Many recycled metal sculptures can be made from small parts. These parts may be joined using wire or metal-joining adhesives. Old nuts and bolts, parts from clocks, or tools may become your next sculpture components. Assemblage can represent realistic objects, imaginary creatures or figurative representations of reality. One key to successful sculpture with recycled metal is to find the parts and then let their shapes inform the final product.
Metal sculpture does not mean you need to learn to melt, cast and form your own metal. You can follow the lead of creative thinkers who came before. Dornob.com has photos of seating made by hammering nails into thick slabs of reclaimed wood. The nails are bent and twisted and then ground down to a shiny and smooth silver-toned finish. No special metal-melting oven was needed. These pieces were made with just a hammer and a grinder.
You can use existing garden art and combine it with found metal items. Fred Conlon, owner of the Sugar Post studio, creates his own version of metal creatures that seek out and destroy plastic garden gnomes, carrying one off over their heads. Other artists use various weights of wire either twisted together or in single strands to add form to smaller items. Create a metal base of found materials and add a shallow glass bowl. You have an instant birdbath.
When you find interesting pieces of metal, keep them and look at samples of metal sculpture to help you decide what to create. Springs and metal strapping can be contorted and bent to form many different things. Add wire, a few nuts and bolts, or some rusty nails and old copper tubing. Before you know it, you will have created your first recycled metal sculpture. It could be a tree. It could be a cat. You have creative control -- you decide.