Wheat Stalk Fire Screen for Arisans

I got to make two, well, one and three quarter fire screens for Andrew at Artisans over the break. For the first one, the client requested five wheat stalks. Since neither myself or Andrew had ever forged wheat stalks, I got to play/prototype for a day and half until we settled on a winner. I think it looks pretty realistic.

Three 5/16" round bars braided and fire welded at the top and bottom. Once it was all welded, I ran the whole thing under the power hammer to flatten and tighten it. The Hammer also created the flat spots which serve as the kernel shapes. 

Once that was done, I fire welded the the stalks on and reverse tapered them back down to the base. Each stalk has three welds and four pieced of bar. Who says BA students can't fire weld? 

By far the hardest and most tedious part of these things was the "beard" Thats all mig wire welded on the lowest setting. Not easy!

The second one had a lattice pattern with rossets at the intersections. I didn't manage to take any good pictures of the second one mostly because I had to be on a plane before it was totally assembled.

That's a 60 inch fire screen!