Someone from our church rescued a large St Francis of Assisi garden statue that was damaged in the rose garden by some snowmobilers who were trespassing on the church property. The weathered statue was brought inside the church lobby to protect it from further damage but its base was already damaged and it fell down, receiving further damage to the head.
Here is the statue in question. You can see the back of the neck was very thin. The statue was propped up by a pillow against a glass table from where I did the reattachment of the head. The fingers had to be rebuilt with green body filler.
The statue was wrapped in a blanket and given to George to see if his brother Paul would fix it, but his brother wasn't feeling well so I took the statue home to see if there was a possibility of fixing it myself. When George removed it from the car, the head fell on the cement floor where the top of the head received major damage with cracks and a hole. Luckily only the top of the head received further damage.
I went online to see how to fix a fiberglass garden statue and my husband bought a container of short fiber auto body filler and some hardener at an Auto Machinery shop. I sanded the areas to be fixed and slowly started to mix the filler and hardener and began to repair the top of the head from the inside and shave the excess. That stuff hardens so fast, you can only do a little bit at a time.
When attaching the head, I had to hold the head in place and the filler hardened on my paring knife. I couldn't even clean it afterward and had to throw it away.
When I finished sanding the excess green filler the best I could, I mixed the following four following colors, off-white, black, cobblestone, and moss-green acrylic paint, and got a color that was close to the finish. My years as a ceramic teacher came in handy. When the paint dried, I sprayed the painted area with a Super matte spray and the job was done.
My first fiberglass statue repair job... As you can see I did not clean the statue, just the parts that needed some body filler.
I have no idea to whom this statue belongs to, but I did the best that I could. If I was to do this kind of job again, I would get myself a Dremel kit as it was difficult to smooth in the neck crevis.
That was the most satisfying thing that I did last Monday.
Thanks for your comments and I hope spring has found you.
