I was called in part of yesterday and this morning to assist a small shop that I occasinally freelance with in order to help with some specialty sympathy design work.
The decedent was such a huge fan of the deceased Nascar racer Dale Earnhardt that two of the designs featured Dale Earnhardt accessories and I also was requested to make the casket spray and two other sympathy designs - one was a contemporary easel spray and the other was a tribute design in a pair of cowboy boots.
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The first Dale Earnhardt design ( labled dale1 ) was a specialty peice that featured the racer's photo mounted inside a section from one of his actual racing car tires. I had to create a double easel mount as the tire peice itself was extremely heavy. I then wired two floracages onto the easel supports and created the designs from there.
The second Dale Earnhardt design ( labeled dale2) was a large number 3 with the racer's name cut out in sheet steel and then painted and polished. This design took some unusual mechanics as the steel piece alone weighed about 4 pounds. To secure the steel - I took and lined the container bottom with styrofoam and then placed oasis on top of that.....then used aluminum rod to create large U-shaped struts which I bent the ends into smaller u-shapes for security and inserted all the way into the hard foam base then lifted the struts back out, dipped them into pan glue and re-inserted all the way through. I then wired the large steel peice onto the support struts.
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The other two pieces in this posting are the design using the cowboy boots and the contemporary easel spray.
The decedent was such a huge fan of the deceased Nascar racer Dale Earnhardt that two of the designs featured Dale Earnhardt accessories and I also was requested to make the casket spray and two other sympathy designs - one was a contemporary easel spray and the other was a tribute design in a pair of cowboy boots.
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The first Dale Earnhardt design ( labled dale1 ) was a specialty peice that featured the racer's photo mounted inside a section from one of his actual racing car tires. I had to create a double easel mount as the tire peice itself was extremely heavy. I then wired two floracages onto the easel supports and created the designs from there.
The second Dale Earnhardt design ( labeled dale2) was a large number 3 with the racer's name cut out in sheet steel and then painted and polished. This design took some unusual mechanics as the steel piece alone weighed about 4 pounds. To secure the steel - I took and lined the container bottom with styrofoam and then placed oasis on top of that.....then used aluminum rod to create large U-shaped struts which I bent the ends into smaller u-shapes for security and inserted all the way into the hard foam base then lifted the struts back out, dipped them into pan glue and re-inserted all the way through. I then wired the large steel peice onto the support struts.
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The other two pieces in this posting are the design using the cowboy boots and the contemporary easel spray.
