Thursday, December 18, 2008

One Crane Wing Down But Much to Do


This is an updated photo with the cranes now attached.

I laid out one of the crane wings last night. There are over 200 cranes in place but when completed there are going to be approximately 300 cranes per wing, with the neck, head, tail and back taking on the 400 or so left over to make 1,000. The picture is from my phone so not much detail, but the wing is over five feet across which will mean approximately an eleven foot wingspan.

However, I am not sure about the support yet to hold it's shape. I have the ceiling tile wire on the underside, but that has to be moved to the top, as I would prefer not to see it from the bottom. But that means I will have difficulty attaching the cranes to the wire frame. This is intended to be hung from a high ceiling in the UWT library, so care in lifting and setting will be necessary.

Most importantly, it still does not have the rigidity I wanted, which means there will need to be more support wires to attach when it is hung. I will be gluing overlapping wings together which helps, but also means one mistake could cost me time in crane replacement.



You should be able to see the outline of the wing from the positioning of the black cranes.

If anyone has additional ideas let me know. Thanks to Pete and Judy for earlier help.

4 comments:

HannahH said...

Fantastic!

Anonymous said...

Wow! Very cool! You are a man possessed! Maybe there's a structural engineer out there who can give you a hand.

Anonymous said...

Just an idea, but if you're looking for more structure, you might want to consider fishing line. You can string it through the smaller cranes to keep them from sagging across the wing span, and then you can tie it to the whole sculpture at various points and attach those lines to the ceiling. Don't attach it to the tip of each wing - go in a little, so the wings droop slightly, for a more natural look. Good luck - it looks great so far!

Droid116 said...

Thanks for the support. The cranes are being glued together now, making it more uniform across. Not sure if I like it better or worse but it looks pretty cool. Once I have them aligned and attached I am going to coat them with a clear gloss, which will, once more, create additional rigidity.

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