Here you can see the gantry at work. It still amazes me that all I have to do is pull on the chain with very little effort and the 400ish lbs of steel is lifted. Thanks to Adam for being my spotter/team player while I did this.
I was a bit hasty when I put the straps on the top piece before lifting it up. I learned that I should have made sure it would lift up the piece already centered to make the next step easier. I thought the weight of the top piece would make centering it easy, but I was wrong!
I think that this was the most testing part of the the sculpture. I kept thinking about why I didn't center the straps better. Eventually, hours of tinkering with more straps and the use of my car jack ended and the top was in place make for one piece, "Position." I immediately tack welded it in place and then made several more passes to ensure it would stay in one piece.
I was given a tip from my dad to make a pattern to put on the base from my anchor bolts. This is the stencil I used for pre-drilling the holes for the anchor bolts. Thanks Dad, it worked like a charm!
The picture to far left is of the piece after several cans of primer. Next step was to paint two coats of black and the I finished it with a dry brush application of paint with stainless steel in it. I wanted it to look like raw steel. The outside of this sculpture has a lot more paint that the inside, which goes a long with the meaning of the piece (that will come in the next blog entry).
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