a fan coral ice sculpture carved by Roland Hernandez of Carving Ice at the 2011 Orange County Fair Ice Museum in Costa Mesa, CA
updated 11/10/23 with the video and some links. also updated some 4/16/23 with formatting and seo when added to iss
my fan coral ice sculpture design
Like several other recent designs (the reef shark, sea turtle, and manta ray, which might not have been added to iss by the time you read this…), this fan coral ice sculpture design is the result of my involvement at the Ice Museum at the 2011 OC Fair in Costa Mesa, CA. Only in this case, I didn’t carve the piece for the museum. Roland Hernandez, architect of the Ice Museum, carved the fan coral, or sea fan piece.
Fan corals are also called gorgonians and are a soft coral, lacking the stiff skeletal structure of other corals. A fan coral is really a colony of many smaller animals, all working together to do better than they would individually. Sea fans are primarily filter feeders, feeding on plankton that flow through their fan.
Two versions of the design are included. One is a cut through piece, similar to Roland’s sculpture above, while the other is a snowfilled version. The cut through version, while more realistic, can be super time consuming to create and would not hold up nearly as long as the snowfilled version. It would take a LONG time to cut each cutout and clear the snow out.
On the other hand, the snowfilled version could be carved fairly quickly and is more CNC machine friendly too. So you can choose which would better fit your needs. I’d envision that this design might be combined with other undersea designs (like the reef shark, for example) to create a larger display.
Either design only requires a half block slab (4-5 inches thick) to create; fan corals are very thin and largely flat. You might want to incorporate a little curvature, but not much is required.
I couldn’t say for sure there’s a fan coral in this video, but somewhere, I’d bet there is.
Roland Hernandez, Carving Ice, & the OC Fair
I have several ice sculpture designs on the site that resulted from my experiences with Roland and Carving Ice. Working with Roland on the Ice Museum for the Orange County Fair was fantastic and there’s a lot to say about both. The sea turtle design, manta ray design, and reef shark design are related to the Ice Museum. You can also find pics from it in the Daukas gallery.
how to handle it with a cnc?
So how would I handle a fan coral ice sculpture on a CNC machine. I’m so glad you asked! Because I’ve done that. Below, you can see a large fan coral ice throne. I was working with Joe Rimer and Ice Pro Ice Sculptures to create this. If I recall correctly, I did all the design work for their I-Sculpt CNC. Then they ran the ice and then I joined them at Minus 5 Ice Bar (which is gone now 😩) in Orlando. I then assembled this ice throne with the pieces they had run on the CNC.
Now this fan coral ice sculpture (ok, well, throne) is quite a bit bigger than the designs here. Just the fan on this throne took 4 slabs of ice to make. We froze the engraved side to the ice wall to make it last as long as possible. If you look closely, you’ll also notice that the sides of the throne are made from white ice and I bubbled these so they looked “coralish.”
for more info and some guidelines
If you have any questions about the fan coral ice sculpture design, email me or comment below. (It might not let you though.) If you would like to use this ice sculpture design or any other design on this site, please check the design usage guidelines. The design collection page lists designs on the site and has LOTS of other sealife designs to go with the fan coral.
You might also find photos and info from this entry on the ice sculpting secrets facebook page and you can comment there as well as below. Thanks!
