Day 24 – 5/10/22

Today, I worked on a couple of strips for the back of the bench and fastened those to the form. I’m trying to make them look like they’re really peeling off the bench by making the curves work well with one another. So far, it looks great!

Day 23- 5/8/22

We put together the outline of the bench today by using a spacer to maintain the correct distance between the front and back. From there, we picked a few strips that look good and can easily come off of the bench and provide opportunities for us to attach other pre-made strips.

Day 22 – 5/4/22

I continued working on additional curves. We’ll have to rip some more strips soon. But I’m also starting to panic because graduation is soon and I need to finish this bench on time!

Day 21 – 5/2/22

I walked by McClellan and found the hammock unraveling in one spot. So I repaired it by reknotting it. But I think we might need to invest in a better outdoor hammock because it’s breaking in many areas. Today, I also continued making additional strips.

Day 20- 5/1/22

I worked a lot on curving pieces of wood over the weekend. I’m finally getting better at curving the boards! Here’s a recent picture of one of the curves which I thought was cool. With the more curves I make, I’m also realizing that I’ll need to repair some of the curves which have minor breaks. I’m repairing those with wood glue, shown below.

Day 19 – 4/28/22

Today, we placed the strips in the gutter that Mr. Brodie got from the store. This works much better because we can weigh down the boards with rocks so they get properly soaked. I then continued working on curving my strips of wood. Here are some pictures of the setup used in this process:

Day 18 – 4/26/22

In the double period today, I came in with the intent to experiment with some really cool curves on our strips. Although it proved that the strips did not soak in the water long enough, and they therefore dried out much quicker than we wanted them to. As a result, we were not able to experiment with bending as intended. Mr. Brodie says he will go to the store to get a rain gutter that we can soak the boards in. Hopefully this way, we can weigh down the boards and ensure that they get fully saturated before we attempt to bend them.

I’ve also been working on an independent project in my free time this term, which started as a goal to design a Lawrenceville logo keychain for my car keys. I then decided that I wanted to make a pair of earrings. Finally, I decided that I wanted to make a little gift for some of my teachers as an end-of-year thank you. I would describe it here, but considering that Mr. Brodie IS my audience, I’ll have to keep that information secret for now.

Day 17- 4/25/22

I came into the shop tonight to rip some of our first boards. We ended up shooting for 1 inch wide and .75 thick. We wanted to run them through the planar, although we encountered a few issues with the dust collector because someone else had filled the whole thing up! Therefore, we placed the strips in the tube submerged in water to soak overnight.

Day 16 – 4/21/22

Because I had to leave early for softball, we didn’t have time to try to figure out the setup of the pipe and how it will work to bend the wood that is 12′ long. We also sketched out how we will attach the pieces once we finish bending them, and we decided that the pieces on the front and back will be the hardest to conceal, but we can connect the spaghetti by plugging them into pre-cut notches in the wood. The sketch below shows the design we are considering:

Day 15 – 4/19/22

Today, I worked on settling the type of bench I wanted, and the below bench is the style that I chose. I really like the contrast between the organized lines of the bench and the chaos of the spaghetti coming out of the bench. In Fusion, I made a 3d model of the bench in the proposed dimensions (19″ x 54″ x ~16″). I will insert the screenshot below. Because Mr. Brodie wanted to go to the lumberyard to buy the wood, we had to calculate the total amount of wood we would need to carry out this design. I also inserted a photo of the calculations in the photo below.

Day 14- 4/14/22

In class today, I assembled the hammock with the thistle plates and the bolts (yay, we finally found the second bolt we somehow lost in the shop!). After assembling it and making the long trek to McClellan with it on the cart, I finally set it up. Hopefully everything stays okay! I’m thinking of making an announcement at mcc house meeting next week about it to try to make sure people treat it gently. We’ll see. Anyway, now the main focus is on finishing the preliminary bench skethes, trying to figure out the dimensions I want it to be, and the shape I want the spaghetti to be.

Day 13 – 4/13/22

For my homework tonight, I stopped by the shop during my free period and put the final coat of paint on the washers and the final coat of polyurethane on the hammock itself. I asked Mr. Brodie to pick up the second bolt from the store so we can assemble the hammock tomorrow and get it out there!

Day 12 – 4/12/22

During our long period, Mr. Brodie showed me how to safely bend the wood using the heated pipe. I found that the 1/4 inch slices worked best, especially because the thicker and square pieces cracked extremely easily due to their thickness. My trial piece turned out quite well, especially the second curve I made. A picture is attached below. I also found out that I will need to use clamps when forming my curves in order to hold the desired shape while the wood cools and dries. In the next class, hope to finish up the hammock so I can focus all of my energy on finishing the designs for the bench (especially since I now have an idea of how bending the wood works).

Day 11 – 4/11/22

In today’s short period, we attempted to spraypaint the hammock plates purple, although I quickly realized that all of the spray paint cans were against me. I had to substitute 4 nozzles onto the purple spray paint can until I found a nozzle that was unclogged. Luckily, I was able to find one eventually! I then spraypainted my plates purple. I also sliced several pieces of wood to use in my experiment with the heated pipe for the bench. Mr. Inzer allowed us to borrow their pipe so we can soak the pieces of wood in water overnight before beginning the bending. So experimenting with the different thicknesses of the wood will be the project for tomorrow.

