Today there were three of us camped under our welding helmets, working hard to finish off the last Viking ship for Dubai. Peter was busy welding up the last of the structural steel frame. Jack and I were welding the pencil rod armature. Each piece of quarter inch thick steel bar is carefully shaped by hand and then welded into place. The object is to form a wire frame of the sculpture, slightly under size to allow a skin of concrete to be towelled on over top. Once we are done welding we hand tie a galvanized, expanded lath to this frame. I formed, cut and and welded over three hundred pieces of steel into place today. Jack did his share on the other end of the boat. Another few thousand feet of pencil rod should finish off this part of the project. It is looking more like a Viking ship every day!
Here a piece, there a piece, everywhere a....
The driveway is littered with sections of Viking ship frames these days. Half of a ship, which translates into two truck loads, are at the galvanizers and due back any day now. This means that two loads are staged and ready to load up. Before heading into the city the truck driver will stop at our place to pick up a load that needs to go in. All those pieces fill the yard up in a hurry! It won't change anytime soon for as fast as we turn these pieces around the second ship will be welded up and disassembled and waiting for it's turn to go get it's coat of zinc.
Sail away
With a project like the Viking ships there are many components and aspects to the project. It sure keeps us on our toes. We did the design, hired an engineer, and then cut and welded many tons of steel. There was lots of head scratching as we handled larger pieces than ever before. Then we sent the welded frames off to the galvanizer to be coated with a protective layer of zinc. This got us to the point where we start to do what we do best and that is the theme work. Our crew is familiar and more than capable with this work and on the Viking ships it is our best work ever. Now we are into the final stages and once more we had to contract others to create bits and pieces we couldn't do ourselves. We designed the sailed and sent the massive files off to a company who could handle the large scale work. We got back the double sided printed panels which we sent off again to our sewing experts to make into the sails. When we got them back we rolled them up and built a case to securely transport them. These will be tied to the masts once they get to Dubai.
