This week’s assignment consist of repetition: Fabricating “5 of the same”. The ideation process started with a quick benchmark research of simple projects for beginners in the treatment of wood, because since the assignment was announced in the class I knew I wanted to work with that material. I also knew I wanted to create something useful and that I could hopefully give away to my friends.
Inspiration
I decided to imitate a necklace holder that I found as part of my research. The shape was challenging enough for me to explore different tools and procedures in the shop. I started by drawing and sketching measures, I grabbed some discarded wood from the shop and I started building my first prototype that looked like the picture in the right. The process of prototyping allowed me to create my first “Pancake” with spare material instead of using recently bought wood.
Ideation and measures
Since I have already figured out which machines and tools to use in order to achieve the desired shape, I went ahead and bought wood (Pine) and started marking them with pencil. The vertical piece was challenging since I had to generate 45 degree slots in the sides. For this piece I decided to use the band saw with the help of the angle guide in 45 degrees and I had to incorporate an extra piece of wood in order to be able to achieve the desired degrees (due to the short length of my piece).
Vertical piece with slots
The base was also challenging, specially because I had to create a groove that would allow the vertical piece to stay semi-straight, therefore I had to be very careful with the size and the depth of it. I decided to use the miter saw because the width of the blade, repeated a series of times and moving the wooden piece would allow me to generate the groove. I had to use some guides for the wood to stay in place and also to be able to work with more safety.
Horizontal piece
The last step was sanding, I decided to leave the natural color of the pine therefore the finish of my pieces had to be really good since I couldn’t cover any mistake with paint. Sanding the groove in my base pieces was a challenge and I has to find a way of doing it, also the slots in the vertical pieces were challenging since they had to be smooth enough for a necklace to fit in them.
The most interesting finding of this project was that no matter how good I tried to measure my pieces while cutting and sanding them, at the end they are all different and it was very difficult to try to have consistency among them.
Imperfection and different sizes
Vertical pieces
Base pieces
The final result are five pine necklace holders that are not even close to being perfect, however some of my friends will receive a nice and imperfect gift.
Final result: Five imperfect necklace holders