At last it’s time to finish off my weather vane posts. I last left the story with the base of the weather vane in zinc undercoat. I finished off the pig for the ‘wind’ part from plasma cut aluminium and balanced it on a rod with a curly tail end for decoration and balance. This fitted over the vertical part of the main vane stem with a greased ball bearing to allow it to swing easily in the wind.

With the whole assembly screwed in place of the original tatty weather vane, I was quite pleased with the result.

Here is a close up of the pig:

I know I have been remiss in not posting the picture of the finished weather vane, but in the meantime, Happy Xmas to everyone. Be kind.

I am overdue part 2 of my weather vane project, so here goes.

This is of course the main body after zinc undercoating.

it weighs about 3 times as much as the ‘shop bought’ one it replaces and should last a lot more than 3 times as long. I have added some twists and scrolls to the design, partly for strength but mainly for decoration.

I have also added my trademark, and favourite, use of organic scrolls along with industrial rivets in the strapping design to support the vertical post. A quick bit of compass work also confirmed the need for a twist in the post to get it perfectly aligned.

Now to the N, E, S and W indicators and the all important vane itself.

I have been thinking for a while that I need to replace the shop bought weather vane, currently sitting over the garage, with a proper blacksmith made weather vane.

The current weather vane, as seen here, was bought about 20 years ago from a garden centre somewhere long forgotten.

It was chosen more for its subject matter than its overall design, pigs being a favourite of my wife.

However, over recent years the weather has taken its toll and I have had to make a few running repairs to the arms. From a distance it still looks OK, but for a while I have wanted to make a slightly more ornate weather vane before the old one falls apart.

So now I have set the scene, the work began. The one stipulation was that it must have the same basic pig design. I therefore started by taking a photograph of the pig and blowing it up onto aluminium sheet, but more of that to come.

The final stage of making our 25th wedding anniversary celebration bench was to make the slats for the seating. These were made from oak, from another plank bought from the National Trust, Ickworth wood fair.

It took quite a bit of cutting and planing to produce the slats, but the results are very pleasing.

Below is a picture of the completed bench in the garden.