compound bars - try thepolishingshop.co.uk and look for a medium cut green compound and then a finer white compound to buff finish (which also has a little cut to it). Best to have a softer mop for the finish. You can generally fit these either side of a standard bench grinder.
Spoon to spoon generally i'll be on setting 2 which (at approx 48 amps) is not far off for quality cutlery, which tends to have a bit more meat to it. I generally reject anything than I can bend easily, it's just garbage!
Wire speed:
Down to experience but if its bouncing back off the weld then its too fast! and if the wire is disappearing towards the nozzle or getting stuck to the nozzle then its too slow!
One of the most common mistakes is having too much distance between the nozzle and the work piece. Don't be afraid to get right on in there! Try tacking two spoons together with a few mm clearance and then with an inch. There is a big difference! Again, little things you learn through trial and error!
Hmm what else? ... dunno really. If you got any specific questions feel free to ask. It's a small channel with not many comments so I do read them and am happy to share what (little) I know!
Only other thoughts are this ....
Best tool upgrade I ever made was getting an air compressor!
25 litre is useable (if slightly irritating while it catches up to the tools) but I just got a 50l and that is a significant upgrade. Paid an amazing £50 for it last week ... it needed a service and a new capacitor (£8 item) which I had a spare of anyway. I was lucky (assuming it lasts for any length of time) I'd expect normally to pay £150 for any half decent second hand oil cooled 50 litre comp, ... regardless, money well spent. With luck you might find a 25 litre oil cooled for around the £70 mark. Check out facebook market place / ebay and don't be afraid to haggle hard!
The die grinders are between £15 and £20 for cheap ones. I have 5 or 6 and not one has let me down yet. Bargain! Also, just brilliant tools! I like them because (whilst I still use a Dremel - which is also brilliant tool) they are much beefier with better collets and capable of hocking out a lot more material or sanding alot faster with the finer grade discs. Such a wide range of attachments too. Quick Lock 50mm flap discs, sanding discs (velcro easy on easy off), carbide burrs. Brilliant bits of kit!
All in all, the quality of my work is not in my welding, it's in my finishing! It's so important!
There are alot of cheap crap cutlery creations online, badly finished, unpolished, heat marks, ratty welds on show etc. If you want to stand out then invest in good finishing materials (hence why I have gone to the lengths of bigging up the die grinders and their attachments). Don't get me wrong, you can do an awful lot with a dremel, they are very good and most certainly capable of very precise work but they are just light weight compared to the die grinders. Good to have both for sure, though I appreciate that starting out you'll probably not want to lash out on everything.
Final words:
When I started I had 1 angle grinder and a fake dremel. I can't tell you how quickly I got pissed off relentlessly having to change from a flap disc to a cutting disc!!!! Get two angle grinders!!! I buy the cheap and smaller (easy to handle) Macallister grinders from B & Q (I think Macallister is their own brand). They were (12 months ago) £25 a pop and at that price are a real bargain. I'd recommend them to anyone for this sort of lighter weight work.
Also ... and I can't stress this enough ... get a proper Gas MIG if you don't already have one. You just can't get any sort of decent finish with flux core, it's a waste of time! Fine for welding brackets together or general 'farm' welding but no good if you want to be able to finish a weld off to a smooth shiny finish! And ... don't bother with the tiny portable gas cylinders .. they are an incredibly expensive way to buy welding gas! Get a 25 litre bottle from a proper welding shop (probably £80 deposit and £60 a refill plus £40ish for a regulator). One of them will last you months and will work out 8 to 10 times more cost efficient ... its worth it!
I guess that's pretty much it. Again, if you got other questions let me know, happy to help if I can.
Let me know how you get on! Feel free to share my social media pages as a thanks!!
Namaste
John
Your birds are beyond amazing…I am good at soldering, welding scares me…do you think it possible to solder together a bird with differing solders? THANKS!
