Early morning shaping binge brings Sati closer to plastering

Today I awoke early and put in some time before breakfast, does anyone know the saying "Mad dogs and Englishmen.."? It's just too hot during the day to do anything as strenuous as making an elephant! The glare off the white polystyrene gives me snow blindness too.

Sati has finally reached the point where shaping is complete.

All her cutaway side has been filled and shaped ready for plastering.

Sati is no white elephant! All that remains to be done is a final sand, grind the joint line around her two mating halves and I'm ready to trowel on the first coat of plaster.

Julie took some images of me sitting on her back this afternoon.

Another days work on Sati the Asian Elephant

Today ended with Sati finally connected together in one continuous piece.

I was able to take down my home made gantry crane today after a final lift to prepare the upper and lower mating surfaces, prior to gluing Sati's two halves together.

The glue line is clearly obvious with the two halves going together as planned.

She was built in two haves to allow the Zoo staff to be able to move her from place to place around the Zoo grounds. Since she was vandalized and consequently left in outdoor storage Sati had suffered some significant structural damage. Her two mating halves no longer aligned correctly and some of her other details have deteriorated too. Her Hickory wood tusks were touched by so many hands that the double skin fiberglass finish wore clean through to the wood! (See in the photo above).

Later in the day I fitted a few more filler blocks to flesh out her left hand cut away. I have one more day left of filling and shaping before I'm ready to plaster render her repaired left side. The plastering will be done with a combination of two types of render in conjunction with a fiberglass tape sandwich, reinforcing matrix.

Next job will involve re glassing her tusks to give them protection against the weather. After that the fun bit, her final coat of paint.

Sati the Elephant starts to put on weight.

Ryan visited me on Saturday morning. Being a horse rider he just had to get up on Sati for a ride.

Ryan on Sati's back, Rawene.

I received some recycled, polystyrene foam packaging from our local engineer who was happy to be rid of the bulky waste from his workshop.

I've begun the process of filling in Sati's left side with polystyrene foam. I began by fitting the foam blocks, cut roughly to shape around the complex surface of Sati's left side torso. I secured the blocks with Kebab skewers driven in to the blocks and into her surface then filled the spaces between with Holdfast Nail Power Pro expanding urethane glue.

It's high summer at the moment, an umbrella allows me to work in the shade.

Sati likes the umrella

Foam blocks slowly cover Sati's anatomy.