Copper Plaques for Peace Poles
Click Photos to Enlarge
The tradition is posts with text on them. The habit is posts that are too small to serve the message. The time it takes for me to make plaques is the same for large plaques as it is for small plaques. So you might as well go large. It costs the same.
The
plaques seen here are 4 inches wide. If you buy a 4 by 4 wooden post and put a measuring tape on it, it
really is only 3.5 inches by 3.5 inches (9 cm). So plaques made for them are only 3
inches wide. The post itself speaks as loudly as the text on it. Stature
matters. At right is a photo of a 10 foot long cedar 6 by 6 (15 cm) next to an 8 foot cedar 4 by 4.
For perspective, compare their sizes to the door just beyond them. You
can see what a big difference a 2 inches of width makes. I recommend getting a 6
by 6 that is 10 feet long and burying 2 feet of it, which is what you see in the
photo.
A treated 6 inch by 6 inch post 10 feet long at Home Depot is only $30 (Winter 2009 price). That is not cedar, but it is not a bad solution, as you can see in the photo below right. Cedar takes a little more searching and costs $60 if you get rough cut.
That is how you can save money with this pole - buy the big, heavy piece of wood locally and save the $250 it costs to crate and ship it. Shipping the plaques and a cap costs only $40. The copper peace pole plaques come predrilled with holes for screws. Brass screws are included. So are the drill bit and the screw bit for the drill. Anyone with an electric drill can attach these to a wooden post in half an hour.
At left are plaques on a rough cut, cedar 6 by 6.
I could put the plaques on a post and ship it to you completed if you prefer. But you can save a couple of hundred dollars by buying the piece of wood where you are.
For more about what wood to buy and where to get it, click Wooden Peace Pole.
Plaques
The plaques are made from 32 ounce, cold rolled copper. Cold rolled refers to the way it was created. Cold rolled means durable.
In addition to language plaques, I make dedication plaques, which are smaller. Sometimes there are two or three dedication plaques on a post. For instance, one dedication plaque might say "September 21, 2009" on one line and then "The International Day of Peace" on the next line. And then another dedication plaque might say "Dedicated to Peacemaker" on one line and then "Heather Longineau" on the next line.
Caps
I
also can make copper caps for your pole. The cap at right is $100. The one at left is $250 (it's difficult to make). There are
others I make, some of which can be seen elsewhere on this site on other
peace poles.
Caps are made to fit your pole. Usually just measuring the width of your pole for me is enough, but some people saw an inch off of their pole and send it to me so that I can make it fit exactly.
The pole doesn't have to be four-sided. And it doesn't have to be symmetrical. One person cut a four-sided 8" by 8" into a six-sided pole, but when it was finished the sides varied in size by as much as an inch. An inch was sawed off the top and sent to me so that I could make a cap to fit its asymmetrical shape.
At left: copper plaques on a
stainless steel
peace pole.
I can put different patinas on the copper.
I'm playing with the design of the caps right now, making new ones, changing old ones. The cap seen sitting on a book at right I created for a man in Sweden who told me he was going to put his peace pole in front of the aikido dojo in his garden. He said that the founder of aikido said "aikido practise" should be a prayer for peace so he thinks they go together.
In that situation I thought the cap should be simple and unornamented, but I gave it one more level of contour than I'd put on such a cap before.
The cap below it, sitting on the grass, I made to fit in with what I had learned from photos about the landscaping and renovating of a house in Illinois.
Shipping
Shipping plaques alone is $25. Shipping plaques and a cap together is $40. The cap arrives in a separate box.
Cost of plaques and cap for a four-sided pole:
4 plaques ................. $400
1 cap ........................ $100 (unless you want one of the more
expensive ones)
Shipping ................... $40
Total ......................... $540.00
Dedication plaques are $50 each. Additional language plaques are $100 each. There is room for a total of 8 language plaques on a 4-sided peace pole.