Duncannon Scroll (Addendum) - Sand/Cement Sculpture

My last two posts were about the making of this piece and I left it with a kind of unfinished story. The sculpture still needed to be installed and it was another two years before that happened due to delays in getting planning permission and the foundations built.

In 2003 were back in Duncannon for the annual Sand sculpture festival and decided that since everything was ready we would give this piece a place to call home.

After bringing all the parts down to the beach we started with the center section. The reinforcing bar loops we added on top made for easy lifting by a teleporter and chains.

The Foundation/ Plinth seemed a bit overkill but I was happy with it's position and design. The first panel fitted nicely into place.

Unfortunately our sculpture wasn't the straightness so needed to be jacked up and leveled as we went along to close all the seams and match up the top and bottom lines.

Putting some rocks in for it to sit on did the trick. With the last piece in place I have to say it felt like a great achievement after all the steps we had taken to get to this place.

Concrete was then added to the bottom and back to fill the big gaps and to hold the whole thing in place. We didn't want someone to knock the whole thing over like a stack of dominoes.

So there it stood in the elements. The surface became a bit blotchy with the two years sat in a workshop of Duncannon fort but that would be was easily washed away.

I used a con-saw to cut away some of the over-sized foundation and angle grinded of the Re-bar eyelets below the surface. Our work here was done. It would be up to someone else to neaten up the surrounding area.

Over the next few months this happened with some nice rock work and patching up the seams inbetween the panels. They also powerwashed it and gave the sculpture a coat of concrete sealer which brought the base colour up nicely and would give it some protection from the harsh sea weather.

On July 4th 2004 the sculpture was finally unveiled to the public by the Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador who had some special connection to the Village. Neither myself nor Fergus could make the ceremony as we were away on another job at the time. We heard it was a grand day out and that the sculpture went down well.

Looking at it now I am sure that all of the work done on the foundations and plaques cost an awful lot more than the sculpture itself but for me I had a great time time making it and was happy to add this technique to my tool box.

Nearly 18 years have passed since we made this piece and it has spent most of that time being wind swept with salty sea air from the south Atlantic. The sculpture has definitely stood the test of time with no cracks or weathering and even though I can see some not so great carving quality in the piece from yours truly, I am still quite proud of it.

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Ps

Thanks for reading. I use Steemit to document my work as an ephemeral Sculptor of sand, snow and ice among other things. This will hopefully give it a new life on the Steem blockchain. I am doing them in chronological order so there are many more to come. Below you will find some of my recent posts.

Duncannon Scroll (part 2) - Sand/Cement Sculpture

Duncannon Scroll (part 1) - Sand/Cement Sculpture

The holey Demo- sand sculpture

I hope you'll join me again soon.
@ammonite

[//]:# (!steemitworldmap 52.220767 lat -6.933734 long Duncannon Scroll (Addendum) - Sand/Cement Sculpture d3scr)