*updated 5/30/11
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Ice sculptures are very popular as vessels to display shrimp on a buffet, so a shrimp boat ice sculpture is a natural fit. In fact, the second ice sculpture that I ever did was a stylized shrimp boat. In this design, the block is turned on its side so that a lot more shrimp can go into the boat. Technically, this design requires a little bit more than a single block of ice, but you could probably squeeze the boat’s cabin out of the unused ice from the back end of the boat. Use the aluminum welding technique to get a nice strong weld between the cabin and the boat.



A few things to keep in mind:

• Make sure that you put a hole in the bottom of the boat unless you want shrimp soup.
• You only need to cut out a shallow depression to hold the shrimp; think ice tray, not bowl.
• Make sure that your boat will fit in your tray. Many ice trays only measure about 17 inches front to back, so you’ll likely have to cut down the size of the boat a bit. Also, you’ll notice that there are no waves shown in the template. You can certainly carve them if you wish, but the last time I did this piece, we just packed a lot of ice around the boat and the waves would have been covered by the cubes.

Obviously, the shrimp nets would be tough to carve out of ice. However, you could make some using light netting and plastic rods, inserting the assembly into a hole near the back of the cabin. This is something that I’ve seen done before and I might try this at a later date. I’ll attach a photo if it works well. Finally, if you want to go all Forrest Gump on this sculpture, you can engrave “Jenny” into the boat’s prow. (Don’t worry much about making the letters perfect; Forrest didn’t.)

If you have any questions about this piece, email me or comment below. If you would like to use this ice sculpture design or any other design on this site, please check the design usage guidelines. The design collection page lists designs on the site.

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Tags: aluminum welding method, food display