Building "Position"

Last week I spent in the studio cleaning and grinding the steel rings for "Position." The edges of the rings were cut with a torch making for a very rough edge. I had to grind them down to achieve a cleaner looking edge.

I also cleaned the surface of the steel with a wire cup brush attached to my grinder. This prepares the surface to accept the primer and paint later on.

It's a little hard to see in these photos, but on the left is the before and on the right is the after.

After I finished these six rings, I started to weld the pieces together. I finished the top two and bottom two rings.

Below is an action shot of me welding the bottom two together. I am only welding on the inside of the rings, so you see a nice clean edge on the outside. The welding is the fun part...much easier on the wrists!

website and rings

So, I finally bought my domain name for my website. { www.dustyfolwarczny.com } Feel free to click on it. I am still very much in the process of building it, so try not to judge too harshly. I thought I would be frugal and use Google apps or sites rather than purchase Dreamweaver and it is proving to try my patience. I'll get there soon enough, though.

More than half the time I spend on my mac trying to figure the program out, I'm thinking in the back of my head that I would much rather be working with the metal and the other projects I have going on. BUT to move forward, I have to look ahead and remember that the administrative stuff is just as important in terms of business.

However, all next week I will be spending in my studio. I was able to make a trip to Victor Pipe & Steel over the weekend to procure steel rings for the piece. I now have six of the seven rings needed to complete the piece at my studio. I'll fetch the last one when I return to St. Louis for Easter. Thanks to big brother for hauling two of the rings up here for me :)

I have to get Position built. I will need to install it on 5.6-7.2009. I have a lot of grinding to do before welding the rings together. I am still uncertain about how I will fasten the sculpture to the base. I need to know where it is going before I engineer that part (there are many different locations around Chicago it could end up). Most likely I will use a flange or an inner ring to secure it to the base. I'm sure that makes very little sense without a drawing, sorry...I'm just a stream of consciousness right now. Back to work!