On Tuesday, Meg's 2 stones from Reed quarry showed up. Vessels trucking hauled in the 14 ton and 7 ton blocks. Meg is inspecting the stone that will become the Reading Girl for Charles City, Iowa. We are both very happy with the quality of the stone.
We scheduled time between the arrival of the stone and the crane to give us the opportunity to split off the extra 3-1/2 feet of stone off what will be the top. (The stone is lying on its side.)
I drill a series of holes along the line where I want to split the stone, and then hammer in the feathers and wedges until it splits.
A 50 ton crane from Bramer Crane Company of Louisville, arrived in the afternoon. The first task was to move Oberon off the cart. He's going to Yew Dell Gardens next Wednesday, and we need the cart for Meg's commission.
Next, we rigged up the reading girl rock to move it off the truck. It weighed in at 28,000 lbs., but weighed 21,500 lbs. after I split off the extra piece on the end.
We set it on the ground and re-tied the rigging so that we could flip it into its upright position.
Then, we set the rock onto the cart-and-rail system. We will commence work on this project once we are finished with installing our sculptures at Yew Dell Gardens next week.
That was fun! Let's keep moving heavy things while the crane's here. Meg needed her Sea Lion moved up onto higher wooden timbers.
Meg bought this stone to round out the load. I thought that I'd be able to talk her out of it (I thought wrong). It will become a reclining reading girl. She already has some preliminary drawings for it.
"Well, what about this 6,500 lb piece of scrap from off the end?""Nope, go get your own rocks."
We woke up at first light that morning to the familiar trill, trill of baby raccoons - the first ones of the year. When we opened the door to get a snap shot, they dashed inside to explore.
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