Well, my friends, my companions, my lovely readers, it has happened.  At long last, after a rough start at Masterpiece in a Day, after subsequent hours of slaving away over my dining room table, after several burned fingers, noticeable neck pain, some frustration, occasional doubt, moments of elation, quite a few ounces of burnt propane, who knows how much solder, much vacuuming of the floor and table, a bowl of spilled water, and the stripping of sixty feet of house wire, it’s done.  Done!

I took several in-progress photos along the way, and though I though of posting them, I was really much more concerned with finishing the darn thing, so they haven’t made it up until now.  Here we go!

Previously, I believe all I’d shown you was the spiral itself, the largest element of the sculpture.  At the time, however, the poor thing just lay there on the table and looked a little forlorn, if not kinda neat.  The evening of September 30th was huge, because the project finally grew legs!  I remember being particularly excited about this stage, because I was finally able to place a marble on the thing and have it function in a manner somewhat resembling its form.  I was very pleased to find that the marbles did in fact roll on it as I wanted.  (This stuff is never a certainty, as I’ve learned from reading about others’ efforts on the interwebz.)  Oh, and see that little coil?  Remember that one.  It shows up later – kinda.

Following “Leg Day,” as I like to think of it, there seemed to be only one way to go, and that way was indeed up.  I needed to be able to test the rest of it as I went, and I couldn’t do that so well until I had a starting ramp.  The ramp would determine the speed of the marbles, and upon that I would be basing the rest of the design.  I kind of freaked out at this point.  There were moments of deliberation and procrastination.  I tweaked the spiral some more.  I looked at the legs to see if they were really properly affixed.  I goofed with the exit point below the spiral to make sure it would hypothetically actually really work – and then I had to look at it all again and go, “Aw, crap.  I’ve done well!  I have to do the ramp now!” 

I really had no idea how high to make it or how steep I could bank it.  I was afraid that, either the marbles would be too slow, and wind up just stopping on the spiral, or that they’d be too fast, and I’d get to watch as they repeatedly launched, one after the other, onto the floor.  In the end I could do only one thing: build it and trust it would work out.  This is the part where I quite literally said, “I will take care of the quantity while some Higher Power takes care of the quality.”  I really did feel it was out of my hands, though mine were the ones doing the work.  I kind of went slowly with it and just did a few tests here and there, but I think I got really lucky and nailed about 80% of the design right off the bat.  Still, it took a lot of work.  That little ten-inch rise of copper?  That took me at least one evening, maybe two by the time it was completely finished with the big swoopy support on it.  Glorious it was when the marbles rolled off the end of the ramp and spun around without flying off into space or dragging to a halt!

 You can also see in this photo the beginnings of the lower track going together.  I was working on a series of S curves at this point.  I had the initial design completed, and was clamping them in place and checking what areas needed to be tweaked.  Much tweaking was involved.  I remember that bending one wire of the S took about two hours, and I thought I was cooking along.  The second one I figured would go faster.  It didn’t.

Here is a shot from above, and you can see that some of the track below is not complete enough in form that I was able to solder connecting joints to it.

Here’s a side view during the same period of progress.  You get a better idea of the swoopiness of the lower curves.  Those were pretty fun to design.  I had to get them banked right, because the marbles were reacting to changes in direction in such a small space, that making them flat would have just thrown them all over the floor.  I really do enjoy that part of these sculptures, the graceful curves that kind of sail out there and make the marbles seem to effortlessly follow the track.  Not such an easy trick, kids, but so rewarding when it works.

And now, the moment every one of us has been waiting for:

Ta-da!  CHECK IT OUT!  Isn’t that cool?!?!?!?!?!  I can’t believe I actually finished the darn thing!  Remember that little coil I pointed out earlier?  I’d planned to use it as it was originally formed, but since the marbles weren’t really ever going fast enough to be held inside it by inertia, I reformed it, took out a couple of loops, and made it into the small spiral that runs around the leg of the tripod.  That part took some doing, as I had to reform it several times so that the marbles would just barely clear the leg when they spun around the inside of it.  The final straightaway ended up with a rise in it to slow the marbles a bit, and then I threw in the J-turn, because I had enough extra wire already cut, and it seemed kind of a shame to just have them speed out of the little spiral and then just smack to a halt at the end of a straightaway.  The track was all done on Sunday, October 13th, (and there was much rejoicing – “Yay!”).  I even showed it to my sister’s family Monday night, but the final bits of bracing took some hours to complete.  It was very wobbly before that.  You can see them at the curves of the S, and then there’s a very small one that’s hidden from view at the base of the small spiral.

The sculpture, which should probably be called Masterpeace, has now made a whirlwind tour of southern Indianapolis, downtown, one bar at 96th and Meridian, Carmel, Indiana, and Avon, Indiana.  Overall it’s been a pretty big hit.  I figure if a kid keeps staring at it like it’s television, I’ve done something right!  Happily, adults seem to be about as entranced, making me feel like not so much of an idiot for repeatedly rolling marbles down it and grinning like a tot.

I feel pretty good about sticking with this whole thing.  The rewards of persuing it to completion after my disappointment at Masterpiece in a Day are hard to put into words. 

Ah, now there’s that other unfinished one that I started before this one.  Time to get back to work!