cairns

Some lately assembled cairns.  I'm pretty sure it takes me longer to put these together than it does to make the individual parts.  Each one morphs several times before I decide the arrangement is right.

I've been putting aside the various cairn parts for a good while- from birds to wheel thrown rocks, to slab rocks. When a commission only takes up a shelf or so cairn parts are good to make because they dry quickly and evenly. They have been kiln fillers- when I need to rush a firing for a commission and don't want to fire the kiln light.

Occasionally the holes I make in the rocks are too small for the metal rod that runs through the piece so I get to spend some wollering out time with the Dremmel tool. Apparently "wollering" is not a word, according to spell check.  I know what I mean.  Since I am using the same metal tube to make all of the holes I am not sure how this hole size discrepancy occurs.

Above cairn is 18 inches tall.  The one below is 10.5 inches.  I may have talked myself out of making more like the one below (no wood base).  It is very tricky to  get these squared up without the drill press making a nice straight hole through wood for the metal rod that runs through the piece. 

Same cairn above and below.  The color is more accurate in the above photo, but I saw the shadow from the early evening sun and had to capture it.

Cairn with small base is about 9 inches tall and larger base is 10.5 inches.  I have put these two pieces aside for a customer who made a request for a smaller size cairn.