broken ice sculpture repair: don’t panic! Here are at least 3 options for you

by Dawson List, Ice Dragon Ice Sculptures, New Orleans, LA

When I’m holding an ice sculpture in my arms just prior to setting it up, it always seems like someone is there to say in that annoying sing-song voice: “Don’t drop it!” And then I think: “Boy, it’s a good thing you told me that, otherwise who knows what would have happened!”

Unfortunately, breaking an ice sculpture is not a matter of if, but a matter of when. And once in a while, that annoying person was right to warn you because, well, you dropped it… or at least broke an arm off.

Over the years, I’ve stopped getting upset or excited about broken ice and just accepted it as part of working with this weird and wonderful medium. But that doesn’t mean that I’m giving up without a fight… and you shouldn’t either! So here we’ll talk about some ways to deal with it.

There are lots of reasons why it happens. Maybe you weren’t paying attention to that horse’s tail while you were going through the doorway. Or maybe a box of frozen cookie dough fell on your seahorse while it was in the freezer. Perhaps you cut a little too deeply and made Tweety Bird’s neck too thin to support his head.

Whatever the reason, suddenly you have more pieces of ice than you’re supposed to and you need to get them back together… and you probably don’t have much time to do it.

The first thing you need to do is CALMLY assess the break. If a client is standing there when you break the sculpture during set up, he or she is going to be a lot less nervous if you seem to have the situation under control. This would NOT be the time for profanity or yelling!

While assessing the break, you need to decide the degree of severity: is it a situation where you just need to set one piece of ice on top of another or do you need to think about cranking out a brand new sculpture in fifteen minutes. This assessment can be crucial to the eventual success of the sculpture and even the entire event. Your ingenuity and creative solutions can also be critical at this stage.

Okay, after you’ve decided how bad things really are, what do you do? If it’s a small, simple break on a non-structural part (like a wing maybe) then the solution is usually quite simple. Often, if the ice is cold enough, you can piece the ice together and add a little ice water to the seam and the pieces will freeze themselves together. If the sculpture is already wet and melting, you can use a refrigerant such as gum-freeze or butane to freeze the pieces together (even better, put it back in the freezer for a while!)

It’s important to keep a couple of things in mind in this situation. First, you shouldn’t let the surfaces of the break change very much. This means that you should either repair the break as soon as possible, or you should immediately refrigerate the broken pieces. If the fracture surfaces change, then the pieces will not fit together as well. Also, when you do make the repair, you should ensure that the surfaces are mated as tightly as possible and that there is no snow or debris interfering with the weld.

Sometimes, it’s not a simple break. You may have more than two major pieces to deal with or maybe two major pieces and a lot of little ice shards. The surfaces on either side of the break might have been further damaged so they don’t fit together well. Your repair job might feel like a maddening three dimensional puzzle with a time limit. In these cases, you have to assess the integrity of your potential welds and decide whether or not these welds can hold the sculpture together. This is sometimes a difficult judgment call. Always err on the side of safety!

Horizontal welds generally hold better than vertical ones because the water will sometimes drain out of a vertical weld before it has a chance to freeze. However, even a horizontal weld can be troublesome and potentially dangerous if the center of gravity of the broken piece is not over the weld.

If you don’t feel that a repair will hold throughout the event, then you may want to change the weld surfaces so that you can get a stronger weld. Sometimes the best remedy is to recut each surface and aluminum weld the pieces together (see back issues of On Ice for a description of this process.) If aluminum welding is not an option, then other solutions might be to use a hand saw, a nailboard, or an iron to match the weld surfaces. As always, if you have time, let any repairs solidify in the freezer or under dry ice.

Another situation arises when you break a component that you were intending to attach to the main sculpture. If you accept the inevitability of broken ice, you can almost eliminate this problem with a little extra planning. I carve a fish piece where the head is a separate component. Once I broke the head during assembly. Whenever I carved that piece after that, I would carve an extra head as insurance. It generally takes only a few extra minutes to carve an extra component, but it ensures that you won’t end up with a headless fish or something.

