Well here it is, installation day. It took me, my brother Jason (Jazz) and Bob (sculpture technician) all day to travel down to Devon and site my piece. We began the day by loading the trailer with the sculpture. We didn't need the hoist as it is fairly easy to 'walk' the piece around. With a bit of 'to me, to you' we got the piece to the back of the trailer and cushioned it from the straps with an old jacket and a matress.
As you would expect we had some strange looks going down the motorway with our 'bound figure' in the back. Bob was our driver and after four hours (and a couple of breaks) we made it from Carmarthen to Muddiford.
Jazz and Bob happy and ready to go. Rinus was expecting us so we had access to electricity, and I was really pleased with the plinth that Rinus and his team had made. We backed up the trailer to the plinth and lowered the tail gate directly onto it. I had planned it in my head that by doing this we would be able to walk the sculpture onto the concrete pad without the need to bring a hoist all the way to Devon and back.
Luckily my plan worked without a hitch and the tailgate idea worked a treat. Jazz and I were able to position the piece with relative ease. After the sculpture was in position the four fixing holes were marked and drilled. We all learned a new fact, SDS drills come in different sizes. SDS and SDS extra. We were all set up to go, holes marked, electric ready, drill plugged in and working, drill bit put into drill......oh? Yep, the drill bit didn't fit; Luckily after a quick run up to Rinus he was able to provide us with an SDS drill that fit our drill bit.
Crisis averted, Bob is on hand with his vacuum to clear the holes as I drlled them. Once the four holes were ready we re-positioned the piece and started to fill the holes with chemical anchor. The anchor comes in a tube and is made up of two parts that mix in the nozzle and this mixture sets rock hard holding fixings in place.
You can see the mix occurring on the nozzle above and the length and depth of the bolt and chemical anchor. This was repeated for all four holes and will hold the sculpture in place for a long time to come.
Once anchored we wiped the piece down and started to wax the surface. Two layers of Rennaisance wax was applied and allowed to harden between. Once hardened we buffed the wax with old cloth, this layer of wax will help to protect the Iron but will only last a short time, soon the piece should start rusting giving the surface a lovely natural orange patina.
Time for posing..Just enough time for a quick change and some photos for posterity. Time to go home, we left Carmarthen at 9am and got back at around 10pm. Not bad. Cheers lads.
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