When we arrived in Yuma for the winter, the statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus that I had fixed previously, was further damaged I found out. I was glad they had saved the pieces in a shed and I offered to repair it. Deacon Todd offered to bring the statue to my place. It weighs probably 150 lbs. so last time I worked on it at the church. I was glad to have it in my driveway so I could repair it close to a sink with running water to wash off the plaster off my fingers and the paint off my brushes. It took me a week waiting for glue and plaster to dry a lot of the time. Started by piecing together the 15 pieces like a jigsaw puzzle. Discovered there were 3 fingers missing on the left hand. Interestingly, now I have remade all the fingers on the left hand because I recognized my plaster thumb and pinky in the pieces to glue on again. We also wanted to reinforce the heavy arms with a metal rod. The guys helped me with their drill that drilled into cement and a saw that would cut a firm metal rod we found in the shed. The first arm we used two pieces of the rod, but found the angles weren’t very exact so there was quite a gap to fill with glue and plaster. The second arm we just used one rod and it fit closer together to glue. For gluing the pieces of hands I prefer crazy glue and only glued my fingers together once. For the large arm pieces I used gorilla glue. It was a long wait holding the arms up, through 3 rosaries on my ipad and I still wondered if they would sag apart so we laid the statue down and tied the arms up so there was less gravitational pull.
