Been awhile since I shared anything. Been busy which is a good thing. Antlers are forged from 1" round stock and shafts/tools are forged from 1/2" square. Shovel is 14 ga. sheet steel.

 

John

 

Nice work. The antlers are especially impressive. How do you texture them?

Never seen antlers with such a realistic texturing.  They look like the real thing!

A will take a guess and say popcorn from a mig welder. Very nice btw.

The antlers are textured with a bark swedge and then the nubbs are mig popcorn as PaulKy guessed. Glad you like them.

 

John

John you really got those antlers down. I like the fireplace set.

Steve ...maybe we could try some of those out next year at Stan's hammer-in. Those look very attractive.

 

 

carry on

John missed last years hammer-in because he was doing a demo on his antlers. You ought to see his life size rack replicas. They are simply amazing. I don't recall the name of the thread, but John has posted his antlers here before.

So how do you get the popcorn to line up where you want it? Do you mask the material with sheet metal and then weld something close by?

No, I just run it down the antler and vary speed and distance. I always practice on a spare piece right before I do the actual pieces.

Here is the finished set with the oak branch wall bracket.

 

Another very nice offering John! Always a pleasure to see your work.

 

A similar texture can be achieved with a stick welder; again, by dragging the stick back and forth. As john said, practise on scrap to get the affect you are after. Experiment with votage, size of rod, speed of drag, and even the position of the piece you are working on. You get a diffferent look if the piece is vertical than if it's laid flat.