So, let's start with the components. A vintage wrench, the stunning vice, hand forged nails, spanner ends, some nuts and ball bearings. I began with offering up the wrench to see where about I would like to mount it when the fish design was completed. This gave me the idea of how much room I had to play with. One thing I wanted to try was to open the wrench a touch, this extended the fish in length and also gave some negative space. Our brains are great for filling in those areas but most importantly when I am creating something, it needs to just look right, which to me is what it did. Looked right.

Mounting Dennis - I came up with a method to make him look like he was 'floating'. My previous effort involved using rebar directly up into the bottom of the fish which I feel spoiled the illusion. This version I wanted to make it less obvious. I welded 2 chunky nails together. I then forged those into a 'C' shape. This makes under the fish a place you can sweep your finger under and it appears to be magic!..... well to me it does. I really like the view from the rear, something about how the supports sit gives a real pipework inside a soviet submarine vibe.

For the reeds that surround him, I wanted to make it look like he was swimming through a body of water and the water pressure from this would be pushing the reeds out of the way without physically touching them. It is quite a simple method but making it look spot on just takes a little time and a few attempts. What I did for the reeds was to heat some big chunky nails that I have and put a few into the fiery forge. I flattened from about half way up on the anvil. The next step is to put some texture on these with the round end of a ball peen hammer to give them the dappled effect. Once I had done this it was back into the forge so I could add the curve to them that replicates the natural swaying under water. This was a few taps on the anvil so not to change anything other than the curvature and to keep the details from the ball peen hammer in place.

I have been let down by my poor photography skills but you may be able to make out the lettering "M.DENNIS" stamped onto the side of him. This will have been a previous owner of the wrench. It's so cool to see things like this on tools, who is this person, are they wondering where their wrench is? Have they marked their name on it so it does not go missing? Will M. Dennis ever see this? More than likely not, but I hope so one day!

Although the main side to view this piece is from the other side, I love to see the back side. The industrial edge really shines through. The vice is really interesting as I have no idea of its origin, although it has an absolutely stunning patina that has only got better with a coat of furniture wax and so many marks, scratches and dings. I can only imagine the amount of cool things it has been used to make and fix.

One thing I did experiment with this piece is colour. Subtle colour may I add. I heated certain areas with a blow torch, there is a science to this which is often used in industry where certain colours appear as specific temperatures in very controlled environments. I just went to town to see what colours would appear. To my delight I managed to achieve mainly blue colours. After some very light research I would guess this would have been around 300°C.

All in all, this was a fun build. I learnt some really cool things, some interesting details have been included that you can only see if you get in close. Sometimes when you go for a simple idea it can really work out and the relaxed nature of it can help you focus on other things.