Summer Time (and the living's easy)

It's turned into the humid, hot weather (over 90 degrees) that's typical for Kentucky in July.

This week, the work focused on the stone base for the newly finished Washington sculpture. I used the crane truck to get an 8 inch slab from the stone yard. A hammer drill (shown) put a hole through the center so that I could place a 1" stainless pin in the center. You have to start by drilling half way from the bottom, turn the piece over and meet the hole. Otherwise, it will break out a big chunk if you drill all the way through from one side. I use a square to make sure that the pin is perfectly perpendicular to the base.

Next, I used the crane truck to place the pre-drilled sculpture over the pin.

The sculpture and base preform were rolled back into the shop, so that I could work in the shade. I inscribed a line onto the top of the base using a divider, like I did with the edges. This will create a lens-shaped base that will follow the footprint of the bottom of the sculpture. I used the diamond wheel on the grinder (shown) to cut off the extra stone. The hammer was used to break off the pieces after they were cut.

After cutting off the main portions of waste stone with the large grinder, I carefully went back around the entire circumference with a smaller grinder and used the small level (resting on the timber) to make sure that the edges of the base were flat and vertically plumb. In this picture, the left side has been finished, while the right side remains to be worked.

This is the base after it was completely ground into shape.

This is the finished and polished collar base for the sculpture. Using the sander (in the picture), I went thru a schedule of coarse 36 grit, then progressively finer 80, 220 and 400 grits to get the final smoothness that I wanted.

Sunday afternoon, I had a choice: either do some housework, or go for a bike ride and maybe a little exploring.

I notice that my floor needs sweeping, still my bike gently creaks.

Our first side trip found these remains of an old bridge; built who-knows-when, across a creek with no name, going from nowhere to nowhere in particular. I'm sure it was important at the time.

Meg discovered that the huge culverts down by the slough (pronounced 'slew') were high and dry.

Go toward the light, Don, toward the light!

Race ya home!