A Farmer Plows in the Early Morning Moonlight

When I first came up with this metal working technique, my neighbor had given me an old sawmill blade. I have always loved doing designs on a circle, probably from my pottery background. My first attempt was to grind the design in very low relief. This ended quickly as the tool steel was so hard. I next tried brazing brass onto areas to color them. Also not an easy thing to do. I was familiar with heat colors or temper colors from making carving tools. When I saw the colors run on the bare steel as I tried the brazing process, it all came together. With a little experimenting a new technique for “painting” on steel was developed. This 48″ dia. sawmill sawblade was engraved with grinding tools and colored with oxidation colors or heat colors, using a large torch. The work proceeds from hot to cold so as not to change areas that have already been colored. The saw blade is made to hang from a lag screw and can be rotated on it’s bracket to view the circular design from different orientations. Edition of 6 available by custom order.

I go into more detail about how I got started making metal wall art in this article.