Tool Assignment

For this assignment, we were asked to create a tool out of metal. I chose to recreate the Hylian Shield from the Zelda video games, as a birthday gift for my room mate. The construction of the shield was difficult, because I have never used metal as a medium before. The shield was very hard to cut out because of it's thickness, which also didn't allow me to curve the shield as I had hoped. I used the forge to bend a rod into a handle shape and welded it into place. I feel that the best part of this piece is the paint job. I used stencils to paint the decoration onto the surface of the metal. I also attatched cut metal pieces onto the shield using epoxy, so I didnt damage the paint with welds. We had also run out of sheet metal, so the border of the shield had to be made with a roll of thin guaged sheet metal, which was very annoying to work with. If I were to rework this piece, I would replace the border with a real sheet metal and hopefully find a way to work the shield into a curved shape.