There's a giraffe in our attic

There was a crazy amount of work on the giraffe this weekend.  I'm pushing very hard to have him done by the fourth of July as there's more significance to this sculpture than just being a giant steel giraffe. 

Well in the redo department, I completely redid the thighs AGAIN.  They were too skinny.  I'm still not completely happy with them but they'll have to do because that was a lot of work.  This week I also finished the feet, legs and knees.  Everything went pretty well and the only complaint is one leg is about an inch shorter than the others so I'll have to come up with a method to shim when it's installed.

One thing I learned is it's very difficult to sculpt an animal when it's laying on it's side or back.  Especially for me who is not very artistic.  So that's why I needed to stand him up while working.  My wife reminded me of our original idea of working on him underneath the open attic door.  That way his head can extend into the attic while I work on the lower extremities.  The downside was the heat pouring out of the attic on a hot Florida day really heated things up during the peak of the day.  The second day I aimed a fan at the attic and that seemed to keep the heat from dropping onto me while working.

So the last item to fabricate is a tail.  That shouldn't be too difficult.  I'm just about out of co2/arg so I called it an evening.  When this project is complete I'll take a little break from summer welding.