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20. The finished piece. The tail is the hanger, and the snake is held securely to the wood with two screws.
19. Fitting the snake to the piece of grapevine. Because of the two shapes and the way they fit together, I could not bend the tail to its final shape until after the two were put together, So I had to have the final polish and patina on it ahead of time.
18. Showing the first bit of texturing, only took a minute or two.
17. On the left, a rotary tool I made for the flexible shaft. As it revolves, each lobe acts like a little hammer, putting a hammer mark on the metal. This creates a nice texture reminiscent of snakeskin, in a very short time.
16. I had to do some hammering to take care of some flattening and to smooth out irregularities.
15. More bending.
14. Now for bending. This was very hard work.I made this special bending tool out of hard maple, which was helpful.
13. Then to remove the file marks, I'm going over it with a unitized wheel in the flex-shaft.
12. The silver-solder just love to go other places besides the seam, which means a lot of painstaking filing.
11. SIlver-soldering the seam. Those cheap Walmart "visegrips" really come in handy for things like this. I have put a U-shaped piece of brass in between each clamp and the snake to protect it.
10. closing up the rest of the seam.
9. Using the tool on the left, hammering on the nose to make it more rounded.
8. Silver-soldered and pickled. I will clean up the excess silver-solder after the whole thing is done.
7. The seam for the head has been closed up. I will silver-solder this first, so it won't open up when I close up the rest.