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Artist in Residence
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AUGUST JOURNAL
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Thursday, August 3 - Wednesday, August 9, 2006
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On Thursday I finished welding all the joints from inside the piece, and started a new project. |
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A wedding cake! I love cake, and offered to make a friend her wedding cake as a gift. So the Paine project went on hold for two days of baking, torting, filling, and frosting a rum-soaked, raspberry-filled butter cake. |
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I didn’t get a picture of the cake with the happy couple, but you can see the top two layers of the cake packed in a box ready to go to Milwaukee in our car trunk lined with dry ice.
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Back in the shop I started the next phase of work, refining the surface. It involves grinding, sanding and filing, and is quite loud and messy, but it is necessary.
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Here you can see the difference between the unground surface on the left and the roughly ground surface on the right. The grinding flattens out the blobs of material left after welding. This is not a final finish, just one step in refining the surface. |
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These images show the ground areas reflecting light, and the lower unground sections. |
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I use electric grinders with silicon carbide grinding disks. You can see in the image on the left a new disk and one that I used for about an hour. The process leaves a thick coat of fine sharp bronze slivers on everything in the studio including myself, and appropriate protective gear is important. I wear gloves, long-sleeved shirts and long pants, an apron, earplugs, earmuffs, a respirator, safety glasses, and a face shield. |
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I have been working with the piece on the table. It is easier for me to move and work around rather than having it lying on the ground or sitting upright. I have finished all the rough grinding, next step-sanding! |
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Thursday, August 10-Wednesday, August 16, 2006
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Last week I finished the rough grinding. The next step in finishing would be sanding, but I decided to work on the foot before starting that. Because of the way I broke the outside profile into sections to bend the bronze, the final part of the foot was not constructed with the whole of the vessel and must be added.
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To begin the foot, I started at the very bottom, making two semi-circles conforming to the diameter of the bottom of the foot and welded them together. Bending circles is hard - breaking the form into pieces makes it easier. After welding the circle together, I marked it into 36 segments indicating where the sides of the foot would be added. |
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As in constructing the whole vessel, I began adding the sides of the foot by welding two together to establish the outside profile, and adding a ring at the top. |
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Adding the 36 side sections that define the form. |
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Adding one band of horizontal sections. The ring at the top is temporary, used to help place the vertical sections. This foot, once finished, will be welded directly onto the piece and the temporary ring will be removed. |
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On Saturday, August 12 my family and I left for a long-planned visit to my parents who now live in Western Colorado. Because I did not get much work done on the project, I will now subject you to vacation photos!
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My husband Bill and daughter Wren in the lovely historic town of Ouray, Colorado. |
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A view from along the “Million Dollar Highway” connecting the mining towns of Ouray and Silverton. |
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Looking out the window from my parent’s home near Hotchkiss. Note the artistic scene portraying a (non-functional) windmill, water tank, and the profile of horse cut from sheet metal. Water rights are hotly contested in this arid region, and my father has a tremendous sense of humor when it comes to teasing people. He also has a wonderful metal working shop and makes wrought iron fixtures, hardware, and decorative pieces; many of which grace my parent’s home.
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Wren “assisting” my mother, an accomplished gardener, by plucking all the petals off her California Poppies.
Till next week! |
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Thursday, August 17-Wednesday, August 23, 2006
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This week I continued the finishing process and spent two days sanding. The rough grinding I did a few weeks ago removed large areas of material, sanding creates a more finished appearance.
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You can see the difference between the rough ground surface (above) and the sanded surface (below). I am using an 80 grit flap wheel to sand the entire outer surface of the vessel. |
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These images show the surface before and after sanding. The sanding makes a cleaner, softer, more uniform surface, but it is not the end of the finishing process. You can still see tiny round bits of bronze stuck to the inside of the round material. This will also have to be removed; more on that later. |
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The entire piece sanded and me covered with bronze dust. |
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After sanding, it was a treat to finish fabricating the foot. I put the outside profile of the foot together last week, but needed to make the bottom. I used ½” bronze for the bottom of the foot, slightly thicker than the 3/8” I have been using in the rest of the piece. This will give the base a bit more weight and stability. |
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I designed the bottom of the foot with an interior circle and 32 radiating elements that will line up with the vertical lines of the piece. |
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Once I welded in the radiating pieces, I began welding in the grid. |
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After welding both front and backsides, the base was roughly ground. |
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After sanding, the base was welded to the exterior form I fabricated last week. |
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The assembled and sanded foot ready to be attached to the vessel. |
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After maneuvering the foot into position and checking to make sure it was level, I welded it on. It weighed about 60 pounds. |
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The foot welded in place! |
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What’s next? More finishing! I usually file the inside edges of the welded joints by hand to remove those small round blobs of welded material called slag. But this piece is so big that I recognized I needed help, and we bought one last new tool for the job, an air compressor to power a die grinder to grind the inside edges of the joints. I will work on that next week. |
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Thursday, August 24-Wednesday, August 31, 2006
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This week I worked on more finishing. Typically, I file each weld by hand after the grinding and sanding, but I realized there was too much work for hand filing and purchased a new air compressor to help facilitate this part of the process.
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These images illustrate why this step is necessary. The welds are not all consistent or neat, and the slag, or melted bronze that splatters during the welding process, leaves unwanted blobs of metal stuck all over. |
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This shows the difference grinding the joints can make. |
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The die grinder is a simple tool powered by compressed air. I use interchangeable carbon steel bits or burrs to grind the inside of the joints where an angle grinder cannot fit. |
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Another image showing the ground joints on the left and the unground joints on the right. |
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I worked on all the joints that were easy to see while the piece was still upside down from bottom to top. |
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After I finished all those joints, I flipped the piece over and worked on the joints while the piece was right side up. |
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I am still not quite done, I have about a days worth of grinding left to do. When I finish that, most of the preliminary finishing work will be done, and I can begin fabricating mounts for the flowers. |
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Continue to September Journal |
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