Saturday, February 16, 2013

Another days work on Sati the Asian Elephant

Today ended with Sati finally connected together in one continuous piece.

I was able to take down my home made gantry crane today after a final lift to prepare the upper and lower mating surfaces, prior to gluing Sati's two halves together.

The glue line is clearly obvious with the two halves going together as planned.

She was built in two haves to allow the Zoo staff to be able to move her from place to place around the Zoo grounds. Since she was vandalized and consequently left in outdoor storage Sati had suffered some significant structural damage. Her two mating halves no longer aligned correctly and some of her other details have deteriorated too. Her Hickory wood tusks were touched by so many hands that the double skin fiberglass finish wore clean through to the wood! (See in the photo above).

Later in the day I fitted a few more filler blocks to flesh out her left hand cut away. I have one more day left of filling and shaping before I'm ready to plaster render her repaired left side. The plastering will be done with a combination of two types of render in conjunction with a fiberglass tape sandwich, reinforcing matrix.

Next job will involve re glassing her tusks to give them protection against the weather. After that the fun bit, her final coat of paint.

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