Metal Flower (Stainless Steel)

Fairly easy tutorial on making a metal flower at home. The idea came from a picture of a Water Lily. Hope you guys like it!

Materials Needed:

• Stainless Steel Sheet (24 gauge or lighter)
• Super Glue
• Paper
• Fine Point Permanent Marker

Tools Needed:

• Tin Snips (Rights and Lefts)
• Hammer
• Chisel
• Pliers
• Blowtorch
• Scissors

The video can be found on my YouTube channel at:

I drew each pattern out on standard line paper that I got from my 14 year old daughter. As you can see it's pretty basic. I drew two intersecting perpendicular lines for reference while drawing the petals. If you look at the pictures you can see how many petals you will need of each pattern. You'll also notice that each pattern gets slightly smaller than the first.

After all the patterns are made up, go ahead and cut them all out...you should have 4 patterns altogether. The biggest pattern with the six petals will be traced twice, the 2nd pattern will be traced once, the 3rd smallest pattern will be traced twice and the last pattern with 2 petals will be traced once.

24 gauge stainless steel is a little tough to cut through but it isn't impossible. 26 or 28 gauge would be ideal for this project but I only had 24 gauge on hand. When cutting these pieces it is EXTREMELY helpful to have right side and left side snips...Also if you notice, I am using snips that are offset. This is also EXTREMELY helpful. Stainless is pretty hard on snips so if you have an old pair use those versus a new pair as this will dull your snips sooner than cutting softer metals.

After that pieces are all cut out the will be a little curled up. They will go back to their flat shape by using a hammer and a hard piece of wood. Softly tap them back into shape!

Down the center of every leaf, on every petal, draw a straight line using a marker. This will be the guide for the center line on the leaf. With your piece on a scrap piece of wood, line up your chisel on your mark and strike the chisel with a hammer to make a center indent line in the middle of the leaf.

Then on each side of the line you will make 4 or 5 more indents with the hammer and chisel to get the "leaf" look. See the 2nd and 3rd pictures for reference.

With an adjustable pliers like I'm using in the picture above, go ahead and bend up (called braking) the petals. The bottom petal gets zero breaks. The second petal only gets a slight break. The third petal a little more than the second one and so on and so forth.

The two pictures above are what your brakes should look like when you're done.

So to give it that bronze and blue color I used a blowtorch to heat up the pieces and this was done to all of them. With your pliers, grab onto the very end of each petal and point the flame at the middle of each petal on the INSIDE. If it's heated from the back side you will not get that nice transition between bronze and blue. Being as thin as this metal is, it will only take about 10 seconds or so. When the metal is glowing red it's ready. I let it cool for another ten seconds or so and then I dunked it into a bowl of water just to cool it faster. Because I did this in my finished basement which is carpeted...It's cold in Minnesota and the garage isn't heated yet!

In the center of each petal, add a small amount of super glue. Then stack each petal on top of one another in an alternate pattern (see above picture). Between layers, I noticed you should wait about 3-4 minutes until the glue has set up enough for the next layer. The super glue takes a little longer to adhere when using bigger dabs of it.

Using a part of the sheet we cut the pieces out of, cut off a small chunk and color it using the same method we did earlier with the blowtorch. After it cools, cut off 6, 1/8 inch slivers. Then with your pliers grab on to the sliver so that about 1/4 inch is inside the jaws of the pliers. Squeeze tight and fold the sliver over as far as you can. Then squish tight. Now hem this over one more time. Then about 3/4 of an inch down from the hem, fold over the rest of the sliver so that it is at a 90 degree angle. Cut the tail off so that the end is about 1/2 of an inch. Check out the above picture for a reference.

Add some super glue underneath the top petal. The petal doesn't sit exactly flat on top of the one underneath it so you will have room to add some glue and then slide in the pistils. Three will go in one side and three will go in the other side. Try to space the out evenly.

After the glue has dried completely, give it about 20 minutes, you should be able to push them wherever you want with your finger or your pliers. I sort of bent them inwards a little more.

This step is optional, if you choose not to add a magnet, then you're all done! But to add a magnet all I did was add a liberal amount of super glue to the back side of the flower and stick the magnet on...pretty simple. I used a neodymium (rare earth) magnet. I found these magnets ACTUALLY hold your kids projects to the fridge that they made in school. Unlike the other ones where you slap the magnet to the paper and it holds until there is a breeze in house and all the papers go flying everywhere!

So, I hope everyone enjoyed this Instructable. If you have any questions or comments please let me know! Thanks for looking

If you're interested, I have a DIY YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/c/adamfleisch with more metalworking and woodworking videos.