Another Corona edition of my little-read blog. I hope anyone finding this is well and doing OK in our interesting times. I’ve not done too much in the way of actual work in the last couple of weeks, instead I’ve been mainly focusing on my Open University degree (which is going well, thanks for asking). I did get a couple of photos from the other guys I usually share the workshop with who have been doing some socially distanced work installing some of the things that were cut pre-virus. You can see how the panelled room is coming along in the first two image below. The ceiling is looking really good and is now waiting for some moulded features that we’ll be carving (see below for more on that). The doors and carvings are also looking great, fully installed and painted. The next image is a beautiful pink rose that has bloomed outside the house and is one of the few photos I’ve taken in the last couple of weeks, the blossoms on all the trees have been a real visual plus on our daily walks and runs. The next image shows two signs my kids designed. This was a home-school project during lock-down, using the software I use (Vectric’s Aspire) they had to design and toolpath a sign each. I then took their toolpaths into the workshop last weekend (when it was empty) and machined the parts. These are shown as they currently are waiting to be sealed and then finish painted over this coming weekend. Lastly, today I actually did some paid work again. What was nice is I was able to do this at home - setting up files and toolpaths and emailing them to Tom in the workshop - you can see the Egg & Dart I programmed to be cut for the coffered ceiling shown earlier and then a full sheet of scalloped moulding that will also be part of the elaborate decoration on there. Getting the toolpaths done remotely for these was not too bad, there was a bit of going back and forth with messages but we worked it all out and it may now be the new normal for a while in terms of how we work to reduce human overlap in the workshop… Onward and upward, stay positive.
Lion 3D Print, Walks, Bakes and Splash Photos
A total lack of CNC or workshop related projects this week as CoronaVirus lock-down continues. In order to maintain my habit-building efforts for this blog I’ll continue to do updates though with what we’ve been doing at home. The first picture are some excellent flat-breads my wife and daughter made, we’ve also had home-made hot cross buns this week and been taking it in turns to cook evening meals with the kids which is fun and hopefully will help them learn to take care of themselves as they get older. We’re lucky to be able to get out every day for a walk and I took a photo while out of an interesting bark growth and then the third picture is a close up of a buttercup, really more for the yellow colour blast than anything else.
We had another go at 3D printing this week with a downloaded model from the internet. The fourth image shows our finished print, this a scan of a lion statue from Lyon in France. It’s a very good model and printed well. Finally below there are a couple of images from my kids of this weeks photography project (set by their granddad) to take a picture of a splash. I think they both came out very well and there was plenty to think about for them in terms of how to set it up and catch it at the right time.
I don’t expect to be doing too much workshop-wise again next week but may get back onto some 3D modelling the week after. Stay well in the meantime.
Turtle 3D Print, Card Shape, Portraits and Cherubs
As with last week, I’ve spent most of this week at home again with the kids due to the Corona-Virus school shutdown. This has been a good excuse to get the 3D printer out again that we built last summer. My son spent a good deal of time with the Prusa software to setup a 3D turtle that he had downloaded. This needed a lot of support elements to enable it to be made. You can see the printer and close up of the turtle in images one and two below, the support is the bed of looser material it appears to be lying on. I’ve also been working with him on some of his homework, one assignment was to take portrait photos of family members. The third image below is picture he took of me, I really liked the composition of this, especially the fact its focused on the Joker image on the comic book and I’m a blurry background. Very cool indeed.
Of course with more time on our hands I’m getting round to some stuff I’ve had for a while and has been on my to-do list but never got near the top. The fourth image shows something I think I bought probably 5 years ago from a Maker Faire. It is a set of 60 cards with slits in the edges that can be assembled into a kind of sphere shape. I’ve finally made the time to put this together, it was awkward, frustrating and time consuming but mildly satisfying when complete… Still I can see how I’ve not managed to find time before. On the work front I did manage to make it into the empty workshop on Wednesday for a few hours of filling and sanding on the big “Angel House” sign I started work on a few weeks ago. You can see the wings lined up on the bench waiting to be sanded in the fifth photo below and the whole thing put together in the last image - glove included for size reference. When we get back to work properly I’ll need to make a backer probably from marine-ply and we can do the final assembly, including the banner, then more filling and sanding before it’ll be ready to be primed and painted.
Locked Down Activities & Art
So, we’ve got to the end of the first week of COVID-19 lock-down here in the UK, a strange week to say the least but we are very lucky to be in a good position to ride it out. While this is a stressful and difficult time for many it’s also heartening to see the majority of people pulling together and acting as a community while paradoxically having to stay apart.
I’ve not done much at all at the workshop this week other than pop in to glue up some parts on the angel wings I cut last week. The workshop is remote enough that I expect I will get back in there soon enough. Instead I’ve been home with the family taking (isolated) walks and there has also been some excellent baking as the pictures below show. I’m also getting the kids going with some Design & Technology projects which will ultimately use the CNC and Vectric Aspire software. So hopefully an element of practical learning to be had there.
