Descending Ashtray

While Brandy was out and about for a mental break, Ethan and I had our first Lego night together!

Although this is a very rough version of the idea, the Technic Legos helped me work out some of the mechanical problems of a larger wood sculpture that I have been working on. The basics of it are that by turning the small wheel (bottom right) the four blades will open simultaneously. Thus creating an adjustable opening (at the top) to allow light to enter into the center of the piece, similar to an aperture in a camera.

Well, I have some more exciting news to announce, Brandy and I engaged. We went for a walk in Brown’s Woods yesterday, with Ethan. It was a beautiful day and the sun was shining. I asked her the big question and gave her this wooden ring and box that I made. She was so happy!

I drilled out the pieces for my sculpture in progress last night. Six of the 139 pieces split or otherwise shattered while I was drilling them, leaving 133 pieces, and a lot of sanding to do. The Forstner bit did a good job, but cherry burns so easily; a lot of the inside of the holes in the cherry wood will need a fair amount of sanding. Wish I had an oscillating spindle sander. Perhaps I will get one for my birthday!

I milled up stock today for the sculpture I described a few days ago. The idea is to assemble same-sized pieces of many different kinds of wood (and copper) to create the look of a building that has fallen into disrepair and been rebuilt several times.

I began with a bunch of scrap I had laying around (I am a major wood packrat): small pieces of Doug Fir, Poplar, Cherry, Black Walnut, Maple, Alder, Aromatic Cedar … Some were thick enough that I ended up re-sawing them on the bandsaw before I sent them through the planer.

Because I was using up some scrap, there were a few short pieces I tried to plane, in the neighborhood of 5-6 inches long. One piece of poplar shattered inside the planer, I think because it was not long enough to be engaged by both feed rollers at the same time. No harm done, but it made a terrible noise! So, word to the wise: only plane pieces longer than 6 inches.

After more planing, I cut the pieces to width and length on the table saw, ending up with a pile of 139 pieces of wood 2 3/8-in. square. Amazing how the pile shrunk from the first photo! There goes another bag of sawdust!

I am already liking how they look all together. Tomorrow night I will drill a 1 1/2-in. hole in each one.

I had an idea for a sculpture the other day, and started drawing something out today to get an idea what it might look like. Not sure how/if I’m going to finish this drawing, or just move right to the sculpture. Probably the answer depends on the weather.

I have not switched to drawing on parchment paper; I had to do some photoshopping to get the faint .5 mm pencil lines to show at this low resolution.

The idea is that I will make lots of square/circle pieces with different woods, and assemble them together in a somewhat haphazard way to resemble a pieced-together building. Something that has fallen into disrepair, then had repairs made with lots of strange materials. I am thinking walnut, cherry, doug fir, alder, copper and whatever else I find lying around the shop. Should be interesting.