Averting Near Disaster - Emergency Space Shrimp Surgery!

So this is what CJ looked like when I started my next sculpting session…

But a little while later I noticed he’d started to look like this…

Uh CJ? Have you been getting into the cat food? You look a little tipsy…

In fact I had no sooner put the camera down after taking this shot when the entire sculpt started to topple! I JUST managed to catch him and lay him down gently in a secure spot before he went over.

What had happened? Well apparently copper is actually an extremely soft metal and the weight of the clay (far more, as I mentioned, than I anticipated using) both started to bend the copper pipe in CJ’s “spine” AND broke through my beginner soldering job at his hips. The bolt I had put through his hips as added security was not enough on its own to hold CJ upright securely.

Time for Space Shrimp Surgery!

I started by adding an extra flange & pipe base (an old one I had from a past project) behind the main base.

I got some more pipe and another copper elbow from the hardware store, thinking that if I could attach this piece to CJ’s shoulders it would help pull him upright, making him less top heavy.

Here is the clay dug out from CJ’s back, revealing where his “shoulders” meet his spine. The gold wire is what I used to pull the new support bar into place, before securing it with heavier gauge wire.

However it was clear from the test assembly (below) that this was not going to be enough to fix the problem – the second copper pipe just started to bend and warp as well.

So I mixed up some heavy duty plaster (Ultracal 30 which is really closer to a fine cement) and filled all the pipes (both the bases and the copper pipes themselves)

Then I set about bracing the base with small lengths of wood, electrical tape, and more plaster filled pipe…

I tightened the bolt at CJ’s hips and then pulled a Red Green-esque (although hopefully more MacGyver) move with hot glue like so, to immobilize the hips (since any attempt to solder the joint now would melt, if not outright burn away, the surrounding clay)

And since that actually appeared to be working (and trust me, no one was more surprised than I) I used the same technique to immobilize the wires tied around the shoulders…

After further bracing with wood, adding some guy-lines, and filling in the hole in his back with clay, CJ was standing again!

Not exactly a pretty rig – but he WAS nice and stable now. Back to sculpting! :D