Hammerhead Stoneworks

Click the image for a better view.

Allie sent a flying space car with me to work this morning. Here Captian Lego attempts to solve the riddle of the Zero Tolerance Wheel.

At the top: Close up of some joints between stones.
Middle: Bug tracks that appear every morning in the dust. Centipede?
Bottom: Power cords.

One of the great joys of getting ready for the Gainesville art project was tooling up. In addition to a wonderland of new blades and grinding wheels, I got another grinder and a tile saw that I can equip with a contour wheel- a cup shaped diamond blade used for cutting radii. And for all the tool sellers I found on-line, the grinder was $20 cheaper from Amazon and offered free shipping.

Templates are essential for efficient production. My friends at Henco Reprographics print these for me. This sheet shows the actual length of the patio and is over fifteen feet long. This sheet is the first of nine big templates I’ll need.

I cut the templates with pattern shears, three blade scissors that remove a thin strip (5/64th of an inch) of paper as they cut. These shears are used for creating templates for making stained glass with lead came. The thin strip of paper is equal to the thickness of the lead, keeping the pattern consistent with the original pattern, also called a cartoon. The thin strip of paper is the width of my joints.

I have rented a temporary shop for this project. It’s the first time I’ve ever had my own shop and I love it. I built a sandbox (filled with pea gravel really) to lay the patio as I cut it. By leveling as I go, I can detail the fits between the stones so that there’s a minimum of fuss and time spent when I venture to Florida to install it. Click the image above to see a larger version.

The first three stones, done and dusty.

I made this handout to accompany the fossil floor. The family has four kids and I hope that the floor piques their curiosity about geology. Maybe this ‘story’ will get hung up in a cabinet and forgotten, to be discovered many years from now, yellowed with age, when someone else takes ownership of the house.