Metal rose.

What does Do It Yourself man give to his better half as present? Flowers? Sure but not any ordinary but something you can see how much effort was put into it. Something that never dries or dies even if you forget to water it. Whats that kind of magic flower? It's a rose made of metal.

Making the rose is pretty easy. You only need some basic tools, sheet metal and metal rod. Welding equipment are awesome but you can also solder it together. Best part is, it's pretty much impossible to fail.

Föower and the leaves are made out of 0.7mm sheet metal that you can buy from hardware store. Stem is made out of 5mm metal rod i dig out from my scrap bin. Recycled stuff. Metal rod can also be purchased from the hardware store and it can also be replaced with M5 or M6 threaded rod to assemble flower with nuts. It also creates nice texture on the stem.

Tools needed are hammer, sheet metal cutters, socket wrench set, bench vice, bench grinder and blowtorch.

Start by printing the parts of the flower. Found by google and downloadable here.

Cut the pieces with scissors.

And then use the cut pieces to copy flower pieces to the sheet metal. I used some scrap pieces.

Cut the parts of flower with sheet metal cutters. Use safety glasses so you don't end up having piece of metal in your eye.

 When flower parts are cut it's time to sand the edges and drill holes that matches the stem rod in the middle of the pieces. (I did it the hard way and drilled later, this is why there is no holes in following pics.)

Then give shape to the flowers. The bottom leaf piece on the bench vise and hit in the middle of the leaves with hammer or flathead screwdriver.

Next we give shape to the petals. This is where you need the socket wrench set or suitable piece of pipe.

 Place the petal layer on the socket and hit it gently with hammer. Do this to all layers except the leaf layer.

(I drilled holes at this point. It's much easier to do that before hammering.

Then it's time to start to building the flower. Leaf layer on bottom and all layers of petals on top of those from biggest to smallest.

Small piece of pipe or long socket can be used to help while doing this.

After assembling the flower i welded some metal to keep it from moving.

Then it's time for the blowtorch. Heat the topmost layer till it glows a bit red and bend the petals up towards the center. Do this to all layers. Leaf layer tips are bent downwards.

 

Then we are lacking the leaves still. They are made by the same way as the petals. Picture of the leaves is again from google. For example this will work really well. Print and transfer to sheet metal.

Petioles are made with hammer and flathead screwdriver.

Some texture to the edges of the flowers can be made with file, metal cutters or bench grinder.

Attach the leaves to the stem and then connect the stems together. Blowtorch is used to heat up the flowers and bent the tips downwards to follow the gravity.

And the rose is ready. It can be painted so it looks real or just left as metal color. I suggest that atleast layer of clearcoat is added to prevent rusting.