Aside from the freezer, there are a number of ways to cool your ice to aid the repair. Earlier, I mentioned refrigerants such as butane and gum freeze. These are very handy substances that can provide quick, on-the-spot cooling for your repair. Their cooling action is the result of the liquid changing to a gas as it is released from the can.

Butane is usually easy to come by; I often get it at Wal-Mart or Walgreens in the tobacco aisle. Restaurants also use cans of it to fuel their portable burners for omelette stations and such. Gum freeze is not as widely available, but hotel housekeeping departments often have it on hand.

However, keep in mind that butane and gum freeze are very flammable. Look around the area for open flames that could ignite the gas. If you’re repairing the ice at the set up site on a buffet look around for nearby candles or lit sternos under chafing dishes. Realize that you are using these substances in a way that the makers did not intend, so there’s some risk involved.

In fact, neither butane nor gum freeze should be used near food, as both are toxic. Nontoxic (for the most part) coolants include dry ice, liquid carbon dioxide, and liquid nitrogen. Of these, dry ice (solid carbon dioxide) is the easiest to get and to use. 

All of the coolants mentioned so far have one hazard in common: frostbite. Liquid nitrogen is by far the most dangerous in this regard, but even butane can burn you if you’re not careful. Great care should be exercised with all of these substances. There is one “coolant,” however, that is both nontoxic and poses no risk of frostbite: salt. Salt, though, has other drawbacks.

Throughout my ice carving career, helpful people have suggested that I use salt to fix a break. One misguided banquet server even shook salt all over one of my sculptures in an apparent attempt to preserve it. The repair process involves combining salt with slush and applying the mixture to the break. Unfortunately, the salt can damage and weaken the surrounding ice if it comes in contact with it.

Remember that road workers use salt to melt the ice on slick winter roads. In fact, the “cooling” action of salt is a result of this melting. The melting process pulls heat out of the surrounding ice, so it is cooled. This process is also used in hand-cranked ice cream machines.

Because of this drawback and the messy look of the repair, I don’t use salt to repair breaks. However, I do use salt sometimes to give my sculptures an added bit of stability. After the sculpture has been set up and ice cubes have been poured around the base of the sculpture in the tray, you can sprinkle salt on the ice cubes and they will freeze together and to the sculpture. This gives your sculpture an added measure of stability and safety. Just don’t get the salt on the sculpture itself.

Sometimes the whole sculpture or a major portion of the sculpture is destroyed. You might have a bunch of pieces slightly larger than the ice cubes at the bar. This is when you have to be the most creative. If you have the time, the ice, and the tools, you might be able to carve a replacement sculpture. If you don’t, then maybe you have another sculpture in the freezer that you were planning to use for another event, but might now work as a better-than-nothing substitute for the one you just broke.

If you’re able to salvage some of the sculpture, maybe you can use the salvaged pieces in a way that still works as an acceptable centerpiece. Usually, there’s a solution, but you have to think calmly so that you can give yourself a chance to come up with it.

Finally, I cannot emphasize how important safety is in these situations. The repair process can be dangerous, especially if you’re in a hurry or you or the people helping you are inexperienced. After you’ve finished your repair, you need to try to look into the future and see what would happen if the repair fails. Would a large chunk of the sculpture fall towards a table full of people?

If you have a sculpture that you’re concerned about, then protect people and property from a potential falling sculpture by keeping them away with tables or barriers. Realize also if the sculpture falls, even if it doesn’t hurt anyone or damage anything, that people will talk about the ice sculpture that they saw collapse. You might lose a few future sculpting jobs if they do. Often, it’s better not to have an ice sculpture than to have a dangerous one.

Hopefully, you won’t ever have to use any of this information. Unfortunately, while they say there are only two types of motorcycle riders, those who have wrecked and those who will, there’s only one type of ice sculptor: those who will break an ice sculpture (probably lots of times too). So if you do break that King Neptune sculpture while you’re setting it up for the most important event of the year, I hope this article comes in handy…