It’s a typical Michigan Saturday afternoon in January. A light snow is falling, there is a reasonably stiff wind blowing (8 mph), it’s 23 degrees (F) and the air is somewhat damp so it goes right into your bones. So, what should we do today? The answer to this almost seems so obvious as to be ridiculous – we head outdoors and go to the Plymouth Ice Sculpture show of course!
Every Year the town of Plymouth Michigan holds the “Plymouth International Ice Sculpture Spectacular” and is billed as “The Oldest and Largest Ice Sculpture Show in the World“. Quite a claim there I would say.
Never having been to any other ice carving shows I cannot dispute this, and guess I really do not even want to do so.
This seems to be another new annual tradition – that of freezing our fingers, toes, noses and anything else that lives outside of several layers of clothing. We also went last year and the temperature was even colder with wind chills in the negative numbers. (January 19-21, 2007 it was 15.1 °F /
For some reason in the past we always went in the evenings, which is nice since the carvings are lit with colored lights, but did not really see people working on the carvings. We went early enough this year to see the artisians entered in the competition still at work (it is timed). It was pretty interesting watching some of the techniques and “tools” used.
- standard electric chain saws (from 12 inch up to about 24 inch bars)
- chisels, from about 1/4 inch or so up to several inchs wide with handles two plus feet long (modifed wood turning chisels?)
- electric drills with a wide variety of bits
- brushes (hand – car window – paint – scrub -and about anything else)
- small hand held and large “wand type” propane torches
- and our favorite, the regular old steam iron as used on clothes (remember those were used a lot before “permanent press” came along. I am told you can still find these in antique stores.) Now used by the craftsmen for smoothing the surfaces and giving a very nice glossy finish.
Paul has already mangaged to get some photos out on the web site so you can take a look at those.
Hopefully I will get mine posted in the near future also, although his photos are usually better and more comprehensive than mine anyway.
After walking around for a hour or so we decided some food was in order so we hit a nearby Thai place for some hot – of both the temperature and spicy varieties – food.
The feeling returned to our toes about the time we were done eating, and so we ventured back outside to retrieve the car and head home.
Until the final snowflake falls in Michigan,