How We Built A Weathervane, Part Eight

Next up in the process of making the Belle Isle Aquarium weathervane was the final mold making that would be needed to cast the metal. In this case, aluminum.

These are sand molds that were made around the plaster castings. This is one half of the gar.

The plaster has been mostly removed and since the gar measures in at about four and a half feet the sand molds had to be sectioned off into three parts to be cast separately. Sheet metal was used to separate the parts.

Here is a side view showing the narrowing of the nose of the gar.

These past three pics show the making of the second half of the molds.

Here are the molds for the electric eel. Note, in these, as well as the gar pics, the 'knuckle' marks to line up the molds. At this stage, the work was mostly done by artist Leslie Cisco while doing the same for the Robocop statue molds. Thanks to Leslie for the pics!