PART FIVE: THE FINISHING   2009

• .Sanding and Rounding

  Here comes the time consuming part. The piece is fully shaped. It is now obvious what the sculpture will look like. However, it still needs sanding and polishing. Ah, the days, and the days. Sculptors employ many different strategies for getting through this endurance stage of the process

  • Go slowly, meditate and drink a beer every hour

  • Put on head phones, crank them up to high volume and swing your hips and arms to the beat.

  • Go to your rolodex and start calling all of your friends asking for help. Warning, most friends will agree to your request once. As for a second time? No! Once they have discovered this great wasteland of boredom with few thrills, and even fewer signs of progress, most people are not even willing to sand and polish for hire.

  We tried all three strategies!

• Polishing and Sealing

  Polish from 60 grit up to 320 for a matt finish, and up to 1800 grit for high polish—and that’s the good news.  The bad news is that during the carving process the marble is bruised, sometimes almost ¼ inch deep. Those bruises must be polished out, or they look like zits when the sculpture is completed.  And, what’s more, they do not become visible until you work the surface up to the 220 grit level. Then, for any that appear (sometimes by the hundred) one must go back to 60 and start all over again. No wonder the Greeks painted their sculptures!

  The sealing?  It’s easy. Just douse the stone with a coating, wait five minutes and then wipe it off.  Doesn’t it just make you want to be a professional sculpture sealer?

• Selecting, Sizing, and Drilling the Base

  How much weight and floor surface contact must one choose in order to be sure that the tall, 1,350 pound final sculpture is not knocked over? Good question. (Warning, please sit down before you read the next sentence.) My preference leads toward overkill. Hence you can check on the size of the 600 pound base chosen for this sculpture. My theory? You can never tell when some random Mac Truck might come careening through the living room entry way!

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KOKOPHILI: PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 | PART 6