Here is a piece I just finished up. It was made as a tribute for my favorite podcast, The Drabble Cast. There logo is a squid arm raising from the deep ocean. I plan to send it off as a thank you gift for all the great story's they have posted over the years.

Mild steel, guilders paste and wax.

M Martin
Martin Forge Works

Very cool, can I ask how big is it?

How did you attach the suction cups to the tentacles?  They fit perfectly and I can't see any welding marks.  Nice job.  

I'm with Dave on the asking. How did you do that!? I just can't get what I see.

Very impressive work!

The arm shank started as 1" round. It stands about 8" tall.

Yes you can see weld marks! The cups are welds. I formed the cups with a tig welder by welding little rings with filler metal. Then I used little tools to sink depressions between the rings hot and chisel serrations.

I like the option on sculpture of adding material where I desire with a tig welder, then back into the forge and push the material around.

Another option I considered was to work down all the background material around the cups, but that just seemed inefficient.

I was afraid you were going to say that.

Afraid Why ?

I don't know how to do modern welding. Just forge welding, which is worth a try for this in fact would make a real good practice piece. I had sort of thought that it was done with modern welding as I was trying to figure out a way to do it small scale but traditional only methods. Every time I see something I like I try to reverse engineer it, even if I never do it. The mental exercise helps me out.

 

Rashelle

If you are top notch with your forge welding I guess you could weld wire rings to the arm. Maybe use a wood or raw hide mallet to strike the welds.
The other option would be setting down the back ground material with punches then chasing the rings round

I've got a couple months worth of stuff ahead of me. It'll be June or July before I might have a chance to try. But hopefully I'll remember to try forge welding a tentacle like this, and for comparison try punching in then raising the lips of the punch marks over. It'd be an interesting self test and learning experience for me. A challenging one at that. Sounds fun. LOL also sounds like it's making me hungry for squid curry.

 

Rashelle

I am sure such a thing is possible with out electricity after seeing such wonderful things made hundreds of years ago. You could forge over size then with a saw and chisels start cutting off excess material leaving the cups raised.

Almost anything is possible. It's just time and materials

Yup and a fun exercise in thinking how to do so. Along with a nice challenge to make oneself improve. Through adversity (challenges) we gain strength (skill). Only by pushing myself past my limits will I pass my limits. Otherwise it'd be easy for me to become complacent. I really liked the tentacle, and enjoy thinking through various ways of doing it.

Amazing work on that squid's tentacle, almost looks like the real thing. Excellent technique you make, the welding marks and clean and goes very well with the design. I'm sure it's very much appreciated. Excellent job!

Great tentacle, thanks for the pics.

 

Even more thanks for the great conversation between you and Rashelle, this kind of talk is where great things are born.

 

Thinking about forge welding the suckers leads me to two ideas I'd try first. #1 would be to cut and rough form the suckers, then make a tool that let me hold them and drive them from the tool. Think a rivet set but with sucker features. Then heat the tentacle to welding heat while bringing the sucker to close to welding heat. Put it in the tool (sucker set?) and drive it home. Repeat till all the suckers are welded on. The "sucker set" (I like the name) could also be used to rough in the details or another could be made for final forming.

 

I'm thinking the sucker blanks would work best if the contact (scarf) were reasonably sharp, similar to a disk punch.

 

My other thought would be to make the suckers solid, just cut off from a round bar with maybe a little weld prep, say a short point to act as a scarf.

 

I'm thinking similar tentacle sculptures would make really cool table pieces, wine bottle holder, bottle opener, lamp holdr, etc. It'd need to be a holder of some sort because that's what a tentacle does, grab and hold stuff.

 

Thanks guys, you've really gotten my juices flowing.

 

Frosty The Lucky.

I like the idea of a "sucker set" Frosty. I was thinking of pre-sizing/fitting some rings then forge welding the rings on, using a second heat to shape the suckers. Or at the end of the welding heat. Could use a sucker set at that stage probly very well. Heehee sounds like you might be trying it somewhat soon. If so let us know how it works for you.

Nice. Agreed that finding interesting ways to make non-electric tentacles is a fun exercise.

nice job!