Hi and thanks for the nice words. Not an expert on soldering by any stretch o f the imagination. Can just about solder a handle on a brass blowtorch or solder wires but stainless is a different kettle of fish. Google tells me that 'tin-silver' solders are best for stainless but thats literally as much as I can tell you. Obviously it's really only a surface bond rather than a fusion of 2 metals in to 1 solid piece so wouldn't be as strong but perhaps it would be sufficient, I wouldn't really know. Welding isn;t that scary really. Only the first time then you just don't think about it. What I like about welding is the ability to add material and then sculpt it ... almost indefinately. There is much more scope for artistic creativity I think. Obviously more expensive equipment required to start but realistically you could get a useable gas MIG set up for £400 with an angle grinder, a dremel and some nice attachments. Hope that helps
Yes, big help….I do stuff with vintage silverplate but sick to death of jewelry, etc.…being a bird lover, those would be my target…so I will look into a useable gas MIG set up…already have saws, grinders, drills, etc…your comment about the ability to add material and then sculpt it, really pinpoints it! I don’t have the strength guys do but I do have a bender press for help with strength….Thanks Suzanne @@JohnNorrisMetalSculpture
No worries happy to help. Not sure where you live but in the uk we have a store called B&Q. They sell angle grinders for £25 and they are quite small, easy to use really ... and i say that as someone who has issues with the tendons in my fingers. Obviously I take the safety guards off so I can see more easily what I'm doing and tend to use the edge of the cutting discs to do really quite fine detailing work. Brain surgery with a spade but one of my favourite tools. I'd highly recommend an air compressor and some die grinders too. 50 litre minimum ideally, 25l works but you're always playing catch up with the tools which can be annoying. I'll cut and paste now something that I typed out for another person who posted questions about my welding set up a week or so back. Hope it's of use to you ... @@SueNC-r5s 'Ok, I don't know exactly what set up you have so best thing I can do is run through mine and you can gauge it from there.
I have a 140 amp welder (Gas MIG). A Wolfmig 140x. It has 6 power settings so theoretically each one is 23.3 amps. I read that as a general rule of thumb you should use about 30 amps per 1 mm of material thickness.
Obviously I've taught myself to do this from watching a couple of youtube vids and a little bit of advice on the MIG Welding Forum UK, so much of it is trial and error and learned experience. Every mistake is a learning experience.
My settings depend on the thickness of the spoons. Some are cheap tat, some are really nice bulky thick bits of stainless so there is some variation. Typically I will tack on setting 2, so that's about 45 amps and i'm real close in with the gun, about 4 or 5 mm from the mating surfaces. Worth noting that fit up is important here, you want to try and get a zero tolerance fit, any gap and the tack you do is not going to be very strong.
Sometimes on thicker spoons I might go to setting 3 (just under 70 amps) and again its a real quick zap, it's very easy to burn through as this is arguably a higher setting than ideal! You can vary the heat in the weld though by moving the gun further from the work piece, say 10mm (maybe turn the gas up a touch if you do this. My gas is on pretty weak so i can 'just' hear it coming through. More distance = more shielding gas requirement.
Note that I have a lot of spoons! so often I will find two identical ones or very very similar and do a test weld or tack just to test my setting and make sure its going to penetrate properly and give me a nice strong weld.
If I'm doing more than just a tack, for example building up material on two spoon handles to form a birds beak then I will use the 3rd setting.Often this requires a bit of weld, then cleaning up the 'sooty' deposits and welding over it again to get excess material that I can then sculpt with a flap disc. MIG welders are great but sensitive to impurities like soot, dirt, rust etc. Any of these impurities will generally cause gases to build up in the weld as it forms and bubble through giving a porous cheesy look which then has to be welded over again to sort it out, so try to make sure the surfaces are as clean as possible.
Note that I am using a gas MIG. Plenty of people buy 'MIG' welders that aren't really gas at all and therefore not really MIG welders, its kinda false advertising. They work by using a 'flux core' wire which produces its own gas when the weld takes place as opposed to using a proper gas MIG which fires a shielding gas through the gun and around the wire (typically argon / co2 95%:5% mix). This is much much better. The flux core welders do work but they produce a lot of splatter and often give a similar porous cheesy weld like a surface that wasn't clean. They are pretty messy generally speaking so trying to make small birds out of spoons is really just too fiddly for them. They are more agricultural tools really.
Hmm what else ... err ... ok cutlery is stainless steel and it comes in different grades. I'm not really an expert and not all cutlery is stamped with the exact mix but I'm told the best is 18/8 .. so that's steel with 18% chromium and 8% nickel in it. Rare to find stuff with the grade stamped on it but as a general rule of thumb anything non magnetic is good. Equally, avoid anything with a plate finish or any kinda of yellowy hue to it. These will produce gases in the weld and you'll get the porous weak cheesy welds if you try. Just bin that stuff!
Finally, generally speaking I use mild steel wire even though its stainless i'm welding. It's much easier to work, easier to weld and more than strong enough for sculpting purposes, you wont be pulling it apart with your hands if your settings are right.
