Mining for FUN!

Work continues on all fronts. Up at the lake the crew is busy welding and applying mesh to the lower fence. In the shop we are applying the final touches to make the balloon ready for concrete. The ballon basket started getting the concrete this morning. We are also planning the next pieces to be started including the water tower and mining car.

The signs for the project will ne routed on our CNC router and so I spent a little time building the necessary routing file. We'll combine high tech with some old fashioned hand work to create some pretty cool signs.

The mine car is now ready for the mesh which will make it ready for the sculpted concrete. This is going to be fun!

The structural steel is now ordered and as soon as it arrives we'll get busy to build the whole big piece. I can hardly wait...

-grampa dan

Tree sculpt DONE!

Mondays always seem a little more hectic as I scramble to assign work to all the crew, meet with the client to decide on the week's action and line up the materials we need soon. Monday seems to be the day for designing too. Even with all of that going on I managed to get my hands a little dirty. Peter worked part of the morning to apply some concrete to the tree. Hailey and I had a meeting after he left and we decided (with some encouragement from her) to go for it and try to finish the sculpting on the tree. It was a little ambitious but doable. It took a few minutes of overtime to get it all done but thanks to the efforts of Hailey, Jenessa, Kendra, and Sarah we managed to polish it off. The tree sure looks cool!

The thing about sculpting trees is that the twistier and gnarlier they are, the more the degree of difficulty goes up exponentially. This tree was definitely over the top but well worth the effort!

To give an idea of the giant scale of this piece I took this picture of Hailey peeking around the roots. She is standing tall (five foot six or so).

On Friday the painting process begins and by the end of next week the tree may just be on it's way to the 'mountain top'.

Stay tuned...

-grampa dan

More color!

This morning we loaded the two finished signs into the truck and took them up to the lake. It was a simple matter of sliding the pegs on the back of the signs into the sleeves previously imbedded into the sign background and then welding a bead on each stub to permanently secure them. It only took a few minutes to finish the installation.

This corner of the park is now very colorful and looking very finished! The crew and I are working hard onsite and in the shop to bring more pieces to completion. Stay tuned...

-grampa dan