Ok, a minor rant: I have once again built something that I cannot take an adequate picture of. Architectural features have always been, for me, the most beguiling of subjects, and the most difficult to catch.
There is just too much going on. The eye can pick and choose and appreciate; the camera cannot, at least in my hands. Here are the stairs leading down to the patio.
Pat wanted a railing. Sometimes you come out the door with a turbo-boxer on 20# test and there is a real fear you will go over the edge instead of down the steps. Don, largest of the dwarves, goes to work with scrap steel and a small flash in the brain pan.
The side and top pieces are ~2.5" used drilling pipe from N.M. It was one of those things you throw on the trailer and get a disgusted look; hell the stuff cost me a dollar a foot and it's getting hard to find.
The rest is just plain scrap. Plate or strap from other projects. Not much gets thrown away here.
So, Pat looks at it and says, "nice sun, great tree, hills are good, but you sure missed by a mile on getting your moon round."
Back to the drawing board and 2 lightning bolts are added to the "cloud".
The 4 main features, tree, sun, cloud and fern are all bare metal worked to some extent. You can't see the peening on the tree, or much of the chiseled veins on the fern, etc.
This shot is obscenely oversized so that you can see some of my masterful detail work. Some might call it crude. We prefer the term "stylised".
Just one more view. Gives an appreciation of the artists delicate handling of the sun rays.
Below is simply the backside to show a bit more of the construction. I know Young Dave wanted a blow-by-blow photo write-up on the process, but not much really goes on.
An idea comes to mind for the design, you find some scrap and cut a piece out to see what it looks like, you weld it in, and with some paint all is complete. I finished all the surfaces not clear-coated with a gloss black for some added zip. I had meant to do more at the bottom, but have run short of scrap and time and will probably just prime and paint.
Great thing here was that the drill-pipe was an exact fit for the holes cast in the steps using soda cans.