Day 10 – 4/9/22

Although we technically didn’t have class today, I wanted to stop in and continue working on my project. I put another coat of polyurethane on the hammock and hammock stand. I also put another coat of primer on the steel thistle plates so I can spray paint them next class.

Day 9- 4/8/22

I worked on coating the hammock stand and the wooden hammock support beams with polyurethane. We wanted to coat the bottom of the hammock stand because it’s the part that is always in contact with the ground so we arguably want to protect this area the most. I also wanted to recoat the hammock support beams because they started to weather and crack slightly. I’m hoping this rope hammock holds up – otherwise, the Etsy seller will be receiving a very negative review from me! haha.

Day 8 – 4/7/22

Even though we didn’t have class, I stopped by GCAD to coat the thistles with a coat of primer (especially because I know it’ll need a few coats and will have to dry in between each one). It started to rain as I was finishing them, so I had to bring them into the shop to dry.

Day 7 – 4/6/22

Today, I worked a lot more on my sketches for the bench project. I’m hoping to experiment with the rod to see if bending the wood will work for the bench design. I really like the idea of the spaghetti bench so fingers crossed that it works and that it’s attainable! Here are some of my most recent sketches, which include different combinations of the spaghetti and the spaghetti bench. We will also have to see if weaving the spaghetti up the railing would be doable or not considering the fire code. But that would be so cool if we could do that. I’ll also continue working on a few other sketches for non-spaghetti designs in case we aren’t able to do that. I’m particularly drawn to design #4 which uses the negative (unusable) space under the stairwell then climbs up the railing and uses slightly more negative space under the larger part of the stairwell. I want to make sure that the bench takes up just the right amount of space and seems to blend into the gcad design while also allowing for a practical space for people to sit.

Day 6 – 4/5/22

Today, I used the angle grinder to cut out the metal plates and shave down the extra metal from the tabs. I then applied primer to the plates and coated the hammock stand in another coat of polyeurathane. I came back to gcad later that night to apply another coat of primer to the metal plates so we can paint them with spraypaint during next class.

Day 5 – 4/4/22

So I was so excited to finally hit the ground running with the washers for the hammock stand today, only it didn’t work out the way I was expecting. We had even more issues with setting ‘tabs’ and altering the printing path. After many trials, we were finally able to restart the program and properly place the tabs to cutting the thistles. We also worked on cutting the backplates, which we attempted to cut without tabs, and then had to remake because they dropped into the tank before being cut. Finally, we cut all of the plates we needed. I went back to gcad later that night to continue working on the hammock, where I sanded all of the faces of the stand so the sealant adheres when we apply another coat of polyeurathane.

Day 4 – 3/29/22

We had a lot of trouble with the design of the plate design, especially because it did not save correctly on my computer. So we had to completely restart the design on the lville computer, which took a lot of time. We had to increase the thickness of the positive space on the top of the thistle multiple times due to concerns about the thickness of the cut of the waterjet. We ended class with 3 wood models of the thistle design, all with differing levels of thickness of the top part of the thistle. Aiming to finally cut the thistle design next class so we can finalize the hammock design.

For homework, I continued researching bench designs, and I’ve found some additional options, although I’m thinking that I still like the idea of the spaghetti bench design.

The bench design above is one of my new favorite designs because it serves the practical purpose and is decorative/cool looking. I’m working on sketches for how I might merge this idea with the spaghetti concept. But I’ll have to check with Mr. Brodie and see if this design would require too much steamed wood. Here are my most recent idea sketches:

Day 3 – 3/28/22

Worked to transfer the thistle sketches to Fusion and after tons of trial and error, finally arrived at a sketch that worked and had the correct curves and negative spaces. At the end of the period, I saved the design on my computer. Although I would later find out that the saving just didn’t work on my angry computer.

Day 2 – 3/24/22

Worked with Mr. Brodie to fix the hammock and provide reinforcement for the eye hooks. In the process of sketching the McClellan thistle and started to (unsuccessfully) transfer it to Fusion. Side note: Mr. Brodie hates my PC! Anyway, we’ll try putting it in Fusion again during the next class (on Mr. Brodie’s computer haha). I also have to fix up the hammock itself and put another coat of sealant on the hammock stand.

Insert sketches of McC thistle reinforcement plate below:

Outside of class, I’ll continue developing my design for the bench. So far, I’ve decided that I definitely want it to be wood. I also really liked the idea of the “spaghetti” bench – which doubles both as a bench and as an art piece! Below are the sketches I’ve been working on for some potential designs. I also want to keep exploring other bench designs in addition to the spaghetti design. Here are some other designs that caught my eye:

Day 1 – 3/22/22 – Brainstorming & Problem statement

Problem statement: I would like to expand on my project from my sophomore year Design class. With the new GCAD building recently completed, there is now a huge open space under the staircase in the main lobby. In order to utilize the space and provide another area for students to spend time, I would like to construct a practical and artistic-looking bench that will be a good addition to the space under the staircase. I would also like to fill some of the negative space -which might be otherwise unusable -under the stairs, too, which might mean incorporating some form of artistic feature to the bench that might not necessarily be functional. I would like to expand beyond the idea of an art palatte, perhaps instead exploring other ideas like creativity, life, etc.