Working, Working, Working...

You get the idea. Welder issues taken care of I have been able to get some good work done. I now have a check list and yesterday got a lot of items accomplished. There is light at the end of the tunnel! All the parts are made for the bases and now it's just fabbing everything up. Tomorrow I will cut all the pipes to length, drill and insert the pins and then weld together and attach the internal sleeve bearings. I have a few of the internal sleeves made up and will do the last two tomorrow. After that I can start welding all the bottom supports together. By the end of the week all the fab work should be done and then I have a good chunk of time for clean up and sanding. I feel satisfied that all is going according to plan.


I may be making a few small adjustments to the height of some of the works. You can see in one image that I have my friend John Mark standing next to one of the 'shorter' pieces, he's 6'3". It looks pretty tall to me and I may make some adjustments to keep the works at better relative heights to each other. Also to eliminate the sense of back and front to the works I am installing the support bars randomly. Not that it matters since they all will turn in the wind anyway. More up-dates soon.

My "tall" friend John Mark The shop does not make a good backdrop! Although it might look heavy I can put this up and take it down by myself. However, I will have help when I do the final install at the Museum.

The three 2' pieces with support bars.

Bottom parts.

Top parts, bearing sleeves for the support bars.

The Welder from Hell

Things progress well on the museum commission. Well, for the most part. I have been having considerable problems with the mig welder. It does not like stainless steel. Funny this should happen now after I have been using it for weeks without problems. I promise you there is nothing out there that I (and several other people) have not tried in attempts to fix it. Even the welding supervisor from Mississippi Tank came over and tried to help. Of course it worked for a few tacks and then it was all over with. Every one has been so kind in offering suggestions, but now it is time for a pro repairmen. My friends at Airgas will get thier chance on Monday.


The annoying part is that I really wanted to start integrating stainless techniques with my upper level sculpture students this fall and I am not sure we can do it with the problems I am having now. It looks like a new mig welder may be on the books, with this one relegated to carbon steel.

As far as the commission, I have the main sculptures made, all nine of them. I have moved them out of my field of vision into the "gallery". I need a rest from them. Later I will pull them back into the shop and work on them as a unit, adding or taking away elements, if needed, to make a more complete statement.


Right now I am working on the poles and attachment structures for the bases. I made a jig to keep the poles upright for welding and various templates for cutting the shapes. We do not have a CNC cutter so it is all being done by hand with the plasma torch.

Jig for holding pole upright for welding base plate and gussets.

Tacked together assembly it will later be secured to a pre-poured concrete base.

As of yesterday (Saturday) all the parts are cut out for the bases. I got one base tacked up (before the welder bird-nested again) and all looks good. Except of course I can't continue any welding! Argh! My next step, is to get all the parts cleaned up and do any grinding/sanding needed. That will take a good day for sure. Next, I should be receiving my seamless tubing and can get the sleeve bearings made up for the top part of the poles. After that I will have to have the welder problem solved or I will be seriously behind schedule and I can not afford that. Hopefully I can up-date you all soon with positive welder news. 

Commission Work and More Shows

Schools out for the summer finally! Although I still do teach ceramic sculpture starting next week, that studio class will not affect the metal studio where I am working right now. I have tons of undisturbed space to use and don't have to clean everything up every night.

James relaxing on the just-sanded Alligator Bench for Martha Ferris.

First, I needed to get the Alligator Bench sanded with it's final finish for Martha. It's still not ready for installation as we are waiting for the mosaic to arrive in mid- June. Once that is here I can put it in place and then finish off the top edge. It will probably go to Jackson before it is completely installed with the mosaic glued in place. Doing the final sanding of the bench was fun. James and I worked together on this and it took us a few days to sand it and also do a few spot welds in some places that needed it. I also installed the bottom cross pieces, requested by Madge later on to help with installation. Now it is set off to the side awaiting the mosaic piece and now I can begin work on the Garden Boats.

The Garden Boats are going well. Being back in the studio is very exciting and energizing. I am just at the beginning and working out my techniques for bending, welding and finishing the joints. Stainless is such a different material, so ridged and much stronger than mild steel. When you grind or sand on it with a flap disc it comes off in tiny slivers. Not nice on the skin and very itchy if you are not wearing sleeves. Being so hot in the shop (it's been up over 92F a few times) it's hard to put on sleeves but it's totally worth it. Another thing about stainless is that since it will get no finish later I need to sand every piece now before I weld it into place. Because I have some small parts and some complicated curves I have places that I can not get into with a grinder or sander later, so it all has to get sanded prior to welding. I also have to finish each joint as I go along. It's not something I am used to doing and initially it got in the way of my flow when working but I am adjusting well to the new material and even find I like stainless as I appreciate the hardness. There is more resistance when grinding and sanding and that makes gouging the metal accidentally less of an issue. I can sometimes have a heavy hand when grinding.

The hot shop and modeling my new welding sleeves

I am working on the bearing issues as well. Have a few samples coming and have a good design for how they integrate in the piece. Some bearings can be wildly expensive and others relatively cheap. I have been doing research on this and making some models with parts from the farm store for weeks now but I want to get this part figured out. There are many different bearings that will work for the project but none so far that satisfy my aesthetic for the piece. There are literally thousands of types of bearings and I have been consulting with the tech people at a few of the suppliers and I must say they have been very informative and helpful. One place I must mention is Impact Bearing, their sales manager Scott Barton was extremely helpful. They have so may kinds of bearings it's almost mind numbing, it was great to be able to get someone on the phone who was knowledgeable and easy to talk to. I await a sample piece from them and we'll see if it works.

A Garden Boat, basic structure going well

Templates for the fins to be cut out of 11ga SS sheet

Stainless ready to be made into Garden Boat sculptues

On a side note, The show in Florida at the Ormond Memorial Art Museum is going well and in a few weeks I make the long trek back to collect the work. The Maine show, The Art of the Boat at the Penobscot Maine Museum is up and my heavy ceramic vessel made it fine with out any breakage! Phew! Also, I just received a wonderful letter with an invitation for a show in Idaho in early 2012, of course I accepted and will post more information about that later. Soon I will also begin work on another Train Depo show here in Hattiesburg. The first exhibition, shown last year, was hugely successful and the curators decided to do it again and I am invited to make another work. In addition, I also am working on a top-secret project. We'll see if it materializes or not, if it does you'll get more information later!