Dragonfly Wall Art

I was looking for a new project, and my wife suggested a dragonfly for mounting on the wall. Dragonflies are my favorite bug, so that was a no-brainer. Cindy really knows me.

This is a close-up of the head, where you can see the 3D aspect of this wall-mounted sculpture. You can also see the iridescent coloring. More about that in the boring stuff below.

The Boring Technical Stuff

I used 5/16” round bar for the main body, head, and wing outlines, 1/4” round for the top of the body (called the “thorax” in bug-nerd), and then 1/8” round for the smaller fill. You can also see, up close and personal, that I’m not a professional welder 🙂.

That iridescent coloring is a product called "Dragonfly Glaze", from a company called "FolkArts". This stuff has a clear base with tiny reflective particles suspended. Depending on the angle, it shines blue, purple, or red. I used a flat black base coat for contrast, and am really happy with how it turned out. And, of course, the product name kind of fits, right?

Some challenges - One was welding the long tail 1/8” piece. I’m OK with TIG welding, but that was small for me. Then I had an idea - Go to stick welding and use the piece as the electrode. As soon as the puddle started, I stopped the welder. My machine does both TIG and stick, and has a foot pedal, which made that work. Once one end was stuck, I switched to TIG for the other.

The next challenge was the smaller 1/8” pieces. They needed to be raised up for that 3rd dimension, and I couldn’t figure a way to clamp them in place. So my next revelation was modeling clay. I just put a clump of it where the pieces would go, stuck them in the clay and pressed to make contact, and TIG’ed away. My machine also has an arc starter.