Pure gold

As each day passes, more coats of paint go on and each piece comes to life bit by bit. Now as the final glazes and bits of color are applied to the treasure in the dirtbank and the shovel they are almost completely done. There's plenty of small details in this piece such as the stray gold coin in the dirt by the shovel. This pair of pieces have become one of those quiet screamers, telling the story so effectively. Once the piece is put into it's permanent home and the landscape is tucked around it the treasure and shovel will look like they've been recently abandoned by whomever discovered the treasure, which is still there for the taking. This two piece feature will be visible close up from the golf and only a few feet away from the train.

Another framework is quickly coming together for one of the Gruffle houses.It looks simple at this stage but this will be a good sized piece with lots of fun detail.

Tomorrow the crew is off for Rememberance Day but the crane truck will be here and Peter and I will load the ship into the first container. It is going to be exciting. Stay tuned...

Documenting every piece

It's soon time for another site visit to Trinidad. We'll be meeting with architects, builders and various other groups and making presentations regarding the progress to date. We'll also be doing a layout on the site to get a feel of how everything will physically fit together. In anticipation of the trip it is time to gather all the photos of the work completed to date, making sure everything is properly documented. I spent the day sorting, compiling and filling in the inevitable gaps in our photographs.

The photos I have taken for this journal certain took care of the bulk of what is required but surprisingly there were a quite a number of missed photos of features. Here's a small sampling of what we missed...

Tomorrow afternoon the first container arrives and the next day the loading process begins. The next chapter in this exciting build has begun. Stay tuned...

Keeping score

Each day, after completed pieces are moved from the shop Peter goes to the bulletin board, breaks out a sharpie and marks in a few more boxes. Each box designates a stage of a feature under construction. Coloring it in the boxes lets everyone know how we are doing with the project. 

Sometimes the features are built in stages because of their size. One such project is the large pirate ship. The bulk of the project is done and ready to put in the container but only the top portion of two masts are yet to be finished. This means the ship boxes on the chart are not yet colored past the welding stage, even though the ship is actually 95% done. This motivates everyone to get those last bits done.

Without a doubt there is plenty yet to do on this project, but we have also made great progress to date. Peter is keeping close tabs on our progress.