I am grinding some of the welds in order to smooth and blend the transition areas a bit. There will be much more grinding and blending during the course of this project!
The humble beginnings of the Crane's head... I found a steel sphere that appeared to be about the correct size to work with. I cut the sphere in half and then roughed-out the eye sockets with a plasma cutter. Two more pieces of metal were cut from another sphere (I needed a slight concave shape for the back of the eye socket) and then tacked together to form the eye socket on each half of the head. I tapered the spheres by eliminating material on each half toward the front edge in order to soften the round effect of the origingal sphere.
You can see that the eye sockets have been formed by heating and hammering a rounded and depressed area to form the upper part of the socket and by welding-in the pieces described above. I experimented with a copper rivet for the pupil, but as you can see here, it appears undersized and too flat. I will be removing the rivets and replacing them with some larger (and more rounded) brass screws I located, but first, I have to braze-in the screw slots so they disappear. I have also slotted areas for the two sections to fit around the neck and beak support. I am holding the two halfs in a position that approximates the taper I intend to create - looking front to back or from above.