Trail to Juneau
"This image was posted in Skip’s Corner a couple months ago. Since we are bringing progress on the Whale Sculpture up to date, for those who are interested, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to post it again".
An artist’s concept by Skye Stekoll, Juneau Engineer, of the appearance of the sculpture in the finished pool and fountain “Photoshopped” from my 24 inch high original bronze maquette.
Lynn is in Alaska clearing out our, mostly my, collections of 50 years in the Far North in preparation for selling our home there. I’m in Enterprise, Oregon, (Eastern Oregon) completing work on the breaching humpback whale sculpture in preparation for shipping it to Alaska. It will go by truck to Bellingham, Washington and from Bellingham to Juneau by Alaska state ferry, provided it fits in the vehicle deck loading door. Even without its fins attached, the arch of the whale makes it too high to get under highway overpasses on a conventional flatbed or lowboy semi truck trailer. Every one we looked at to rent was too high so we’re building our own.
This is an image showing a visitor looking up at the unfinished whale and also showing something of the steel cradle mentioned above.
The internal stainless support structure sticks out from under the bottom of the sculpture and is hinged, so that, with the help of a crane, the whale can be lowered so that its head rests in the curved cradle, closest to the camera. This was a marvel of planning and engineering by the talented welder, Craig Starmer, here at the foundry.
An important first step in applying a chemical patina to create hues on a bronze is smoothing and cleaning the surface. To this end the patineur and I are burnishing the surface with pads on electric grinders, a tedious job on such a large surface.
This is Bart Latta, the extraordinarily talented patineur here at Parks Bronze in Enterprise, Oregon standing on a man-lift (person-lift?) burnishing the bronze surface of the sculpture, prior to creating its patina.
Here is the ventral side of one of the Whale’s massive (14 feet long X about 3 feet wide) flippers, or fins. At the near end eight copper pipes are visible, protected by plywood for shipping to Alaska. Each of these pipes will carry water to a “stilling chamber” located inside the fin between the knobs or protrusions or knuckles on the leading edge. (Humpback whales have arm and finger bones inside their fins.)
The volume of water flowing from each outlet between the knuckles will be adjusted at the beginning of the season from a semi-subterranean vault some distance from the Whale Pool. The fountain will be computer timed to flow for five minutes every hour and an anemometer, connected to the computer, will shut the fountain off when wind reaches a certain strength, to keep people around the pool from getting soaked. The base of the whale will be 20 feet distance on either side from the edge of the 50 foot wide oval pool. I think the distance from the back of the whale (in the direction of its breach) to the pool’s edge is something like 40 feet, so that, were the breach to be completed, the whale would not bonk its head on the pool edge.
R T Wallen
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