Stage two underway

Jack and I kept busy through the workday under our welding helmets, building new frames for new features while the crew started in on the wiring of the completed features. Attatching the metal lath is exacting work, not easy by any standard. Our crew has become skillful and quick at the task. By days end Jack and I had three more features welded. The crew had almst finished the boat/wagon and got a good start on the Treasure Quest tree.

We love to make interesting and intricate designs but the irony is that best and wildest designs are also the most difficult to attach the lath and also apply the concrete for sculpting.

It was another great day!

-grampa dan

Day one Trinidad

It's always exciting to break out the lengths of steel and fire up the welders to start in on a new project. For the Trinidad project I decided the first piece would be the horse and wagon. It's similar to the feature we built for Cultus Lake (also the first for that project) but with a definite pirate twist. The design has plenty of fun elements that help tell the story of Skallywag Bay.

We start with a sturdy structural framework which is carefully formed with our hydraulic press to fit inside the finished sculpture. We then work our way outwards, first with a lighter subframe and finally with the handformed pencil rod that defines the final shape of the piece. A galvanized mesh will be then tied onto this frame before we can begin the concrete sculpting.

Tomorrow the sparks will fly once again.

-grampa dan

More sign concepts

We are now officially started on the prefabrication for Scallywag Bay Adventure Park in Trinidad. Over the better part of the next year we will be busy in the shop making fanciful creations. These will be packed up into a whole lot of shipping containers and then transported to the site in the Caribbean.

The design for the park is now final as is the addition of some new rides. Today I worked on the design for the needed signs. The first is called Tupper's Pieces of Eight - a small, spinning coaster. The ride car will resemble the bottom portion of a barrel which will spin as it careens around a figure eight coaster track. And just to make it a little more fun we will elevate it about fifteen feet higher than it normally sits. The design for the car looks like this...

The characters we created will be the proprieters of the rides. This one is to be run by Tupper, the pirate bean counter. Since the track is shaped as a giant figure eight, the name was a natural fit. Here's the sign concept for the ride...

The second ride is going to be an exciting one. It is a pendulum ride. Twelve seats will face outward in a ring on the end of a giant pendulum. It will both spin and loop 360 degrees. We call it the KEEL HAUL

, owned by none other than Fredrick, the enforcer. The sign features him enjoying a turn being keel hauled.

There's still one more sign to go and that is for Spec's Crow's Nest, the spinning drop ride. I'll cram the design for that in sometime this coming week.

-grampa dan