Copper and Gold Weathervane

We've been working on an interesting bespoke project recently... a large scale piece that is copper coloured, rather than our usual black, with the arrow highlighted in gold leaf. The idea behind this weathervane is that it looks like shredded strands of a fabric.

The Initial Design

When we were approached about this project, we were initially hesitant as there were so many unknowns; ideas that were untested by us and in these cases we so often underestimate how long something will take to get right (and get it right we always do!) But anyway, you don’t learn new skills and improve at your craft if you never say yes to potentially tricky things, so we decided to take it on!

These potential pitfalls included:
•    Getting the piece to function as a weathervane ie turn into the wind
•    Finding the right colour of powdercoat at a reasonable price.
•    Gilding such a large surface area
•    Making the sail balance
•    Transporting it several hundred miles!

Making the Weathervane Function

Our main concern was would the piece even function as a weathervane? With the strands at the back bent and twisted in so many different ways, would the wind catch it in the same way it does our flat laser cut profiles? I was confident I could make it look nice (bending and twisting metal being bit of a hobby of mine!), but whether it would function was another matter. We suspected it would, as long as I took care to have a fairly equal number of inward and outward bends, so adding up to equal a flat profile if that makes sense! We took a deposit from the customer, and accepted that if we couldn’t make the weathervane function, we wouldn’t be able to take the order any further.

Job one though, was making the sail balance. We cut the arrow head in different thicknesses; 3mm, 5mm and 8mm which obviously have very different weights. I bent all of the strands in 2mm, and was able to do this cold. Had I needed to use 3mm for the strands, it would have been a much bigger job as I’d have probably needed to heat them in the forge in order to get the curves and twists as I wanted them, so that was a bit of a result in that it saved me a fair bit of time and effort.

Once we’d got the weathervane sail to balance (with the 5mm arrow and 2mm strands, which was what I had hoped!) David tacked them together, and we took it outside on a long pole to see how it spun. As it utterly typical with these things, there was not even the slightest breeze so the functionality of our custom weathervane had to remain a mystery for a few more days…

Until the blizzard came! We took the weathervane for a little drive to the top of the hill (an unnecessarily exposed and bitter location, it turns out!) David mounted it on top of the roof of the car, observed by a bunch of perplexed looking cows. See the video below – we were relieved to see the weathervane sail turning into where the howling arctic blast was coming from. So, now back to the workshop to be fully TIG welded, (we nearly got stuck in the snow on the way down!) and the bespoke fixing produced. We also upgraded the pole & tube so it wouldn't wobble in strong wind, and tweaked some of the strands so that they do not knock together.

The next week, the whole batch was electroplated with zinc for rust protection, and finished in a dark, copper coloured powder coat. It’s the first time we had used this colour, but we’re happy with how it’s turned out, I think it’s quite tasteful & elegant.

So the next step; painting the date on the banner at the bottom of the sail, and gilding the whole of the enormous arrow. As powdercoat is non porous, paint does not adhere properly to it, so it needs to be very lightly sanded. Enough for the paint to take hold, but not so much that the powdercoat is damaged. It then requires primer and 5-6 coats of outdoor paint to cover up the fact that it’s been lightly sanded, so is no small job in itself. Then the size went on, and when tacky, the transfer gold leaf can be applied. We use 23.5 carat from Wrights of Lymm. Nothing I’ve not done before, but just on a larger scale!

Finally the thought of how on earth are we going to get this large, heavy, delicate thing from the Scottish Borders to London?! We use parcel force for our normal size of weathervanes and signs, and rarely have a problem. However because of the weight of this, combined with the fact that gold leaf is very easy to damage, we knew it would only take one over zealous depot employee to dump a load of stuff on top of it and we’d be taking the whole thing back to start again. SO, combined with some village signs we need to get to Kent, one of us will be taking a very long drive south next week. But it beats painstakingly packaging everything which would take longer than the 300mile drive anyway, and removes the stress of imagining our poor weathervane that we’d spent hours on getting abused in a depot somewhere!