From the fanciful and fun to the practical and user-friendly, art welding projects provide an excellent change of pace to your welding projects and can also provide a great opportunity to learn a new welding skill. In addition, an art welding project gives you a chance to try out different materials that can fashion gifts, lawn art, or decorations in your home. Last time we wrote about art welding projects, we kept it pretty simple. This week we’re providing part two, and we’re going to step things up a little bit.
Metal Elephant
Source: Lincoln Electric
“Brian Walters made this elephant from an old drum, stove pipe, sheet metal, an old snow sled from the 1960’s, and thick wall pipe. Parts from old lawn chairs form the tusks.”
This particular project was made with a stick welder, which worked well since many of the parts were dirty scrap metal that would have taken a lot of time to grind and wipe down for a MIG or TIG welder. The downside of stick welding a project like this is that you need to avoid pumping too much heat into it since the metal parts are thin and could burn through.
If you have some options between welding machines or settings on a machine like the Miller Multimatic 200, you can weigh whether you want more control over your heat or less prep time on your metal pieces. If you’re working with found materials, then a stick welder is the perfect tool for the job, unless the weld joints are fine and difficult to reach with a fat stick electrode.
Biplane Welding Project
(The Lincoln website has project blueprints and the step-by-step process
mapped out.)
You can get into the nitty gritty of TIG welding if you try out this complex biplane project that will provide opportunities to weld in a variety of different positions, especially if you want to improve your TIG welding skills. You’ll need a TIG welder with a lot of capabilities in order to get this project done even though you won’t need a lot of power for the small pieces of thin metal that you’ll be using.
Materials for this project include:
- 12″ x 16″ stainless (preferred) or mild steel 12 gauge sheets (.100″
thick) - Approximately 20″ of 3/32″ diameter stainless steel filler metal
- 2″ of 1/8″ diameter stainless steel filler metal (wire)
- Hammer
- Plasma cutter or band saw
- 1/8″ and 3/16″ drill bits
- Two 1/4″ x 20 x 1″ carriage bolts
- 1/8″ x 1″ machine bolt with four matching nuts
- Center punch
- Channel lock
- Needlenose pliers
- Clamps
- Side-cutting pliers
- Large and small heat sinks (aluminum or copper blocks)
- Small, “stainless used only” stainless wire brush
- Tape measure
Sea Turtle Welding Project
Source: Lincoln Electric
If the biplane is too much of a stretch, you can always try out this sea turtle project that is made from 16-gauge metal. This is an ideal project for a MIG welder, but it will also call for some pretty intense metal shaping. The welder who put this project together also used an oxy-acetylene torch setup for certain parts of this project.
If you want something that will challenge you beyond the welding work for the project, this project will be an excellent choice. In addition, many welders have MIG welders, so this is also an ideal advanced project.