What I thought I would do this week is show a few completed pieces of art I’ve worked on in the last six months. Some uncompleted parts of these have appeared in previous posts. First image below shows a geometric design I was playing with a while ago, originally intended to cut in nine separate wall panels. I made this as a prototype to see how it would look. I liked it but my wife was not keen on having the full size version on our wall, my son really liked the prototype though so its now on his bedroom wall. Its made from black Valchromat (dense coloured MDF) and has been sealed, sanded and lacquered. It just needs some black painted over the screws to hide them. I really like this design and how the circles draw you into it but the breaks in the pattern create a randomness with almost a ripple quality. The second image is a tongue-in-cheek piece I made, this very literally examines the idea that modern art is supposed to “subvert”. I feel this is a term that has been devalued by overuse and my pithy interpretation is intended to try and suck all meaning out of it except a play on words. Think of the French word for green and that will clue you in on just how silly this is. In a way I suppose this does subvert the idea of a traditional half-hull boat model which I’ve always wanted to make. The last image is an oil painting I completed earlier in the year that I’ve finally managed to frame. The painting is called “Does Dark Matter 1”. The proportions of the different areas correspond to the proportions of dark energy (the red area), dark matter (the blue area) and regular atomic matter (the grey area). You can read more about why they are the size they are and what these things are here: https://home.cern/science/physics/dark-matter. I’m fascinated by the idea that the part of the universe we can comprehend is so small, relatively speaking and wanted to express this visually. The frame is made from poplar. The wood was ebonised by using a solution of wire wool dissolved in white vinegar brushed onto a base of very strong tea (for the tannin). This had about four coats of each built up to create this rich very dark brown finish. I used this web-page as inspiration for the method to do this: https://www.instructables.com/id/Ebonizing-Wood-Study/
For now I’ll wish anyone stumbling across this well and will continue to aim to post weekly even if I’m not doing too much in the workshop (habit building). Although I do expect to start a bit more work on Aspire at home in the coming weeks so I can always document that.
Kitchen Island, Cornice and the Big Cherub Sign
Seems odd continuing to write a blog that almost no-one reads while the world deals with COVID-19. However I guess the best any of us can do, who are able to carry on as normal, is to try and do that.
First up is a project the guys I share the workshop with had to complete that was all done on the big CNC. I helped Tom take this from his design software into VCarve Pro and then create the toolpaths to cut the 45mm thick oak worktop you can see in the first two images and also the MDF panels and doors, finished and painted, that you can see in the third photo. This was a perfect project for the large CNC and all seemed to go together well.
Onto other work, in the fourth photo is the prototype ceiling panel I made for the No.3 house - painted now and ready for the client to review at some point in the future. The last two photos are not my work but show the scale of the room we’re working on. This is the cornice for the ceiling boxes, as you can see there is a lot of it and we’re going to have to make egg & dart moulding to go into all these lengths too… that’s a lot of carving.
The project I’ve spent most of the week on though is continuing to work on the large cherub sign. Last week you saw the slices for the face being cut and glued. The result of that can be seen in the first image below. In addition to the face I also needed to make 4 wings and a ribbon/banner. The banner had to be cut from 70mm thick sapele and the wings were cut in slices from two 40mm thick glued-up boards.You can see the various pieces being cut and the slices glued up in the photos below. The last two images show the final pieces being assembled with full-size workshop broom for scale, its 1.6m top to bottom of the wing tips. I’ve still got a few of the slices to glue on but I’ve started filling and finishing the face and top two wings. It does look impressive and all the individual pieces are coming together well. I’ll probably continue dropping into the workshop to keep this moving along while also looking after two kids off school and starting to model the complex chimney-piece I’ve got to work on from home
As well as keeping calm and carrying on, I have got some ideas germinating regarding some more useful things that I could do during these unusual times. If you are reading this then lets all try to stay positive and stay healthy…
Large CNC Work, The Room WIP, A Very Big Cherubs Face
We’ve had both CNC’s running a bit more this week. I created a lot of files for the guys at TPCM downstairs in the workshop to cut out 100+ shelves of different sizes on their new big green CNC. These were cut from 30mm MDF with a poplar lipping along the front edge - which allowed them to have a moulding shape added after they were cut. . In the first picture below you can see a stack of some of the shelves, each one has a shape cut out the back to help ventilate the books. The second image below is another job from the big CNC - a simple cabinet to match a design the client already has. Tom and I worked through this to give him some experience with his new software to take the part from design to machining. The last image shows the black frame pieces I was machining last week and earlier this week assembled into the unusual canvass frames for our artist-customer. The texture looks great and I’m very interested to see what he does with these now...
