now, in hindsight, I would have have added a couple of small pieces of ice to this ice luge with flowers. I would have put them on top of the luge to corral the funnels and keep them in the right position. Except for that though, I was very happy with this piece. Not the picture though. The picture is đ©
updated 9/4/23. This post was one of the worst offenders in the dumpster fire đ„ that this site was before I started working on it again, months ago. I just realized how messed up this post was too. Were I not the author, I might have thought that whoever had written this might have died â ïž while they were working on it đ€Ł Half the text and all the pics were missing!! So I’ve fixed all that, and added seo and formatting. Sorry about that!
an ice luge with flowers is tricky to make, but worth it!
For a double tube ice luge with flowers, two spiraling tubes and three flowers (silks) were frozen into an ice block. Then the block was shaped and the ends of the tubing were exposed so that the luges could be used. I put together the following sequence of photos to illustrate how I froze the tubing and flowers into the ice block. I skipped the part where I gave the ice luge with flowers something other than just a blocky shape, but that wasn’t a big deal.
for this ice luge with flowers, both the flowers and luge tubing had to be precisely positioned in the ice block. So I started with this wire grid.
To position the tubing and flowers into the ice block, a section of green vinyl garden fencing from a hardware store is used to hold everything in place. The grid rectangles measure 2 inches wide by 3 inches high, so 10 rectangles crosses the width of the block tank. Another five on either side (for a total of 20) and you have enough to wrap the grid edges over the block tank edges so that it will stay in place. By the way, make sure to cut out a section where the pump is. Itâs not absolutely vital, but it makes placing the grid later a little easier.
here, I’ve pre-positioned the flowers and luge tubing for my ice luge with flowers. This method saves a LOT of frozen fingers and hassle!
One of the advantages of using the grid is that you can position everything ahead of time, which is much easier because that way itâs warm and dry, rather than wet and brutally cold. You donât want to do the wet and brutally cold way if you can avoid it! The even spacing of the grid also helps position the tubing and the flowers. Clips and/or cable ties can be used to hold the tubing and flowers in place.
SUPER IMPORTANT: Make sure to cork the ends of the tubing before they ever get in the water. You can probably get an assortment of little corks at a craft store like Michael’s. Also, youâll want to add a little tape to make sure the corks stay put. (I forgot that part this time; more on that later.)
Okay, so now the flowers, the tubing, and the grid are all in the brutally cold water đ„¶ With a Clinebell-type ice block machine, the ice forms from the bottom up, so the ice will slowly form up around the flowers and tubing. That is, of course, if you made sure that almost all the flowers and tubing were positioned on the down side of the grid. I probably forgot to mention that earlier đŹ
As the ice forms and starts to hold on to the various parts of the display, you can start to cut away parts of the grid and remove the clamps or cut the cable ties. How you go about this will be different for every display, because most displays will be different and the ice will freeze up a little differently each time.
You want to get rid of the grid without losing the positioning of your elements. By the way, this part will be awfully cold when you have to reach into the almost freezing water and cut away the grid with snips. Neoprene gloves (ideally long ones that extend past your wrists) can make this less of a hand-numbing experience.
Sometimes, maybe because you have to go home and get some sleep or something like that, the ice will grab hold of something you donât want it to: the grid. If it does that, probably no big deal. If it only barely has a hold of it, then you can just pull the grid out and the ice will reform. If itâs really got it, then youâll have to use the hose that you fill your tank with to dig it out.
If the tank is about to overflow because thereâs a LOT of digging that has to be done, then stop, remove some water and then get back to digging the grid out. But be careful! When you do this, youâre adding a lot of heat to water in the tank. You wonât fracture the block or anything, but youâre going to set the freezing process back a bit and youâll actually lose more than just the ice at the problem areas.
Depending on how much water you have to use, you might lose a significant layer off the top of your forming block. Lose too much, and elements in your display might float free. Itâs also going to take longer to form the block.
Here the grid is removed (mostly; you might be able to see a couple of pieces that donât matter by the tubing ends). Now the ice is freezing up and over the flowers and tubing, completely encasing them in the ice. Once this is done, the block gets harvested.
This time, harvesting was a little more difficult than usual, because the block liner leaked a little bit, letting water seep down and freeze around the bottom of the tank. The leak was probably caused by part of the cut away grid poking through the liner while the grid was being removed, so be careful that you donât do that.
yes, this is the same crappy pic of the ice luge with flowers that’s at the top of the post. If I had a different pic, I probably wouldn’t have used this awful one, don’t you think?
Finally, the block has been removed, itâs been shaped a bit, and the ends of the tubes have been exposed so that it can be used as a luge. Exposing the tubing ends is easier than you might think; just cut close to the tube all around it, then you can break the piece off. The tube will slide free and the ice might even hold on to the cork. Then all you have to do is cut the tubing to the lengths you want and attach funnels and youâre ready to go.
Earlier I mentioned that I should have taped the corked ends in this case. Because I didnât, the corks leaked a bit and some water got into the tubes. That means ice formed in small sections of the tubing (on both of them) blocking the luge. One blockage was easy to remove with a little saltwater after the ice had tempered (try not to get the saltwater on the block itself), but the other blockage was more stubborn.
You can also work on a blockage with some flexible wire. In combination with the saltwater, you should be able to free a blockage unless itâs large or in a really bad spot.
Another thing that would have improved the look of the luge would be small pieces of ice that went around the funnels. Freezing some additional small pieces that went around the upper tube endings would keep the funnels in a better position and made them look better. However, dealing with the tubing blockages keep me from attending to this detail before the event started. Next time perhaps…
P.S. Iâd forgotten that ice sculptor John Flottman had suggested a way to unblock frozen luge tubing. He hooked up a smaller tube to a Shark brand steamer, fed the smaller tube down into the blocked luge tube and blasted the blockage away with concentrated heat. He said that it didnât damage the sculpture ice at all. To be on the side of caution, however, Iâd make sure that your luge is tempered, so that it can handle the heat from the steam without fracturing. Either way, this is probably a WAY better method than the ones I tried.
links and things
This ice luge with flowers post will definitely go on the ice sculpting techniques page. But I’ll likely put together a separate page or post dedicated just to freezing crap into ice blocks. Because it’s kind of an art by itself. A lot of things can go wrong if you don’t know what you’re doing. (Btw, please don’t freeze ACTUAL crap 
into ice blocks. Nobody wants to see that.)
In the next post, I freeze fish patties into ice blocks. You’ll have to check it out to see why I’d ever want to do that. But it’s WAY easier.
Also, you COULD also find photos and info from this entry on the ice sculpting secrets Instagram account or the facebook page. You can comment there, instead of here, since it’s unlikely that I’ve fixed the commenting on older posts by the time you read this. Thanks!
