Any advice on forging a tree?

[dennis_hl]

How'd you go about making four apple trees large enough to serve as the corner posts of a kingsize bed? I'm currently forging out the individual branches and then I'll be welding them together with a torch and forging out the joints. Is there a faster way or pieces of advice that anyone can offer?

[frogvalley]

Thats about how I make trees. I have yet to find a faster way, although due to the size of much of my work I can't forge out the joints, although that sounds like it would work cause of the extra heat involved in gas welding. Hot bending is great- although (I know its sacrilege but...) I often have the forks in my anvil or the big bender handy when I make mine and then do a cold bend to get the branches close then heat any final touches. All my branches are hot bent into random branch shapes as I do the final forging heat after the pattern goes on. That gives me a good basis for the beginning of assembly, their already naturally curved then I mainly tweak cold and finish hot again. Mind you I do much of this work under one of the power hammers, including texturing and drawing, but I finish and bend by hand and eye.

I mig tig or stick weld the individual branches onto the trunk, depending on what, where , etc.. Then flap disk smooth and level with the surface, sanding WAY out beyond the joint for better blending. If there is bark texture that I put on (probably), I then die grind the pattern back in to blend the patterns to match. Then wire wheel or whatever to burnish it and blend it further.

[HWooldridge]

Dimitri Gerakaris (sp?) made a full size one in the 1970's for a park somewhere in New England. You might try to google that or look in the ABANA archives.

[Norseman C.B.]

Heres my style for what its worth ,I take three or four lengths of round rod sized to load and lengths eyeballed to what you envision the three or four or ?? different main branch lengths to finish out at .Hammer out ends to taper three or four similar length for roots taper hammer long ends to suit envisioning,Bend roots at 90 degrees and fan out to form base wire group together and weld bottom gap pick trunk height desired and spot weld around, stick trunk end in forgeup to roots to heat all or as much of trunk as possible when hot stick in vice and twist rods to suit. If still hot enough make first bends on branches. Then break out the rosebud, heat and bend roots to suit,then tack weld roots to floor plate or work bench use rosebud to heat and bend branches to suit your vision,weld on extra forged branches if/as needed and/or leaves or whatever you can envision...(love that word)
hope this helps...cliff

[the_sandy_creek_forge]

Something that might speed up the process a bit is pre-textured bars. King Architectural Metals ( King Architectural Metals wrought iron metal balusters finials casting steel ornamental forged gate fence stairs Access control ) sells bark and vine textured bars and as close as i can tell from their pictures they make them using a regular old bark texture spring swage ( i think there exists a blue print for such a swage somewhere here). Should be pretty easy to blend the pattern back in once everything is joined up.
-Aaron @ the SCF

[dennis_hl]

Very helpful, thanks.

[frogvalley]

Trouble with pre-textured from King is that it cannot be easily drawn out to a point without re-texturing the stock. If you have to have the tooling to re-texture, then you might as well do it all, at least for anything tapered like trees.

I often draw or work 1 inch stock down to 1/4 " for a tree, then texture the very long taper. No way around that, I just charge more for the truly handmade thing.

[Archie Zietman]

I have made a few trees, so might as well add in something. What I did was to use one rod for a root, piece of the trunk and branch in one. I textured the entire rod, forged out the branch at one end, and root at the other end, then heated up the whole bundle and twisted them so that it became a very treelike trunk, and then hammered the roots and branches into position.
Now: apples
You could probably, for apples, take ball bearings, and drive the ball of a ball peen into the top to make an indentation and slightly flatten the bottom at the same time, then braze in a stem and a sheet leaf.

[Archie Zietman]

here is how you could forge it from a ball bearing, and braze the stem'n leaf on (the large u shape in the middle picture is supposed to be a round faced hammer :)

[dennis_hl]

For apples I have a bunch of copper balls, they're a bit red and will discolor a bit when I work them. I should be able to get a bit of red out of them with some heat. Thanks for the help. I'll post pix as things continue to progress.