August 22, 2005
Cavalry
Looks good except for the vertical straightening, which
you had said would take
place during sample production.
Frigate
The frigate sculpture continues to get better and these should be easy changes.
1. There should be three square cannon ports on the top of the frigate's stern. However, since the frigate's stern has now been shortened, I don't think there is room to smooth out the existing holes by removing wax material. Instead, is it possible to fill in the four existing holes, and then to recarve the three new square cannon ports? Unfortunately, the four existing cannon ports look like taillights on a car.
2. The engraving below looks good. I had hoped it would be a little wider. The middle picture shows just how much wider to make it (which isn't much). The final picture shows how the bottom edge should be smoothed out. Instead of the cliff-like edge that comprises the bottom edge of the engraving, it should be turned into a slope. I'm worried that this will be confusing, but it should be a simple thing to do. The sculptor's knife would just scrape off the waxy corner edge along the bottom of that engraving (smoothing it out), so that the engraving would really be defined by the upper and back edge, and not the bottom edge. The bottom edge of the frigate itself does NOT need to be touched.
3. The original stern had a nice gentle curve to it. The new stern has a bottom corner that is too sharp/pointy and needs to be rounded off. You can see in the final picture how very little material actually has to be removed in order to accomplish this goal. My big concern here is that the sculptor will over react and cut off more of the stern than is needed. Only the bottom corner needs to be touched. The top of the stern does NOT need to be touched (other than the modification for the 3 square cannon ports).
