The first few NEB’s wall structures are coming along nicely. To make the sculpting a little quicker and easier we decided to do the top portion while the frame is still lying down. Matt showed off his considerable lathing skills to ready the giant frame for the first of the fibreglass-reinforced concrete which will happen tomorrow. When that cures we’ll be able to tip up the frame and finish off the balance of the feature. Stay tuned…
Some assembly required
There are many types of materials required to fabricate our features. Some of these supplies come from far away, such as Precision Board (California) and concrete additives (Illinois). The balance of our supplies are sourced from local suppliers who serve us very well. We love to buy in bulk and keep a good supply of all we need on hand. Surprisingly, one of the harder items to source in our area is the extra fine sand we require to mix our specialty fibreglass-reinforced sculpting concrete. To ensure we have plenty on hand we buy it by the truckload. To keep the sand pristine and dry we store it in a steel shipping container. As we ramp up for next year’s projects we are topping up our supplies. Today I kept our little tract humming as I loaded up the sand bin once again.
Window frames - automated
The wonderful thing about having modern CNC equipment is that it can run while I am keeping busy doing other things. Today the machine carved out the window panes for the NEB’s building. These window assemblies will be mounted to the steel frames and then we’ll sculpt the concrete around them. My task is to stay one step ahead of the welding crew who are always quickly catching up.
