DAY 18 - Church Floor Project - Medallions
posted by Webmaster
Far, far away from St. Peter's, in Green Isle MN, the medallions are being cut from porcelain tile at JIT Waterjet. Yesterday this work began, starting with the Mary Medallion.
Those big rectangular machines on the right are three water jet cutters. They use high-pressure filtered water (soft water) directed in a narrow stream to cut through anything you want to cut. Steel several inches thick is not a problem for them, and you could even carve a pumpkin with them! In our case, they work great for cutting porcelain tile.
However some designs are too small or fine detailed to be cut with the waterjet, because the pieces created would be too fragile for the floor. In these cases, the tiles are etched using sandblasting, and the impression is painted with super-durable industrial paint. This is an example of how that will look, for instance on the crosses and lettering for the St. Peter's Keys medallion:
Starting with the original design, the images are fine-tuned using Auto Cad, dividing the drawing into the individual pieces of tile that need to be cut to form the medallion. Here are some of the pieces after they are cut out from pieces of tile by the water jet:
Then it's time to set the jigsaw puzzle. All the pieces have to be put together in the right position to create the medallion.
It looks something like this when assembled. The white background tiles for the triangles had to be put in the kiln overnight because they were cracking when the intricate Immaculate Heart and crown designs were cut out of them. Hopefully re-firing them will do the trick. The gold border pieces of the quatrefoil were also giving the puzzle-setters some trouble, so those were not in when this picture was taken.
Below is a look at the medallion with one of the Carriage Gold tiles next to it. Carriage Gold is the color of the tiles in the center aisle, so this gives a little sneak peek of how it will look when set in place.
It took most of the day to get the Mary medallion to this point. Once all the medallions are cut, they will be placed in sections on a board, shrink-wrapped, and brought to St. Peter's where they will be installed piece by piece.
Those big rectangular machines on the right are three water jet cutters. They use high-pressure filtered water (soft water) directed in a narrow stream to cut through anything you want to cut. Steel several inches thick is not a problem for them, and you could even carve a pumpkin with them! In our case, they work great for cutting porcelain tile.
However some designs are too small or fine detailed to be cut with the waterjet, because the pieces created would be too fragile for the floor. In these cases, the tiles are etched using sandblasting, and the impression is painted with super-durable industrial paint. This is an example of how that will look, for instance on the crosses and lettering for the St. Peter's Keys medallion:
Starting with the original design, the images are fine-tuned using Auto Cad, dividing the drawing into the individual pieces of tile that need to be cut to form the medallion. Here are some of the pieces after they are cut out from pieces of tile by the water jet:
Then it's time to set the jigsaw puzzle. All the pieces have to be put together in the right position to create the medallion.
It looks something like this when assembled. The white background tiles for the triangles had to be put in the kiln overnight because they were cracking when the intricate Immaculate Heart and crown designs were cut out of them. Hopefully re-firing them will do the trick. The gold border pieces of the quatrefoil were also giving the puzzle-setters some trouble, so those were not in when this picture was taken.
Below is a look at the medallion with one of the Carriage Gold tiles next to it. Carriage Gold is the color of the tiles in the center aisle, so this gives a little sneak peek of how it will look when set in place.
It took most of the day to get the Mary medallion to this point. Once all the medallions are cut, they will be placed in sections on a board, shrink-wrapped, and brought to St. Peter's where they will be installed piece by piece.
Labels: church-floor-project
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