kate

I haven't heard of Sketchup before but I've been having a lot of fun using Adobe Illustrator lately. I was trying to find an alternative to my previous white-out + photocopy approach to sketching. Within a few days of installing the program I was able to put together a set of professional looking designs for a client that were easy to send out in pdf format. Being able to quickly draw variations made it especially handy for visual problem solving, determining scale, etc.

Dief the gate is beautiful. I especially love the portal! Did you have any trouble with the 1/8th" plate warping near your welds? Also, what is permalac?

Here's the link to Blenko: Blenko Glass Company
They have a fabulous color selection and the dalles are around 12$ a piece. The shipping can get expensive because they weigh about 8lbs each. Blenko can also cut them to size and they do custom castings.
I think the marbles came from Mega Marbles.

I love incorporating glass with the steel, it adds such a nice delicacy.

all these rhymes make me MOAN!

Here are some detail shots of the butterfly wings. Most of the glass is busted up slab glass (dalles de verres) from Blenko. It's cast in 8" x 12" x 1" slabs. You can get clean shapes with a wet saw but I enjoy the random so I just took a hammer to the sheets. The round pieces are x-tra large marbles. I epoxied the glass into the steel frame using PC-7. The sculpture is about 12' tall by 12' wide.

Thanks for the kind words. I had the piece blasted then painted at an autobody shop. The colors turned out great but there have been a few rust issues in the crevices. I was 8 mos pregnant when we installed so, yes, Kate is a girl's name. :)

Hi All
This is a project I completed this past summer for the campus of a private girl's school. The butterfly wings are filled in with chunks of slab glass.
Kate

Hello All,
I'm a blacksmith in Cincinnati. I have a small shop and build mostly gates and railings, some furniture and misc. I found your site while doing some research into various power hammers. I'm looking forward to being a part of the forum!
Kate