The Svenson Turret Roof Cap
Chautauqua, New York (12/10)

Details and Photo Page

Updated 11 / 27 / 2011

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This is a copper Turret roof peak cap and custom weathervane I made for Marcelle Svenson in Chautauqua, New York for their home. She had a photo of an arrow style weathervane with a real grow perched on it and thought that was really neat, but had to figure out how she could get a crow to stay there, so she contacted me to see if I could help. Here is a before and after shot:

It was designed to have the 16 sides for a faceted round look. Given the large 44" wide size of this cap we had to make it in 4 separate segments that had to be sealed together.

This was one of the largest turret roof caps I've had to make. The carpeted work table here is 4' X 8' long to help give you an idea of it's size.

Here is several photos of it's fabrication I had shared with this client before shipping it out to them, so they can see the time and care I put into each project. This project took over 2 weeks through the X-mas/New Year holiday to design and fabricate. Besides the dozens of e-mails and photos exchanged to work out all these details months prior.

It was tricky to design this to fit the appropriate scale needed. Since Good Directions does not carry an arrow this size or strong enough for a full size crow figure I had to make this from scratch. The shaft was made from a 1" type L copper pipe. The arrow head and tail fins were made with a thick 32oz copper. It has a 3" segment of copper pipe there in the center.

Making this crow figure was quite a departure from what I have done in copper. To design this I had to study hundreds of photos of crows. It was hard to find photos with the pose I needed. this also was made with scraps I had of 32oz copper sheet stock, so it could withstand a rock being hurled at it with little to no denting.

It was also tricky to get the balance just right, so it would rotate easily in a light breeze. As you'll see here it balances on my carpeted work table on this small pedestal. You might note that I also made another piece to go in the center of the directionals to make it look more substantial from what you see in the photos above.

After reviewing the photos I sent to Marcelle she felt the crow's head needed some height added, so I gave him this helmet I domed from a flat piece of copper, so it would have more of a forehead shape. I do what I can to respond to my client's feedback.

Here are the pieces suspended inside the shipping crate to safely take this across the Nation to the East Coast.

Cost: $2,775 - w/crate & shipping to New York
Weathervane alone was $1,200 w/o shipping

From: "Marcelle Svenson" <wattscroft@aol.c*m>
Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2011
Subject: Re: Chautauqua Institution New York - Crow design turret cone

Thank you David,
Robot-crow is aloft and the cone design is beautiful - everyone asks about it. The house is on the grounds of Chautauqua Institution, New York (I'm in Ohio), I need to get better photos to you. I will save this as a reminder. I'm forwarding a couple pictures now, but will get a better one of the whole cone roof showing with the house. This is a link to Chautauqua Institution: http://www.ciweb.org/community/
Marcelle Svenson

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Here are some excellent photos she sent me of the installation. You can see here how her local Contractor took this installation very seriously to carefully extend the scaffolding and set up these planks to make sure there was no mistakes. It should not take all this to do a turret roof cap installation. With the right equipment it should only taken an hour to do with a good high-reach lift, but in this case most of the scaffolding was already in place for other work being done on her New York house.

This is one of the nicest roofing jobs I've seen on a round turret like this. By far not an easy thing for the best of roofers to do. Take a closer look at these photos to see some of what I had cropped off in these smaller images.

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Custom Copper Roof Cap main page.

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Below is a photo of our
Better Business Bureau's
NW Business Integrity Award
for the year 1998

1999 Better Business Award

We were also a 1997 finalist for this same award. See our referral web page to see how we managed to be honored with this special award

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