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‘Gelt Gladiator’ is an extreme obstacle challenge which is taking place in Gelt woods, very near to where I live, today, May 16th 2015.

Last year I contacted Mike James, the organiser, and since then, in collaboration with ‘Natural Stone Direct’, I’ve been working on designing, sculpting, moulding, casting, finishing and mounting these gold, silver and bronze trophies, which have now been presented to the winners of the three separate events!

The trophy is based on the Roman helmet which Russel Crowe wore in the film ‘Gladiator’. I sculpted it in wax, and after being moulded it was then cast in white resin.

After each cast is ‘fettled’ to remove any surplus moulding material, it was then primed and sprayed with a metallic car paint (the bronze is actually called ‘Ford Roman Bronze’) . This is then ‘aged’ using a selection of black and metallic waxes. The finished helmet was then mounted on a stainless steel tube (cut and polished by Mike Wilkinson, who I also sing with!) and then fixed into a specially cut piece of Cumbria Sandstone, very similar to what would have been quarried from the Gelt woods quarry in Roman times. It has tiny grey discs throughout the stone which are actually pre-historic raindrops!

I used a pillar drill to make the holes in the middle of each sandstone block, into which wording has been blasted by Natural Stone Direct, at the old Roman quarry near Lanercost.

After collecting the newly blasted stones, someone pulled out infront of me, and the bases all went flying! They were chipped and scratched, but after a little bit of polishing,  they just look slightly more ‘Roman’ than I originally intended! It could have been worse…

Finally, these trophies were designed to be ‘trophy-sized’, to fit on the recipients mantle piece, so they are not the size of Russel Crowe’s head…