DIY:salvage to art

1st time making a metal sculpture...ok, 1st time making ANY sculpture. In the process, I gained aching hands and mucho respect for anyone who works with metal. It all started when M. decided to finally remove a mud-covered rope that was tied onto our seawall (yup, it's been there all this time). At the other end of that rope, we found a flat crushed derelict crabtrap that had been abandoned for who-knows-how-many years. M. hosed off the excess muck and left it to dry in the yard. I don't know how I convinced him to let me use it for a "project", but after a couple hours, we had our 1st DIY salvage art piece. If I can make a manatee wall hanging out of a derelict crabtrap, anyone can. Here's how:
1. CLEAN: Using pliers, I removed the excess debris and heavily damaged parts from the crabtrap.

2. PLAN: I stared at the crabtrap for a LONG time until inspiration hit me (ow!). Using sharpie marker on newspaper, I sketched out a simple manatee silhouette. I put the template under the crabtrap to trace the outline onto the metal.

3. SCULPT: Using pliers, I cut out a rough shape, following the manatee outline as best I could. Then, using jute rope (found at Michael's craft store), I traced the manatee outline more carefully. I tied rope knots along the way to keep the rope in place [while singing connect-the-dots-la-la-la].

4.FINISH: I used a round nose plier to bend down the pointy metal ends safely and coated the whole manatee with leftover silver spraypaint. My sis encouraged me to add an eyeball, so I sewed on an old button. Finally, I reused the line rope that once tethered it to our seawallL: I snipped it and knotted it to become a hanger so it is ready to be hung up. Voila: salvage art.

This week, my awesome sis took our manatee over to the Hillsborough County Fair where it will be displayed Nov 4th - Nov 8th, as part of the 2009 Recycled Yard Art contest. We got our fingers crossed, but are just as happy to be participating.

P.S. Safety 1st: Despite using non-slip gloves and a foam-handled pliers set, my hand were aching. I took breaks often to let my hands rest.

"I'm amazed this thing is floating"

Today was supposed to be the day..the day we would bid a bon voyage to our derelict vessel. But it was not to be. It was, however, the day that I fell in the canal. There were no injuries, but I did have to say goodbye to an old pair of shoes and socks, and a bit of my pride. The mud next to the sea-wall is deep, and gunked up the socks & shoes beyond saving. I was already laughing by the time I hauled myself out of the water. I was also able to amuse J when I told her what had happened.

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A little background on the "boat". Neighbors tell us it showed up somewhere around 5 years ago. From what we've been able to tell, it was purchased by one of the former owners. The boats motor & other salvagable pieces were stripped and sold. This owner lost the house in foreclosure, and it was bought by an Investor, Mr T. Mr. T. rented it for a couple of years with the boat still there, before deciding to flip it to sell. Once the house was nearing completion, the market had taken it's turn south, and he let it go into foreclosure, and the bank took over..all with the boat still there.

Now looking back on the situation, we should have included the boat removal in the offer process, but we did not realize how the situation was going to unfold.
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Fast forward to today. The boat has been semi-floating for 5-ish years, and we have a guy coming out to take care of it. Jim showed up and we went out to take a look a the boat. he hopped on board, and started to realized just how much of a process this was going to be.

The boat is 1978 Bayliner, and it used to have an inboard motor. For the uninitiated (like I was until recently), an inboard motor actually mounts below the water line of the boat. This also means that if you remove the motor, you end up with a large hole below the waterline of the boat. Boats don't really like having holes below the waterline, because they usually lead to sinking..which is bad.

So while Jim was checking the boat out, he said "I'm amazed this thing is floating", which is exactly what J and I had thought on so many occasions. So he checked out the boat, and realized that he did not have the pieces necessary to remove it this morning. So he put together a list of parts to bring, and we rescheduled for Saturday. So if all goes well, which it probably won't, we should be short one derelict vessel by the end of Saturday.