Outside of the workshop there has been a lot of work at No.3 installing many of the pieces I helped work on at the end of last year. The three images below show different aspects of the same room in the building. You can see a variety of things from previous posts such as the pointed arches in the doors, the cherub carvings in the panels and the base pieces with the holes at the bottom of the units. It’s great to see it coming together, although I know I still have an awful lot of work to do on things for this room…
Lastly, this week I have started work on the very large sign for “Angel House” as No.3 will be known. Below you can see six photos related to this. The first shows the stack of Sapele that will be machined over the next week to make all the components for the sign. The rest of the images document the large cherub face being cut in slices and then glued up. This may need a light bit of fettling to blend each of the slices but I am very pleased with it so far. Next week I’ll cut the four wings that will surround the head and the ribbon that will go across it. I’m very much hoping it all comes together as I’ve prepared it within the software. Regardless I’m excited to have taken the design from an existing antique object and created something on a much bigger scale. Onward and upward…
Monkey Sign and Textured Wave Strips
I’ve been working on the computer this week to figure out how to make a very large dimensional sign and also setup files for the big CNC machine to cut out shelves for the guys in the workshop. In amongst this I did also manage to cut a couple of things. First a simple black and white sign for a bar. The logo I was given is shown in the first picture below, I brought this into the software I use (Vectric’s Aspire) , fitted vectors to the main outlines and then cleaned it up a bit manually. The cutting was a combination of a v-shaped tool to get the corner detail and a flat tool for the larger areas. The material was black Valchromat MDF with a white paint coat on its surface. As you can see from the second and third pictures the effect of this is striking when its done. This will now be, sealed, lacquered and go on the front of the BCM bar.
The only other machining I did this week was the texture pieces that are going to go on the wavy shaped frame I cut two weeks ago. These are also cut in Valchromat using a large ball-nosed tool to run round and create the gouged looking texture then cut-out afterwards to fit the other pieces of the frame. You can see these being cut in the three pictures below. There will be another mirrored set of these that will go on the other side that will be cut when I get back to the workshop next week.
Otherwise I did glue up a lot of blocks of Sapele this week that I will be using to cut all the components of the large (1600mm high) outdoor sign I mentioned at the start of this post, that is based on the four-wing cherub I prototyped a few weeks ago, hopefully that will start carving next week…
Large Egg & Dart, A Jig, Shelves and a Ceiling Panel
This week I’ve continued to do a fair amount of design and prototyping, next week will probably see a transition into more production mode and also a move to working full time on designing the Chimney Piece - although things do tend to change, so we’ll see…?
First up this week I made a couple of short lengths of Egg & Dart on the two different CNC’s to get a sense of timing for cutting, ultimately we need to make 170 metres of this design for the cornice in the ornate room we’re working on. The first image is the model partially cut on the small CNC, the second image is a deeper version I created, which looks better, cut on the large CNC. Suffice to say this is going to take a long time to make so we need to think carefully about optimising and scheduling it. The third image is a stair-jig I cut for Alan, the slightly grumpy master joiner who works downstairs. Apparently someone in the workshop had thrown his old jig into the wood burner, at least he claimed that, so I made him a new one. Nice clean and accurate.
Next up I become Ikea for a day and made a set of MDF shelves for my dad’s new digs. They had to be quite a specific size so there was not really an option to buy a set that fits. I also wanted a chance to test out the new CNC on the type of work it’ll mainly be used for. You can see the parts being cut on the big CNC in first image. They fitted nicely into an 8’ x 4’ sheet of 18mm MDF (how’s that for mixed units of measurement). The second image shows a test fit before the parts were painted. The third image shows the shelves undercoated, glued and screwed together. I’ll fill the screw holes, sand this back and then it’ll get a finish coat of paint on it next week. Although simple these turned out very nicely and all fitted together beautifully.
Finally this week I had to design and prototype a panel that can be used to go on the wide ceiling beams in the ornate “cherub” room we’re working on. I remixed a couple of the designs we’ve used for the client before to create a flying cherub for the corners and then a semi-symmetrical design for the middle of the panel. The idea with these is the raised and fielded panels (the backing piece) can be installed and then the carvings will be added afterwards. This will allow installation without waiting for the several weeks of carving I’ll need to do. To get the corner angels to fit over the fielded area of the panel I carved the back first, hollowing out a shape that matches the lowered area on the edges of the panels, this can be seen in the first picture. The material was then flipped and registered to carve the front of the corner angels and the larger centre design which can be seen in the second image. The last image shows a rough cut MDF panel (the dark bits are sanding sealer around the edges) with the carvings laid onto it roughly in position. This will get a bit of a sand, then be glued and painted to create a mock-up we can use to get design approval and check the fit. I’m pleased with how this looks and think the idea of making the carvings and panel separate makes sense both from a design and scheduling point of view. Once we finalise this I’ll be making 21 sets of carvings, so its good to get it right before we start full production.
