Kitchen Chicken—Sculpture of a Chicken Made From Kitchen Utensils, Because Why Not?

I had this idea a while ago. My home's interior decor has a farmhouse, rustic look. I figured it'd be really cool and kinda funny if there were a chicken sculpture made completely from kitchen utensils just for the sake of novelty, hence the ever amazing name, "Kitchen Chicken." It's also my first real welding project, so it was also some great practice for me. I used a TIG welder, but any kind would really do. If you aren't familiar with TIG welding, basically it fuses the metal itself together as opposed to having an additional welding rod, although you can (and I did) use a welding rod while TIG welding if the metal's too thin. Another great thing is that this project was actually fairly cheap. I bought all these stainless steel cooking utensils at Dollar Tree for $20. It took me 10ish hours I'd say. Alright, let's hop into this project.

Supplies

The Main Body:

1) Spoon Rests 5x

2) Pie Servers 3x

3) Steamer Basket 1x

4) Spatchulas 2x

Head:

1) Spoons 1x

2) Carrot Peeler 1x

3) Dough Cutter/Any kind of thin sheet metal 1x

Feet:

Just 2 barbeque forks

Additional Stuff:

Really just welding rods

Tools:

1) Welder (In my case, TIG)

2) At least 2 channel lock pliers

3) Tin Snips

4) A bench vise is very nice, not necessary, but definitely nice to have

Step 1: The Main Body

The main body of the chicken is mostly spoon rests welded together that somehow end up forming the shape of a chicken. Luckily, I've already got that part figured out and am making an instructable for you. I started with two spoon rests that I held together with a vice grip on the edges. Then I welded them together with a tiny tack weld. Then I did the same for the third one, but I did that one at an angle like the photo shows. I then welded the 4th spoon rest in place on top as the pictures shows as well. For my welder, I tried 77 at first on the power, but found it was too much, so I then turned it down to 60, and found that to work a LOT better.

Step 2: The Tail

I wanted the tail to be mainly made from spatchulas. To start, I cut the handle of the pie server, then I welded that on the back part of body at an angle. I repeated this with the next two spatchulas, making sure to weld them in a staggered pattern. With this, I was able to create that feathered look that real chicken's tails have. Also, REALLY IMPORTANT, make sure you're welding the tail on the end of the bottom with the ends of the spoon rests, instead of the open side (because the open front side is for the head).

Step 3: The Feathered Sides/Wings

For this part, it's really just the leafs of a stainless steal steamer basket welded onto the side spoon rests. To remove them, you simply have to bend them forward and bend the tab down and it comes right off. Then you position them where. I found it helpful to mark their spots with a sharpie. When welding them in place, weld the bottom one first (closest to the tail end) because the weld will be covered up by the next leaf on top of it, since they're staggered. For my chicken, I only had to use 4 leafs per side, so 8 in total. That leaves you with half a steamer basket, don't know exactly what you can do with that, but if you put it right back where you found it, your mom might not notice it's missing half.

Step 4: The Neck

This part's fairly simple. After cutting off the handles from the pie servers, you just have to weld them on the inside of the neck on both sides. I tried to use the vice grips again for this part, but I found that they were actually a tiny bit too big for the awkwardly small space to work in. Strangely enough, a fork, a literal normal fork, worked perfectly as a clamp. If you get the angle just right, you'll be able to hold them in place with no problem. Go ahead and tack weld these in place.

Step 5: The Head

After thinking about it for a bit, I decided that I could make the head from spoons. I obviously cut the handles off, then pinched them in the bench vice, just so that the angles were a little sharper and flatter, so that when I put the two together, it'd be a closer fit. However, I didn't want them to be perfectly flush against each other because I also wanted to be able to mount the comb between them (which is the red, spikey thing on top of chicken's heads). I then welded the tips of these together. Afterwards, I ground the front tip (where the handles used to be) into a more pointed shape, since this was going to be the beak. To really top it off, I took the carrot peeler, cut the handle off as usual, and pinched it a little in the bench vice. I then welded that over the tip. It created a clean, sharp look. To make the comb, I drew the shape on the dough cutter (any piece of thin sheet metal would work just fine) and then cut it out with tin snips. Next, I put it in the gap between the two spoons and welded it in place. The last step was to mount it to the body. With a sharpie I drew a slit that needed to be cut out of the ends of the top and bottom spoon rests and then bent into a contour so that the head could fit in snugly.

Step 6: The Feet (Last Step)

This is basically the last step and it's a somewhat simple one. I chose for the feet to be barbeque forks, because they've always reminded me of chicken feet. Pretty weird, but what can you do. So I had to cut about an inch off the handle of the fork to make it fit on the bottom of the chicken. I then bent about an inch backwards at a 90-ish degree angle (you can bend this and adjust it later if you need to). Then I bent the feet about an inch away from the fork part, at a 170-ish degree angle, as in just barely bent. I then bent the fork part (feet) at a smooth 90 degree angle. I say smooth, because I think it looks better and more natural than if it were a hard angle. Go ahead and weld these on to the bottom of the chicken and very important, make sure to weld them SYMMETRICALLY, so that the chicken isn't lopsided or anything. As you can see in the second photo, you may have to bend the feet and/or legs a little to get the chicken to stand up right by itself. I had to, but once I did, it stood up perfectly, which I have to say, WAS A HUGE RELIEF. And you're done! Of course, if you wanted to, you could grind all your welds down and wire brush them and clean up the chicken sculpture.

Step 7: Final Thoughts

I thought it was a fun project. As I said, it was my first real welding project, so I definitely improved and got a lot more skills from making this. I haven't actually made any sculptures/statues/whatever this thing is from metal before, so this was kinda a first for me. I enjoyed it and have gotten a lot of great feedback from friends and family saying they'd love to have one in their house, soooo that's nice. Leave a comment about your thoughts or a question or really anything, I'd love to hear from you, and I have another instructable if you'd like to check that out!