Phase I - Pedestal Base
I've been working on the base of the sculpture as I find time for several weeks now. Apologies for not posting any updates during that time. But, it's not much to look at yet and is basically just a massive steel & concrete form. Today is a wonderfully rainy (and rare) day so here is the complete build of the base. Step 1 was to build a matrix of steel solidly welded to the wheel's interior. This acts both as general reinforcement of the concrete to be poured and as a set of distributed attachment points to the main body of the wheel. The concrete plug will be upwards of 2000 pounds. Since it's formed in a near-perfect cylinder and will be flipped over, I have this fear that it could rattle loose during transport and then drop out of the wheel during a forklift move. That would be terrible (and likely become a bad accident). This latticework will secure the concrete slab to the steel shell so it's one cohesive mass. Step 2 was to fill the wheel and lattice wi...