Steely Spring
Hey, how's that for a snappy title? It's a pun! You see, springtime here in So Cal means a couple months under steely gray skies on marine layer days when nothing casts a shadow. Like today. But Saturday we had sun, and it was a perfect day for a cruise along the Santa Ana River. I never bring my camera anymore, but Penny always gets some good shots with her phone, and I swipe them for the blog here.
Contemplatin' the river in the early afternoon.
Kicking back at the park. Russ, Dave, Troy, n' me.
End of the line. We did a little over twenty three miles for the day.
I left off on the smallstone project last week after getting a base cut done.
Unfortunately, the base cut was off by about the width of a pencil, and the stone was leaning slightly to the left. I could have left it as is, and corrected the lean as I shaped the figure. But the lean irritated the hell out of me, so I decided to correct the base cut.
This meant sawing a very narrow slice off the bottom at a very acute angle.
It's tricky, but I pulled it off. Note the precision measurement, and high-tech engineering at work here.
However, getting a clean cut across the bottom brought problems to light. The big concern is the crack:
Cracks just go with the territory when working alabaster. It's a feature of the stone. But there are cracks, and there are fissures. Both of these lines are part of the same break. It almost splits the rock in half. I Love the shape of this little chunk of rock. I had ideas for something intricate, and airy, but now I'm not so sure. We'll just have to see.
It looks like it's waiting to be revealed.
ReplyDeleteThis spring has been so funny weather-wise; I took my daughter to a park yesterday, and even though it was only in the high 70s out here people were complaining about it being too hot. Beautiful day, though.
I've been looking forward to complaining about the heat. I can hear myself saying, "At least when it's cold you can dress warm... I wanted to do a major project with this, even though it would be a small one. But when I cut the slice off the base it just fell away in two pieces. Not a good sign. So it may end up being another very simple piece- strive to do something elegant, rather than something baroque.
DeleteJWM, your precision instruments are truly precision instruments, utilized by the ancient Egyptians, Romans, etc., and look how good their works turned out.
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping by, John. Square & compass, just like the masons of old. I like working primitive.
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