The Spiral Arch
Throughout the Roman empire, their engineers erected arch structures such as bridges, aqueducts, and gates. They also introduced the triumphal arch as a military monument, but they never designed and built a spiral or twisted arch.
Today there is the Spiral Arch, the accomplishment of an intricate and daunting project of brick and mortar. The artistic Spiral Arch required design, precision and strength as well as overcoming an array of challenges for the arch to work. This magnificent Spiral Arch stands strong and has never been matched in America
It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you are goal oriented. Five years ago Josh Huneke selected a career path in the broad and fascinating field of masonry at the Schuylkill
Technology Center in Frackville, PA. We’re proud to say Josh was under the good hands of instruction of former Stevens’ graduate Scott Allvord from the Class of 2006. Josh then came to Thaddeus Stevens College knowing he would be able to hone his skills and increase his competencies yielding a greater working knowledge of the unlimited use and extremes in masonry construction.
With the instructional help and encouragement of his instructors Mr. Gardner and Mr. Hummel, Josh was able to build some amazing projects in the last two years. His favorite project by far was creating the spiral arch. Once he embarked on the arch building phase of the program, Mr. Hummel told them to go research the type of arch you would like to build. In surfing the internet, he stumbled upon a YouTube video that showed a man creating a spiral arch. Not being a young man to stray away from a challenge, he decided that he would give it a shot.
As soon as he told his instructors what he was planning on doing they were equally excited and willing to help him make his vision come to fruition. Josh said once he started working on this
perplexing project, only then was he able to start wrapping his mind around it and he realized how intricate and daunting this project was going to be, but he was hooked.
After he laid the starter courses on both piers he started to work on his arch form. The form was one of the more interesting and difficult parts of this project but it was by far the most rewarding part of it. Josh spent many hours laying out the form and constructing it. If the layout was incorrect in any way the whole project would have been a failure. He said it was a very good workout mentally.
After he built the form and set it between the piers he was ready to rock and get his project completed. He spent many 13 hour days in the shop building the spiral arch and was relieved to see that it was moving along quite smoothly and coming together.
All in all he spent 60-70 hours working on this project from start to finish. There were so many challenges that he encountered and was most favorable to overcome with his knowledge and commitment.
Mr. Gardner and Mr. Hummel were always there if advice was needed. With a big smile he said, “It’s a great feeling to be able to stand back and look at this project and know that I was able to build this whole project from the ground up with not much more than a video to go on. I’m so thankful to have been given the privilege to attend Stevens College and to receive the super training and opportunity to build a project with the highest degree of difficulty as the spiral arch presented.”
He’s not only a very talented young bricklayer nearing journeyman status, Josh exudes the artistic creativeness of a burnt clay artisan. Having the skill and mind to take bricks of
clay and lay them into a very difficult manner of configuration, fashioning them into a spiral arch of beauty is a monumental challenge.
The talent of Josh Huneke isn’t the ordinary; it’s the extraordinary which takes immeasurable skill. Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology congratulates him for his self-discipline
for perfection and may these attributes be the light to his pathway for a long successful career.
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