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Building The St. Louis Wind Harp
The Great Puget Sound Wind Harp was featured in an issue of American
Airline's in-flight magazine, where it caught the eye of the director
of the St. Louis Science Center. The Science Center was planning an
outdoor science park where kids could discover scientific principles
while having a really good time.
Ron was invited to St. Louis for an international conference on science park design,
and commissioned to design a harp for the science park.
This harp, which would be 13 feet high, would be fabricated in aluminum, so Ron drew up the plans, with
some input from wind harp engineer Ed Hagemann.
The work was done by Midwest Metal Fabricators in New Haven, Missouri, a
small town in the Ozark foothills. When we visited them, they told
us that this was probably the weirdest project they had ever worked on.
Click on the images below for a larger version
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The plans and elevations |
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Detailed plans for the machinists |
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Cutting out the harmonic curve of the neck |
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Working on the pillar |
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Starting to take shape |
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