Fauldhouse (Fallahill) Art Project - Page 2

 

The design chosen at the meeting on November 7th 2019 was our “Fauldhouse Folk”, a group of miners lead by the women who supported them during the strikes of 1984. We had been asked to reference the early days of the mining community so we included a small boy in the final design. The drawings of the figures were then refined to a stage that we were happy with.

Engineering drawings were prepared so that our design could go to planning for approval.
When planning had been approved we were then able to take the drawings to the next stage, digitization for plasma cutting. DXF files were created from the original drawings.

Once the drawings had been made into DXF files they were checked against the original drawings to ensure that we got exactly what we wanted from the cutting machine. This was a fairly laborious and time-consuming exercise but necessary to ensure the quality of the final piece was what we wanted.

The pieces were cut by JMSN Fabrication at Dysart in Fife. JMSN Fabrication are based in a unit on the former Frances Colliery. This was purely coincidental but we felt it had a nice resonance with our mining tribute project.

Seeing the pieces cut was exciting. We had waited a long time to get to this stage.
We love the shadows that cut figures cast.

After all the pieces were cut, they were transported to C.A.M Welding and Fabrication near Cupar where their base-plates, stiffeners and fins were welded into place. The pieces were now rapidly nearing completion.

 

 

 

 

The pieces have been fabricated from Weathering Steel also known by its trademark name Corten Steel. This steel was developed to eliminate the need for painting, and form a stable
rust-like appearance after several years’ exposure to weather (the trademark name Cort-ten stands for Corrosion resistance and tensile strength)
The rusting process can be accelerated by the application of a chemical mix.
Corten has been used for a number of public artworks, most notably probably The Angel of the North by Antony Gormley. Fauldhouse now has its own Corten piece in the shape of the Mining Tribute.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On June 14th 2022 installation finally began. We had waited a long time for this day to arrive and it felt good to finally break earth on the site.
Two days were spent marking out and clearing the area in preparation for the sculptures’ foundations to be laid. The foundations went in on June 16th.

June 27th, the day had finally arrived the sculptures were loaded onto the trailer and we headed for Fauldhouse.

The sculptures were individually manhandled off the trailer and onto their bases.
Each one was then levelled and blotted into place.