Placing the side crockets

The new lace flowers are very dense the new consoles, but that was just the same in the old situation. Far left you can see a small piece of new trefoils

To the first post about this project

The 100th post on this blog has been reached, and today we had (my colleague Stide and I) had another milestone as well: the mounting work on St. Stephen's Church in Nijmegen is nearly done. Today the mounting of the side crockets got almost finished.

I was very pleased that after all our work of measuring, drawing templates, cutting out the old pieces and carving the new blocks everything fits just fine.

We have first cut the (wettened) blocks all exactly to size and then started mounting them from top to bottom. That way the underlying work stays clean and the new joints will not wash out when we use water. The side crockets are suspended on two glued pieces of wire end in each block, and of course on the grout. Soon, of course, the whole arch will be filled in. The string is to be able to draw out the wire end, should something untoward happen.

The curve of the pointed arch runs beautifully all the way through. If we wouldn't have found the right center of the pointed arch (the ‘porring point’) then would either have ended up as a series of flat surfaces or a set of waves, rather a beautiful tight curve.

Stide carved these side crockets in tuff stone, to a reconstruction that I made based on the remnants of the old side crockets. Side crockets are crockets on its side, so reclining crockets, and crockets are the well-known flower motifs from the Gothic, especially found on pinnacles for decoration. Four crockets forming a cross-shape make a finial.

The dark line is formed by the inside of the (wettened) blocks with side crockets. The arch's curve runs just right. If everything is dried up and pointed, you'll no longer notice that new pieces have been inserted.

Tomorrow morning we will place the last two blocks and then we'll fill in, that is to say, we'll fill up the open joints all the way until they're full, and then according. That is further explained in message 101!

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