Jay has now finished cleaning up the sculpted concrete DOWNEYS letter faces with a wire brush and scraper to ready them for paint next week. Each letter face will be painted and glazed with a different colour. I can hardly wait to see them painted and lined back up in a row! Stay tuned…
Skinning a horse
I still have a little welding to do on Kraay’s Tire Horse entry, but it was a day at the design table instead. This allowed the crew to get a good start on attaching the diamond lath without fear of being burned by sparks while I was in the studio. Tomorrow afternoon, I’ll pick up where I left off. The shape of the tire horse becomes more evident as we proceed, and by the middle to end of next week, it should be ready for sculpting. Stay tuned…
Production
People who visit us are most often surprised that our shop is not massive, nor is our crew large. There are only five full-time members on our team, and the main shop measures only 30’ x 40‘ with two small additions for the CNC router and plasma table, plus the studio. Although we each have our favourite tasks in which we excel, every member of the team happily helps out with all the jobs to make the work flow through the shop quickly. A medium-sized piece would typically be in the shop only 2-4 weeks at most. The key to producing the work we do is being somewhat organized and flexible. Although it can seem chaotic at times, there is a purposeful workflow and plan. We fabricate all of our features and signs on wheeled frames to allow them to be juggled around the shop as needed. Generally, the pieces in fabrication in the shop are in a variety of phases. We first weld the structure, then the pencil rod armatures, followed by the attachment of the diamond lath. A typical piece would take 5-7 work days to be at this stage. Sculpting is best done in just the right-sized batches so that we can mix, trowel on the fibreglass-reinforced concrete, fully sculpt it, and clean up by quitting time. The features are then allowed to cure for 3-5 days before we begin the painting and glazing, which takes another 5-7 days. This shot captures a typical busy, productive day in the shop.
