The artist behind the designs for the new tidal stairs is in town today to test the concrete he'll be working with.

Elliot Collins joined representatives from the council and HEB Construction at Bay Sandblasting Services this morning to check out their work.

Elliot's contribution to the project will be a tukutuku panel 'in pieces”, spread out across the tidal stairs.

Imagine the traditional shapes you might expect to see on a tukutuku panel, but arranged almost haphazardly, and ingrained in the stairs.

'It should seem like they're meant to be constructed later – metaphorically, of course,” he says.

He's also going to add some 'hidden elements” to the stairs – small drawings such as crabs or shells, which people can discover if they look close enough.

He says the project itself, with the stairs and the pier, is quite bold and strong. So these little designs will provide some balance to that.

The abrasive blasting process.

The vertical faces of the stairs will also have a karakia, in Maori and English, ingrained upon them. It's been gifted by kaumatua Peri Kohu, and tells the origin story of Mauao and how the harbour was formed.

Due to the nature of the stairs, often parts of the karakia will be hidden by the water, which is a concept Elliot finds exciting.

'It's almost like the tide telling you what you can and can't have.”

Today his visit is principally about seeing and feeling what the abrasive blasting can do to the concrete. Bay Sandblasting Services used a steel stencil with some lettering and showed what they could do on a slab of concrete.

The process can be hard to explain, but apparently the abrasive (which can be sand or metal shot) mixes with air and fires out a hose at 300km per hour.

If it makes contact with a person, it can rip their skin off – hence its usefulness at carving into concrete.

Bay Sandblasting Services owner Peter Henderson, Access to Water project leader Morgan Jones, HEB Construction project manager Dean Taylor, and Elliot Collins discuss working with the tide to finish the project.

A couple of demonstrations showed the different depths that can be achieved with the blasting, and the different degrees of roughness the surface of the stairs can have.

When the time comes to work on the real thing, it will be quite an undertaking, as the blasters will have to work with the tide, as will Elliot when he begins painting.

As for the stairs themselves, they're virtually all ready and waiting in the HEB Construction yards.

HEB Construction project manager Dean Taylor says he's seen a lot of kids down at the waterfront these school holidays jumping into the water, and thinks the tidal stairs and pier will be a big drawcard once the project finishes in April.

Some of the tidal stairs stacked and waiting at the HEB Construction yards in the Mount.