5 ft. Whale’s Tail – Concrete Sculpture

This customer sent me a picture of a whale’s tail and asked if we could make it. I told him we could and I recommended making it with concrete as an outdoor sculpture. This way it will be weather proof and permanent with no maintenance. He agreed.

The beauty of concrete sculptures is that they are permanent, they are weatherproof, they are durable and they require no maintenance! They are a superior option to consider for outdoor custom sculptures!

I sent him a sketch drawn to scale and he approved it. Next, we projected the sketch onto the wall and traced it actual size. This image would then become the template for the  1/4″ steel rod framing. I simply laid the steel rod onto the picture and worked it until all the pieces were lined up with the drawing and ready to assemble with a mig welder. I bent the rod using my knee at times and my vise for sharp turns.

A mig welder was used to weld the rod. The hardware cloth was held on by welded washers.

Next, a treated 4 x 4 was attached using welded rods and a stand was created to hold the post upright so we could begin applying the concrete easily. Now, it was time to mix up the concrete. This is a special, sculptural concrete mix called Buddy Rhodes “craftsman mix” sold by Smooth-On. We mixed it in a bucket with water, Gray concrete dye, and fiberglass also from Buddy Rhodes.com

After mixing was complete, we started trowling it on with different sized spackling knives. Once complete, we let it sit overnight wrapped and came back he next day and it was nice and rigid and smooth. Some areas we needed to sand a little bit to get a smooth finish. After sanding, we applied a Satin concrete sealer that we got from Buddy Rhodes .com

Then it was finished and ready to ship to the customer’s house garden in Old Saybrook, CT! When finished, it weighed around 150 lbs. Not bad for a concrete sculpture!

Here are some pics that my customer sent after he finished installing it…

Check out this video showing time lapse footage of the creation process!

 

I’m going to say it again in case you missed it above… The beauty of concrete sculptures is that they are permanent, they are weatherproof, they are durable and they require no maintenance! They are a superior option to consider for outdoor custom sculptures!

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