wax work and water

As mentioned previously, I spent the better part of Saturday making my wax forms and sheets to start on the model making process. Yesterday I trimmed all the blanks and started on the first tile.

the drawings

setting up the forms

pouring the wax

tile blanks and wax sheets

trimming the blanks

starting on the first hummingbird

I'm not doing a sketch a day right now, just now and then. This is Sunday's sketch...immature pecans

Changing the subject...Rocky showed up yesterday to work on the plumbing to the shop. You might remember that Marc shut the water off to the shop at the meter last winter prior to a week or so of very cold freezing weather and because we weren't working over there, being immersed in the house reconstruction, it never got turned back on until I planted the garden and needed the water for the garden. So, turning it back on at the meter months later resulted in no water at the shop. Since I was hauling buckets of water across the street to water the garden, Marc disconnected the pipe to the shop and installed a faucet at the meter, which was fine for the garden but we really need water at the shop. Hence getting Rocky to come figure out the problem. There is about 170 feet of buried water pipe from the meter to the faucet at the back corner of the shop and from there the water is piped into the shop. A couple of weeks ago when Rocky and I were over there while I explained the problem, we pulled the overgrown grass away and discovered a metal cover under the grass and dirt, which covered a shut off valve which was turned mostly to the off position. Curious. Fast forward to yesterday, Rocky had been over there for maybe an hour removing the temporary faucet and reconnecting the water pipe to the meter and then digging around the faucet on the back corner of the shop. He pokes his head in to tell me the water is on now, takes me over to the faucet in question and shows me that he found another shut off valve, also turned to the off position, at the base of the pipe after he pulled all the grass away. He turned them both to the 'on' position and voila! water in the shop. Now here's the crazy thing, neither Marc nor I had turned either valve off, we didn't even know those valves were there, or if we had known, had forgotten entirely as Marc shut the water off at the meter. Before he did that, we had water. So big mystery.

OMG! A lightbulb just went off! We basically hadn't been over at the shop for a whole year, not since Harvey and we had Rocky do the tear out over there. Part of the tear out was removing the toilet and the two sinks and the water heater, the pipes of which were capped off. His workers must have turned those valves off and then never turned them back on after they capped the pipes.

Well, no, that can't be right because I was over there doing cold work last November and I had water then and that was before Marc turned the water off at the meter.

So who the fuck knows!