Alki's Miss Liberty has made her first groan of rebirth.

Well, maybe it was more like a long hiss, but however your want to describe it, the lady is on her way back to her home on the beach, where she will proudly gaze on the waters of Puget Sound and to the horizons of the west.

Last July she lay in chunks and pieces on a flatbed truck for a trip to Tacoma for her recasting. Last week, and again yesterday, the hiss of molten bonze metal being poured into a ceramic shell began her return.

The once tacky looking statute given to our beach 50 years ago by the Boy Scouts is at The Bronze Works, a foundry and art gallery in Tacoma's downtown brewery district. This week the head will be recast and, after some more money gathering, she is scheduled to return to a much-improved perch on the sand of Alki Beach.

The diminutive statue was placed on the beach in 1952 under the watchful eye recently recalled General of the Army Douglas MacArthur. It was one of over 200 small versions of the Statue of Liberty and had been given the Seattle Boy Scouts by Reginald H. Parsons, the first president of the Seattle Area Council of the Boy Scouts.

The original was made of thin copper sheath and plaster and was never expected to weather the wind, rain, salt air, birds and hoards of people who, at best gazed at the little statue, and at worst, defaced it, removing parts and damaging it.

In early 2005, money was being sought to recast our Miss Liberty into long-lasting bronze. Adam Sheridan, executive director of Northwest Programs for the Arts, said there was "no point in fixing this" and launched a $45,000 fund drive to recast the statue and reseat it on a new pedestal.

"We have approximately $20,000 to raise assuming our costs remain as predicted," Sheridan said last week as the first bronze was poured for the new copy of Miss Liberty. He says bricks are available to contributions of $100 or more, which will be included in the statue's new base.

The casting will be complete in a few days, he said, and then the work turns to gathering the money and the ideas for construction of the base.

But it was the hiss of hot metal that dominated the past few days.

"I was really moved (last Friday) by seeing a section of the statue poured," he said.

Sheridan was asked by the foundry staff to crack the shell off the first cast of the new statue.

"As I swung the hammer, hoping not to give the statue her first dents by mistake, I saw years of community work and energy coming literally out of the shell," Sheridan said. "It was a new statue being born and a meaningful symbol, but today was more importantly a milestone for what people achieve when they work together on something. After so many years, it is really, finally happening."

Kevin Keating, manager of the fine art foundry, says the hard part was restoring the statue's imprint to be recast. The years, the elements, the birds and the people had not been kind to Miss Liberty. Parts were missing, for example the spikes on Liberty's crown, and the torch had been ripped out to be replaced leaving telltale patches.

The preparing of a mold is a slow, and sometimes painful process, says Keating, a former Asarco smelter worker who discovered The Bronze Works when he was laid off.

The original statue was covered in a liquid silicone rubber, which solidifies to create a form fitting coating over the sculpture. The silicone rubber is coated with plaster to make it a rigid support shell. That is sectioned so it can be peeled away from the original statue and removed.

The mold and support shell can then be assembled to create a negative replica of the original.

The process, quite complex, results in a hollow "container" where the molten bronze is poured to make the finished product.

Last week, part of Liberty's body was cast and yesterday, the head was scheduled to be poured, later to be assembled into a replica of the original, but this one will be made to last for years on the unforgiving beach.

Jack Mayne can be reached at 923.0300 or jmayne@robinsonnews.com