Heres a dragon fly I made.  I get a lot of ideas and inspiration from visitors to my garden.   

I like that you made it out of horse shoes. I think the eyes turned out well. Are they bolted on?

very cool

Yes, Das, I like to use horse shoes on projects like these for the market and they are easy enough to straighten.  I finally got an anvil yesterday, so think I'll be working on some bug wings tomorrow.  Just to test it out 8-).  Those eyes are roller bearings that I tacked on underneath.

 

Thanks 58er.

And horse shoes are good to use, as people recognise them as recycled.

Have you got six legs on your dragonfly? I can only see four there. Not being critical - but you need six!

No Ausfire, I'm afraid I left him with only four legs, but I agree six would look better.  I will try adding a set.  You make a good point about about using recycled things.  People like to identify the different pieces and parts in a sculpture.  Me too!

Nice piece Scott, well done. Using easily recognizable materials like horse shoes and RR spikes is very popular with folk looking at our stuff. A person doesn't need any expertise to see the transition from the familiar to something new.

Dragon flies are always popular. Marketable little bugs they are.

Frosty The Lucky.

  Well thanks Frosty.  Most of my metal sculptures have been made with "structural" materials like pipe, bar, etc.,  with some heating, bending, crushing, that sort of thing.  Using materials that others can identify and pick out lends interest to the piece and now I have to really start using my imagination!   Always room for change and improvement...

nice job. look to be new shoes instead of used. much of the stuff i do i use old used shoes, adds a certain amount of charactor. i do use new shoes when working to a dimension.

Hello seldom.  Yes those are new horseshoes, unfortunately i dont have a source for used ones.  I have ten or so old ones that I tacked up on the sheds for luck but I'm not taking them down, I need all I can get.  . They look nicer hanging there than new ones too.  Scott.

nodebt,

talk to some farriers around your area. often times they will give you their used shoes so they dont have to mess with them. that how i get mine.

Most of the farriers around here sell the old shoes. One guy told me $40 for a 5 gallon bucket.... I passed. I went to a moving sale near where I used to work and saw some horse tack. I asked if he had any shoes. Shoes? You want shoes, follow me.. He led me to an old bathtub that was half full of shoes, and said you can have these. I ended up with around 8-5 gallon buckets full. This gets me close to what I need for a sculpture I have had in mind for a long time that I figure will take around 1,000 shoes.

  Ok, seldom, I will do some checking around and see what I can find.  Maybe I can find one that likes beer, or, as I've read elsewhere on forums a box of donuts...  

 

On 4/25/2017 at 9:40 PM, BIGGUNDOCTOR said:

 This gets me close to what I need for a sculpture I have had in mind for a long time that I figure will take around 1,000 shoes.

  1000 shoe sculpture.  Biggundoctor, that sounds very interesting...  I have a pile of rr spikes I've been adding to.  I'm thinking about welding them all into one BIG spike.

Nice!