APC
Artifact Preservation & Co.
Design Process
Making the Moai (5 Feb. 2016) ​
We had two of our co-workers (Saioa Tricquet and Naomi von Gerlach) work on the sculpting of the Moai. However, before the sculpting began, Achilleas Souras found the exact measurements and weight our team needed to create the perfect Moai. Later on, Amit Samuel and Maxime Nederpelt weighed the chunk of clay into two different parts: the Moai itself and its simbolic hat, called Pukao. Patricio Pinzon and Amit Samuel were instructed to work on the Pukao while Naomi and Saioa continued to create the Moai. Achilleas was creating the dimensions and Maxime was taking photographs of the whole process. The scultping took our team around 30-40 minutes. Continuing the process, the clay dried up and we decided that having the Pukao was too risky for the assignment, so we left it out. When the Moai was ready and dry, Saioa and Amit painted it grey to capture the natural essence of real Moais. Our whole process was very successful even though, Naomi had to leave this project and continue another artifact investigation in the Himalayas. Our team is very proud of the work we have accomplished and how fast and concentrated we were in the making.
Creating the Terrain (6 Mar. 2016)​
The team met to start building the terrain over the weekend. We used balsa wood, thin balsa sticks and a thicker wood to create the overall structure of the terrain. We then decorated it with leaves and rocks to recreate the landscape of the quarries in Easter Island. The pieces were all assembled and stuck together using a hot glue gun. Achilleas Souras determined the exact measurements of the materials, Maxime Nederpelt and Patricio Pinzón then cut and filed the wood that was needed, and then the pieces were passed over to Saioa Tricquet and Amit Samuel who assembled the terrain and added the decorations.
The base was made with a thick wooden piece measuring __ x __ cm. Then, supported by 5 wooden balsa sticks, we placed a __x__ piece of balsa wood to represent the top of the mountain. Afterwards, we created the slope out of a piece of balsa wood, measuring __ x __, going from the base to the top of the structure. It is held by three balsa sticks placed diagonally in order to make the terrain sturdier. Lastly, on the opposite side of the terrain, we glued 3 wooden sticks together in the shape of a tepee that will later on help to lift the moai onto the platform.
Our team worked efficiently and met all of our expectations. We currently stand in a very good position time-wise and can’t wait to finalize our project.
Building the Transportation Mechanism
(29 April 2016)​
Achilleas, our physicist, developed an intricate transportation mechanism draft for our company to transport the Moai from the quarry down to the ahu.
Our company began building the transportation mechanism by creating rollers that would be placed on the ramp. We started using cardboard cilinders that we cut to be 8.5 centimeters long and placed a metal wire inside, which we connected to two wooden logs on either side of the cilinder to make it stay in place. After we constructed two of these rollers, we realized that the wire would not make the roller turn. To fix this, we decided to replace the wire with string, which we tied and glued to the two support logs on the side.
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Then, the company began constructing the car that would transport the moai from the bottom of the hill to where the ahu stands. We used a 13 x 14 cm balsa plank as the base and stuck a smaller piece, measuring 13 x 4 cm, perpendicularily to the base and at the front of the vehicle as a way of preventing the moai to fall when it lands on the car. As for the wheels, Amit Samuel and Maxime Nederpelt found two metal rods and four wheels that we would be using to move the car. We glued the metal rods underneath the balsa plank, placed the wheels at both sides, and added glue at the ends of the rods to maintain the wheels in place.
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Achilleas began building the pulley mechanism with thin balsa sticks placed at the end of our terrain.
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Our company currently stands in a good place time-wise and we are hoping that our transportation mechanism will work.
The finishing touches
(Week of May 30th to June 3rd)​
Two weeks into the building process, our company realized that the transportation mechanism that we intended to use was not working properly. The moai got stuck in the rollers half way down the ramp, and it didn't have enough impulse to propel the car far enough to reach the ahu. Furthermore, the pulley mechanism that Achilleas had started creating was really fragile and would break with the weight of the moai.
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Therefore, Saioa Tricquet came up with the idea of creating a ramp from the car to the ahu with the piece of wood that was intended to stop the moai from falling. The next day, Amit Samuel started working on this ramp right away, replacing the wood piece by a bigger one measuring 10.2 cm long and 13 cm wide.
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Regarding the rollers, our workers are strengthening the sructure by tensing the string. We also created a small platform at the top of the hill to give the moai more gravitational potential energy, giving it more impulse and kinetic energy when released.
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This week, we also created our ahu with clay and nails. Amit Samuel and Saioa Tricquet created it, by molding the clay in a circular shape and around 1cm tall, to model the ahus that the Rapa Nui used.