This was a HUGE project that was part of an immense undertaking. I spent three months traveling down to Los Angeles every week to build in a big shop. I loved working with all the different people and sharing my talent as well as learning from others as they built their specific items.

This RBS was just one part of many very large exhibit projects. This 40 foot Rolling Ball Sculpture was split up into 3 separate sections – but made to look as one large continuous piece to everyone else.

To activate this large project you would press a button at the start of the run. A tall chain lift would bring the ball up to the top of a large Christmas Tree. The tree was made up of RBS tracks and the ball would roll around and around in every widening circle until entering the Surprise House. At this point the ball would drop through and return to the lift inside the wooden platform waiting for the button to be pushed again.

This would activate the second lift and raise another ball up through the brick tower to exit into the snowman’s head. Dropping straight through the snowman the ball would exit into a ball splitter. The ball would exit one side or the other and “activate” the leaf blowers. Again, the ball would drop through the floor of the platform and return to the start of the second lift, hidden out of sight.

The leaf blowers would blow, spinning the ping-pong paddle wheel. The wheel was connected by a chain to the third lift. But, this was for show as it was not connected to the shaft, but free spinning. It would however turn on the third lift, a motor would turn on, and lift the ball again to drop into the series of pans. The ball makes a nice “bonk” sound as it hits each pan.

The tracks that hold the ball as it hits each pan was added the last night before the opening day. Without the tracks the ball would only make it down to the correct drain hole 8 out of 10 times… not perfectly. Since they didn’t want me to weld inside so close to opening, I took the pans assembly out to the loading dock and created the tracks in a few hours. After that, perfect!

I only did the rolling ball sculpture tracks, the wooden structure and the painting – plus the presents and decorations were done by other people on the teams.

It was AWESOME to work with all the different talented people who built the other attractions once you entered the main area.

100% stainless steel, TIG welded.