Of course mild steel will tarnish over time, even from the moisture of your hands. As a result I lacquer my pieces with 2k clearcoat (professional car lacquer, its like epoxy resin ... product and a hardener mixed 2-1 with about 20 % thinners) applied with an airbrush.
You can buy Polyurethane lacquer from Halfords in cans but its pretty crap really ! Its not very viscous .. ie it runs very easily and even if I'm using the 2k i'm still applying a dusting layer before building up a couple more thicker coats. Trying to do that with PU lacquer is next to impossible. Note ... i forensically clean everything with thinners or acetone and wearing gloves before i lacquer. You don't want any hint of contaminates on the metal that might tarnish, but once its covered, its all good.
Lacquering isn't necessarily essential, especially if what you are making is for indoor display but if you plan on selling stuff then probably it's better that its not going to rust at all, especially a blingy piece made of shiny stainless.
Finally, quick word on finishing. If you haven't got a dremel or a die grinder with a 1/4 " collet then get one. Then get yourself a quick lock adapter and a selection of easy on easy off velcro sanding pads. My flap discs go up to 400 grit, but these pads can go 800 through 1500 / 2000 and this is mirror finish territory which is what you really want. Also, the die grinders can take mini flap discs and carbide burrs which are a god send for small detail sculpting. All available on ebay, amazon or from your local welding shops. I started with fake dremels (cheap as chips on ebay) but honestly get a compressor if you plan on doing this a lot and 2 or 3 die grinders. 50l compressor upwards ideally. Mines a 25l and its usable but the tools kinda outrun a bit so its slows down the work a little.
Right, I think that's about it ... hit me up if you got any other questions. Best of luck, feel free to link me in to some of your stuff!'
Ok thats it, feel free to ask any any time you have questions, always happy to help out a fellow creative. Namaste :)
Also, read the comment below from 'Alan Miller, I sent him a more in depth reply about welding settings. Also, I said in the last comment that I lacquer my stuff, I dont lacquer the birds! Reasn being, sooner or later someone is goin to try and polish one of them and the lacquer will ruin immediately and necessitate a complete removal. That would be a proper ball ache of a job! I do have a TIG welder as well .. had it about a yer and hardly used it, I really need to teach myself, it's a lovely bit of kit and capable of really fine work. Id still use the MIG, they both have their strengths and weaknesses, probably worth reading up about TIG welders too. Significantly more expensive but Ive bought a good one with all the nice stuff, a fine torch that you can hold like a pencil, a nice foot pedal etc, total cost about £1000 (R-Tech welding here in the UK, its a DC TIG, an FPP160 if memory serves. DC cant do aluminium but im not interested in that anyway.
Hi, I want to start making birds like these and have just bought a welder...but I've just realised about the ground cable and possible threat of being shocked....how do you use the ground cable whilst welding a tiny bird?
My ground cable is clamped to the underside of the metal work surface, anything touching it is earthed. If you can, invest in a sheet of steel for work surface and do the same, saves a lot of mucking around! You will find flux core is not great for cutlery because it's stainless steel which generally requires a shielding gas so pretty much you can only do mild steel. I use a Gas MIG or a TIG welder. Not saying you can't get stuff together with flux core but it will produce weak cheesy looking porous welds and lots of splatter! FYI the bulk of my stuff (95%) i've made with the cheapest Gas MIG online, a WolfMIG 140x. About £200 these days but you'd need a gas bottle and a regulator as well. I use a 20litre gas bottle (about £80 deposit) and refills are around £60 but youll get a couple months of welding out of it. (Good regulators about £35). It's about 20 times cheaper than buying tiny portable gas cylinders, well worth the investment! Good luck, get creating!!!!
Do you only use stainless silverware? Some kinds just splatter.
Only stainless. Argon / co2 95 / 5 % mix. Basically no splatter, but the end result is also due to care and attention in the clean up / polishing process.
I would love to create such artistry, but I cannot accommodate MIG gear, I only have room for a stick inverter welder - this would greatly limit me, yes?
Thank you!
You can do an awful lot with a stick welder but finesse will be the problem. Having said that, the skill is not the welding but the finishing. If you can't get / don't have a compressor or air tools then a Dremel will do an awful lot! What you won't be able to do with a stick welder is cutlery or any other form of stainless steel. You need a shielding gas (which means Gas MIG or TIG) unless you want weak porous welds and lots of splatter ... and you won't want either of these! Best of luck. Get making!