• South Portal of St. Stephen's Church: scaffolding removed

    Latest projects, Restoration, St Stephen's Church
    20 trefoils, 20 crockets, 7 consoles and three capitals of the southern portal of the Stevenskerk

    The South Portal of St. Stephen's Church has now gotten its scaffolding removed, and it's become a real sight to behold.

    This morning the foreman from Van Dinther Construction from Schaijk  sent me a few photos to show me how has turned out. I hope to make. a couple of better pictures in due time, but in my enthusiasm I've already put them on this blog for now.

    For this project, in commision for Slotboom Stonemasons we replaced all ornamental work and adjoning stonemasonry in new Tuff.

    The old situation illustrates well how the weathered tuff lace flowers were for dismantling.

    My colleagues Stide Vos and Jan Tolboom and I have been busy at the start of this year with disassembling, carving and replacing of 20 trefoils (carved by Jan Tolboom), 20 crockets (carved by Stide Vos), 7 consoles and two 'caps of consoles‘ (carved by myself), and three capitals (created by Stide and me). It was an interesting, challenging job of which we are very proud. The new Tuff blends in so well with the old work that it's hard to see what has actually been replaced, but if you'd lay the old situation alongside to it , one can tell right away.

    weathering of tufa parts from South Portal Stevenskerk
    trefoils, consoles and lace flowers in new Weiberner tuff
    from the outside to the inside: hangen er al drie peaks (trefoils), you see a console, and a crude tire which will soon come lace flowers
    During assembly: 1 new console (top center), the side crockets are still missing (bottom center), a new capital is already in place (bottom right) and three new crêtes or trefoils resting in their precarved slot (right).
    The narrow pieces are hung on the inside of the arch with anchors. During curing, we can secure it with glue clamps
    The narrow trefoils were suspended on the inside of the arch with anchors. During curing, we were able to clamp them with glue clamps
    In the old situation the three passes were all cut off as a precaution
    In the old situation, as a precaution the trefoils had all been cut off

    To the first post about this project.

     

  • According and finishing

    Restoration, St Stephen's Church

    The project at the South Portal of St. Stephen's Church is now completed. Today Stide and I first went on with according. When all the pieces are placed in mortar, there will always be a spot somewhere where the connection is not quite optimal. According means making the pieces fit by carving away bits of stone in appropriate places.

    New side crockets, consoles and trefoils for St. Stephen's Church in Nijmegen-situation before finishing. Top left: a view of the bottom of the original console that has been preserved.

    Luckily this time there was not a lot of carving and fitting work to do to; we just checked the arch again and put some finishing touches.

    cantilever south portal Steenskerk, before the approval work

    In addition, we still had to add restoration mortar to the connection of the new work on the old portal on a number of points. That was foreseen as well: unavoidably a number of seams were made where they first were not , because we only replaced the most weathered portions of the pointed arches.

    The tail of the side crockets should eventually connect nicely. That connection will be carved on site. For this, Stide left some excess material, as margin.

    accordion work and mortar repairs
    Stide is working on the final mortar repairs and according work

    There are a few blocks where the seams ran right through the tails of the side crockets. In that case, Stide carved the tails a bit too heavy on purpose beforehand, so that the whole can be carved to fit on site. If he would have carved it right to size, there wouldn't have been any room left to adjust something on the spot. In the end you have to deal with an old church: nothing is exact to size, exactly square or true to level. You will have to carve it 'in the works’ to get it to fit.

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    To the first post about this project.

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