Big milestone

 

I have a contract to repair and restore a piece of public art that is made up of 10 footpath art panels with inset metal elements.

Quite a number of the metal elements were missing - a few had been rescued. I had to cut the missing elements from stainless steel with my side grinder as no metal fabricator would take the fiddly job on. An image of some of the pieces I fabricated follows. 

I was not able to glue earlier as there was rain and moisture on the path concrete for three weeks straight - frustrating.

But the exciting news is that after three weeks of being ready to glue the pieces into place I managed to do the glueing yesterday afternoon and went back and  finished in the early hours of this morning. One of the repaired sections with newly glued element appears in the early morning sunlight in the opening photo.

Some of the other glued elements can be seen in the following photos. There is a bit of excess glue in some places but this will be removed in the next stage.

If the weather is fine next week I will return to do repairs on cracked and chipped cement - this is the third stage. The four stages are: fabrication, glueing, cement repair, and paint touch up and clean. 

You can see why I was super excited to get the glueing done and why I saw it as real milestone!!

Metal play and water features

 

The image above shows the outcome of a bit of art metal play. I wanted to see how three layers of copper sheet would behave when pressed in wood and metal forms a number of times in my hand operated hydraulic press. If you like quirky spiky bowls this bowl will appeal to you; but if you are challenged by the square edges and pointy bits this one is not for you.  A couple of process-progress photos follow.

I think I will try this again but maybe with offset circles of metal. The hydraulic pressing process resulted in the three layers of metal binding together - no glue or rivets required - very organic!!!

I also finished hammering a couple of large bowls - one from the laundry copper and one from the base of the hot water tank. Both are water features - most likely watering spots for birds - stones for them to land on. The first bowl is about 450mm in diameter; and the second is about 350mm in diameter.

Who knows where the metal might take me over the next couple of weeks.