Sculpture management

[David Humphries]

Here's a story about a bear, a bear named...........well for the sake of the story, lets call him Baloo.

 

 

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[David Humphries]

The story is really about an oak sculpture that we commisioned 5/6 years ago.

 

The onset of sapwood (Hypholoma fasciculare) & heartwood (Ganoderma resinaceum) decay led us to evaluate the condition (with micro drills) every 6 months.

 

Degrading butressess left us with a dilema, bearing in mind where it's situated within a play park.

 

Got to a point where it couldn't be left any longer, a decision was needed.

 

 

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[David Humphries]

a decision was needed.

 

Leave and keep monitoring

fell

or reduce.

 

The latter was preferable, as the kids love the sculpture & a considerable budget was spent on the commission.

 

 

 

The height is approximately 8m

& I would guess that it weighs somewhere in the region of up to 10 tonnes.

 

 

To retain, we decided that at this stage we would need to remove somewhere up to 3 tonnes.

 

 

 

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[David Humphries]

The next stage was about how we were going to reduce it.

 

First thought about us climbing and rigging it.

Then I thought about lifting sections off.

No way of getting a standard crane anywhere near it, as its pretty much in the middle of this urban woodland

That made me think around a tracked crane, but couldn't source one.

 

 

 

So number 2 came up with the fine idea of getting in a Unimog/Hiab that he knew of that would fit the bill

 

The Mog is owned & run by Tim Wise of TreeLife Ltd

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[David Humphries]

Getting it in and setting up was a tight affair that took a bit of planning

 

 

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[David Humphries]

To retain, we decided that at this stage we would need to remove somewhere up to 3 tonnes.

 

To acheive the above, but retaining as much of the sections whole, was the key to this being a success.

 

So after plenty of deliberation we decided to reduce with just 2 cuts.

 

 

Heres a video of the first removal.

 

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[Peter]

Interesting job, and fine picture set.

[David Humphries]

Interesting job, and fine picture set.

 

Thanks Peter, was a fun and thought provoking job

 

Heres a few more shots of the dismantle of first section.........

 

 

 

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[David Humphries]

The first section came in around 500kgs

 

Which left the larger second section around 2 tonnes.

 

 

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[Gray git]

Good set of photos of what looked like quite a delicet sort of job, its good to see that effort is being made to use the tree and then re use the sculpture when the time comes unlike a few around me that have simpaly rotted away.

Loving that little mog and treelife look a very pro company, nice one.