Hi all, I coming to the end of a giant windvane project and would like some input about the finish. The client chose the look of a blued steel finish with an orange rust patina randomly placed throughout and a clear top coat. My concern is that this vane goes on top of a house out in the country and is surrounded by fields which for at least 4 months out of the year could have a sandblasting effect on the vane. I am also worried that the rusting patina won't fully stop rusting. I have been considering having the vane powdercoated or professionally painted black, or blueblack, and then use guilders paste to give the patina effect. I would then clear coat the whole thing for extra protection. I can't change the materials(mild steel) and it goes on a giant house(thus the size to keep in scale). I think the closest one could get and still see it, without getting on the roof, would be 90-120 feet. Since it's going to be hard to see any small details I'm beginning to lean more towards a faux finish with more protection than the real deal. What do you think?

other side. Form is getting close to "angel trumpet" depth will need to increase depth by 50% Brad

Some friends recently pulled what looks like an old operating shaft from a tractor out of and old well on their property. It is a 1" diameter round steel shaft (heavily rusted) with some hardware on one end. I would like to use the hardware end as a base and forge some (yet to be determined) sculptural shape on the other end. I would like to keep the rusted patina on the hardware (base) end and transition to a wire brush finish with a lacquer finish on the forged end. This will be a relatively small piece for indoors. How should I treat the rusted end? Should I just leave it as is, or try to put a lacquer finish over the whole thing? Should I consider a completely different approach?

I create metal flowers. I want to add color to the flower petals with something that will delay the natural rusting process. I know lacquer will serve the purpose but I want to add subtle color to the lacquer and cannot identify a resource for the type of color additive that would work with lacquer on metal left outdoors

I just read an older blog entry about patinas and there were some comments about sterling and the general idea that one could really only get grey to black. I'd like to share a different perspective.