Gongs For The Wind

Leah Way

We got interested in making wind chimes back in 2014 when we needed an anniversary gift for each other. Leah knowing that Jon is a project motivated artist brought home a SCUBA tank and said let’s make our own. The adventure began by making wind chimes for friends and family. They all said “why don’t you sell these”. We have had great fun in gathering finials and wind catchers from yard sales, swap meets and the like and meeting the most interesting folks along the way. Making friends and making people smile is such great satisfaction.

We salvage expired SCUBA tanks fire extinguishers and other steel cylinders. We then repurpose them into chiming bells. We hunt flea markets and yard sales for the finials and wind catchers. We are giving new value to the disregarded by redesigning the original objects into works of metal art. The process in a nut shell: we cut the top and bottom off the cylinders, weld the striker and finial into place, sandblast then powder coat. Now we add the wind catcher to compliment the finial. The strikers have a 3-part process: 1. Attaching the striker rod to the cylinder 2. Attaching the plastic striker to the rod and finally 3. Attaching the wind catcher to the striker. Power saws, welding tools, power sanders, gas torches, blacksmithing hand tools are used to make these unique chimes.