Metal Hand Guitar Holder

A tiny bucket of scrap steel, that is what I used for this project.

Whenever a piece of blank steel is left over anywhere I throw it in that bucket under the makers’ motto “I might need that someday”
Most of the time that is a LIE. a big fat lie, but in this case it turned out to be true.

I wanted to say thanks to a lovely gentleman that makes music for my youtube channel, and since he is a big guitar aficionado, I figured I would build him a guitar holder.
Then I thought of his love for metal music and the very distinct Sign of the Horns hand gesture that every metal fan makes at their favourite shows.
Drunk or sober, it does not matter, as soon as Slayer, Iron Maiden or Infested Cannibal Brides of Mordor come on stage, the hands go up and the horns come out.

So I figured I’d make a Metal Hand out of Metal….that is also a guitar holder :=)

Scrap steel of all possible shapes and sizes, rusted and sharp, just the way we like it.

Vinegar, for rust removal

Wire brush for rust removal and general welding clean up. Both a handheld one and a Drill powered one if you have it : https://amzn.to/2QBkbIu

Angle grinder with 3 disks - a cutoff disk - a grinding wheel and a flap disc.

Angle Grinder Flap Disc (for blending everything together): https://amzn.to/31pBiiF

Some form of hot glue gun for metal, AKA a welder, I used a simple stick welder

A hammer with a small edge, for trimming the slag off of your welds: https://amzn.to/3d9jLRu

A piece of wood, about 25cm by 15cm

A nut and bolt of approx. 6cm

A router or drill for drilling out a pocket in wood

Bandsaw or scroll saw ( or handsaw and files if you want to work up a bit of a sweat)

Clear spray lacquer

I started by taking small pieces of concrete rebar that were going to be the fingers and using my angle grinder I cut them to size, becoming the individual digits of those fingers.

Each digit then got an angle, since two of the fingers are sticking straight out ( the horns) and the other three are curved in ( making the rest of the imaginary goats head)
When a few finger pieces were cut to their rough shapes I took a stick welder and started welding them together. Each piece was tack welded in place, so I could still move the pieces by bending them or snapping them off and repositioning them.
After a while and after many false starts and lots of spatters I realised that trying to weld on rusted material is a really bad idea.
So in comes the tiny bucket of Vinegar in step 1.5.

Using normal vinegar I soaked all the pieces in it for 15 minutes and then i brushed them with a wire brush.
After washing all the pieces in the vinegar I continued welding on, what was now, blank steel.

I started by attaching the lowest digit to a flat piece of the handpalm and went from there, after the 4 finger were in place I needed to flesh out the hand a bit more. using any and all small pieces that I found in my bucket,
I moved them around until it felt like a part of hand, then tacked it in place.
This whole process felt a lot more like hot glueing cardboard together than it was making a precise metalwork.
If a bit looked crap, I took a hammer, knocked it off and re-did it.
After each tacked piece looked good I went back and did full welds.
Now it started to look like a hand.

On to grinding.

I switched the cutoff wheel for a grinding disk and took all the sharp edges off, then ground away the lines on the rebar and shaped things like fingernails, knuckles etc…
After that I switched to a flap disk, which is simply a bunch of small pieces of sandpapers attached to a grinding wheel.
This can be used for further rounding-off-stuff and general smoothing of your piece.

The final pass was done with a round wire brush chucked up in a drill. this way you can get a fairly clean polish on the metal and you ensure that nothing is sharp, even down in the small cracks and crevices, since the brush tends to reach pretty much everywhere.

The last piece of welding was taking the bolt part of your nut and bolt and placing the head of the bolt inside the handpalm and tack welding it into place,
that way the threaded part is sticking out, I let it stick about about 18mm past the hand.

Now it was a heavy hand that needed to be mounted to the wall.

Enter our piece of wood. I used a piece of Cambara, but you can use pretty much any wood for this.
I drew a general shape on the board that I felt looked like the backplates on mounted Deer heads, Boars etc,,
You know, that old timey shield shape that says “I went out on my shield like a fallen soldier” while in reality the animal was taking a poop in the forest and got a compound-bow arrow through both lungs mid poo before falling over quite unceremoniously.

Using the bandsaw I cut out one side of the board and used that to re-draw the the other side, this is a good tip to get symmetry without having to measure anything.
With the other side marked I also ran that through the bandsaw.
Using a router with a round over bit I rounded over all the edges.

I drilled a hole in the middle of the board so that the bold could fit through. on the backside you will need to add the nut so that everything can be tightened into place.
To do so I took a router, set the depth to a millimeter deeper than the nut is high, and routed out a pocket wide enough for the nut and a wrench so I could tighten it.

To finish the hand I gave it 3 layers of clear spray lacquer and the fingers got at least 6 coats, since they will be holding the guitar neck and
I wanted them to feel plasticky soft and not metal-ly hard.

Then bolt goes through the hole, nut gets tightened and voila!
We now have a metal hand stuck to a plate that can be mounted anywhere and hold your guitar (or teddy bear, or flower bouquet or piece of cheese)