Introduction: Recycled Metal Honey Bee

About: Magpies always got their hands on the best digs!

As a mechanic you'll always have a few nuts and bolts left over from a job - its saving the customer weight..

I've accumulated a large collection of nuts which are a mixture between imperial and metric. I wont be using the imperial sizes anytime soon because in Europe we use the system, metric ;)So I was thinking what I should be doing with all of these and since my garage seems to be a magnet for honey bees I thought id make one, why not! So get some honey on toast and chill out for this instalment of "Make more tat for the mantle piece"


Sidenote - This is a welding project, BUT hot glue or jbweld would work just as well, pre-note saving some of you from having to rewrite this... not pointing fingers or names Tim! ;)

Step 1: Safety and What You'll Need

Health and safety - Time for a bit of sucking eggs time

Im not going to go into the small print here as I always do and I bet half of you daredevils don't listen but to those who do - Eye protection, you only got 2 and they don't grow back so keep the peepers behind some glasses or a mask. Welding helmet for the welding. If your hot gluing you could wear a welding helmet but I don't reckon it would benefit you. Gauntlets to stop your pinkies getting toasted after melting some metal together.

What you'll need -

Attached is a picture of all the tools I have used but we will go through them here

Tin snips - used for cutting sheet metal, only used for a little par on this project

Pliers - Most common tool in the world, use for gripping things

Ballpein - I used this to get the texture on the wings and smack the legs flat

Chipping hammer - Great for small altercations

Wire brush - Great for sprucing up the model after completion


Step 2: Lets Mock Something Up

Well got to start somewhere, so I've got some suspect nuts and other stuff out the bins. I've memorised some photos of honey bees so I can get a idea of the shapes, I've also drawn it onto the table so I always have the reference on me. So before I stick it all together, I laid out the rough shape until I could imagine it when it was done. Doing this allows you to toy with the ideas until you're happy with whatever style you visage

Step 3: Eyes - Shaping

I wasnt happy with the face, I had the proportions right but its eyes are more oval then round, simple fix though. I crushed them in the vice, nothing special but its defiantly something overlooked, shaping premade items always makes your projects look more dynamic!

Step 4: Sticking or Welding

Again I laid it out with the new eyes and was pretty much happy with what I got, so I separated the body pieces and tac welded them together, when I was happy I ran a full bead down the lower side. If I was doing it again I'd weld inside the nut not on the outside of it to make it look more clean, like it was done by someone who knew what they were doing!

Step 5: Bees Knees

Our bee cant be the coolest on the block without the snazziest set of legs! Never bin rivets - super handy for anything sculpture wise.. or if you're robbing a bank you can throw them under the pursuers car but that's another story.. So what I did here was beat the rivet end down so it was flatter, this was done holding it with the pliers and using my vice as a anvil and smacking it with the ball pein hammer. Now I had a bit of bar-ish leggy thing going on I bent it into shape and cut the excess off with the tin snips.

As you can see, on my table I drew the legs out, again references are suuuuper handy!

Step 6: Wings

The old buzzy part, wings! Now own your off cuts, sheet metal isn't expensive but so much goes in the bin and its a shame, so recycle that and make many bees. To get the texture I wanted to break the curves and lines of the metal up I used a ball pein hammer ball end to smack little domes into the face of the metal before drawing the wing shape and cutting it with the tin snips

Step 7: Finishing the Body and Wings

So now all is left in the construction is assembling the body together. As this is fairly small I used the pliers to hold the legs so I don't burn my hands and get a better grip while tacking it. I also ran a full bead down the underside of the body to strengthen everything up!

Step 8: Preparing for Paint

So I want this little fella to not rust so I used the wire brush to get rid of all the weld slag and dust before using my de-greaser spirit to get the last of grime off it before I painted it with clear coat, of course this is all optional! I left it to dry for 15 with the help of a heat gun.

Step 9: Wah-la

Finished off, I'm happy with the results and this will be sent down as a surprise to an artist that loves bees, seeing as I haven't got anymore space between the spark plug spitfires! Hope you all enjoyed, if you make one I'd love to see and if theres any questions let us know bellow!

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