January 23, 20179 yr I have been making this style of Dragon Head for a few years, mostly out of 1/2 inch square stock, but this time I used 3/4 inch square stock. It was easier work in the sense of seeing the details better, but the metal did not want to move so it took almost twice as long as usual. But I liked the result so I decided to add it to a Bookend and make it into something useful. The bookend was 1/4 inch x 4 inch flat stock 11 inches long. I marked a line four inches from one end and used a fairly sharp fuller (or a dull hot cut) to indent the line half way through the plate. I then hand hammer textured the opposite side with my rounding hammer and drilled a 3/8" hole in the short side to accept the tenon on my dragon head. The plate was then bent through an angle of 90 degrees with the textured side up. After that it was just a matter of inserting the tenon from the dragon head from the textured side, clamping it up and heating the tenon with a torch and peening it until the tenon mushroomed into the hole. To keep it from spinning in the hole I used a square punch to punch a square shape in the back of the hole so that the mushrooming tenon would lock into place. The entire assembly was then power wire brushed and highlighted by brass brushing the edges and dragon head. A clear acrylic spray was use to protect the brassing.
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