Steel City Awaitin' Picture

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Arnold Jeffers, in the foreground wearing safety glasses, is overseeing the installation of the steel reinforcing bar assemblies, and the flexible 1/4" masonite formed over the 2 x 4 lumber, used in conjunction with each other to form and brace the casting form for the archways on the gallery's exterior walls. The steel rebar "assemblies" as I call them, are made up on the ground and twist-tied together for strength and rigidity. These shown are actually wrongly constructed, by our earlier contractor. Arnold has devised a way to use them in this way, otherwise we would discard them as scrap iron.

The assemblies of steel are then connected and tied to the vertical steel in the columns for additional strength. This gallery roof will be cast in concrete as well, so these steps are very important to ensure the structure doesn't detach from the building and get blown away in a hurricane (not likely, eh?)!