Corten Steel Waterfall
Minnesota is, in no small way, a bastion for some tremendously creative people; folks with some of the wildest, off-the-wall, cool ideas I’ve ever heard. Any sort of foray into Northeast Minneapolis, or into Lowertown in St Paul, will show you a colorful palette unique to this gem of midwest culture. Now and then, the creative people of this lovely state need a little help breathing life into their ideas, and now and then, I’m lucky enough to be just such a helper.
This particular project is, and please forgive my own lack of creativity in adjectives, one of the absolute coolest things I’ve ever gotten to make. My client and his wife adore the popular modern-industrial design, and despite the popularity of this movement, they succeed in commissioning unique pieces that stand out among the many jaw-dropping designs out there…so of course my answer could only be “yes” when asked if I would be willing to make a waterfall out of corten steel. Here’s how it went.
This was the scene I started with. A rubber membrane, and a hole filled with rock and a water pump. I wasn’t entirely sure how to create the scaffolding for the steel. It was crucial that I not breach the membrane, so a steel skeleton was out, and so was any option of driving anchors into the hillside to attach to 4x4 timbers. It was determined that, with the pitch of the waterfall, gravity and minimal anchoring would be plenty to hold the structure together initially, and once it was all tied together with the sheet metal corten, it would be pretty damn bullet proof.
With the skeleton of the waterfall built, anchored, and strong enough to support 800 pounds of steel, the real work was green-lit to begin. At this point, I’d clocked only about 8 hours into the project, and when I clocked out for the last time, I had logged over 40...there was a whole lot of work still to go.
My client had a “shake and shingle” sort of design in mind, which I was delighted by. My plan from the start was to do two layers. One layer, unbent metal, screwed straight into the scaffolding, mid-way down, overlapped by pieces of corten that would ride along the top of the wall with a simple 90 degree bend. No sweat, yeah? …nah. Sure, along the house, where the top of the scaffold was a flush 90 degree, that was simple, but attempting to take a multitude of sheet metal strips, and bend them in harmony to an organically shaped hillside, accounting not only for the shape of the hillside, but also for the pitch necessary to ensure the water will flow into the pool, and not into the garden or the house’s foundation? There were injuries endured to make this happen.
The persistent, stubborn, and stupid all seem to persevere similarly. I’m not going to make any sort of claim as to which category I fall under, but by god there was perseverance in assembling this wildly cool corten steel waterfall.
41 hours after starting this waterfall, my part to play was finally at an end, and I was able to successfully check “make a kickass corten steel waterfall” off of my fabrication bucket list. I will post an update once my client finishes the landscaping and gets the water flowing…stay tuned; you won’t want to miss this.
