Set down outdoors on moss, the finished piece works as more than a sculpture. The hollow front opening is finished with a rounded rim, making it usable as a small decorative container, and the whole form reads as a coiled ammonite with a dark gray, semi-polished surface.
The construction is a nice mix of fabrication and forge work. Various steel pipe elbows in 90-degree form were arranged in a spiral template and marked with reference lines, then an angle grinder clamped in a vise sliced each elbow into three pieces. Pliers adjusted the diameters, with one piece from every elbow made smaller and one bigger, and the cut segments were laid out by size alongside the center coil. That coil came from a steel rod taken red-hot out of the forge and tapered under the hammer on an anvil. MIG welding the segments onto it piece by piece built up the expanding helical shell, and a round steel bar, heated and bent over a pipe form into the lip, closed off the opening.
Leaving the weld beads raised and visible between the curved, tapered sections is the detail that stands out to me. After welding, wire wheels on an angle grinder and a drill cleaned everything down, and a brush spread a dark protective coating of beeswax dissolved in paint thinner, a common blacksmithing finish, across the surface. The completed shell was displayed beside the original fossil that inspired it.
One open point: KarlMetalworks expected people to dislike those exposed welds and did not anticipate such a warm response. My own take is the opposite. The raised beads give the shell a ridged, layered look that suits the fossil theme, in my view, and hiding them would take away from the piece.
Project by KarlMetalworks. Watch it on their YouTube channel: