Bruce, Imogen, and me

If you do not know him, Bruce Beasley is an internationally exhibited sculptor who lives in Oakland. The picture shows him standing by one of his smaller bronze sculptures. Awhile ago I heard him speak at a retrospective exhibit at the art museum in Oakland.

He wandered through the exhibit which was arranged more or less chronologically talking about what he was thinking when he made various pieces. The amazing thing I discovered was we think alike about the creative process; how a stray thought or image comes to awareness, gets developed, changed, and finally manifested. How the resulting piece of sculpture triggers others that refine, develop, and take the original impulse into new directions.

Now to Imogen Heap, a more or less pop singer and music creator from the UK. I like her voice and, even more, I like the way she creates most of the accompaniment by playing bits and pieces on a piano and using sampling to create a larger sound.

Last week I came across her web site filled with video blogs. In this vblog she rambles on about a song on an album she is creating and talks in almost exactly the same way about creating music as the way I think about sculpture. I know nothing about music but there was instant communication about the creative process. I felt that if I were working in music that I would be working in exactly the same way that she does.

Does this pretty random sample of three make a trend?

Pouring again

What a relief to get back to casting and art! The first photo shows three castings right out of the furnace. One is a shallow round bowl and the other two are pieces of art. To be more precise, a blob and a piece of art. I also cast a rectangular bowl which is not in this photo. The blob in the middle actually came out the way I designed it but now, I can not imagine why I thought it was any good! The nice thing about aluminum is you can always melt down and recycle your failures.



The next photo shows the rectangular bowl in the mill. I like the contrast of highly machined surfaces with the rough surface that results from sand casting. Those long lines at the bottom of the bowl are caused by the end mill and are variations of, perhaps, several millionths of an inch. You can not feel them - the bottom is perfectly smooth to the touch.

The last photo shows the finished rectangular bowl and the bottom of the round bowl. There is a tremendous joy in using all the machines; saw, lathe, mill, grinder, and wire brush and having them all work in a harmonious way to make the pieces that I envisioned.

Weldors, machinists, and diversity - Part 2

One problem with horizontal band saws is the vise that holds pieces of metal that are being cut. It does not work well and it only holds pieces of metal that are at least 4 or 5 inches long. What do you do when you want to cut a piece that is only 2 or 3 inches long?

Machinists have three solutions. One is a kind of vise jaw extender. It sits inside the vise, but is longer and extends right out to where the saw cuts. The second is to use milling clamps, which all machinists with a mill have on hand. You have to drill and tap holes in the table of your saw and then you can bolt the clamps down to hold the metal you want to cut in place. The third is a pretty neat idea which involves putting a smaller vise inside the larger vise in such a way that the small vise sticks out to where the saw cuts. The photo shows the small vise holding an odd shaped aluminum casting. The jaw of the saw vise itself is on the Left side of the small vise.


The weldor's solution was to take a piece of angle, drill a couple of holes through the angle into the bandsaw base to make a small shelf that sticks out. Then he just used a Vice-Grip 'C' clamp to hold the small piece of metal. This probably took ten minutes.

The weldor may have thought of this solution because weldors have lots of these clamps in their shop - it is the most used method of holding pieces of metal together to be welded or ground. On the other hand, machinists do not have these kind of clamps in their shop. Even if they did I think they would be uncomfortable with the lack of elegance. These clamps do not hold as well as a machinists vise or milling clamps which are designed to exert thousands of pounds of force. Of course the Vice-Grips hold just fine for the bandsaw but I that might well be irrelevant to a machinist.

I was explaining this to my wise wife who told me there is a lot of research on how people form mental models, and how difficult it is to think 'outside the box.' It is one of the strengths of diversity she said.

Maybe I should join a jewelers forum, and an auto body forum, and a sheet metal forum, and ...

Weldors and machinists - Part 1

I have mainly learned everything about metal work from trial and error, and the web. I am a member of a welding site, machining site, and horizontal band saw site. When you work in metal you need to cut it. For several years I used a chop saw which uses a big, thin, movable grinding wheel that grinds through the metal. Works just fine but it throws metal sparks, dust, and grit everywhere. Worse, it is not very precise -- especially when cutting angles that have to fit together.


A nicer way to cut metal is with a horizontal band saw which is quiet, much more accurate, and makes very little mess. They come in two flavors; small, really cheap, and poorly made or big and expensive. I did my research by lurking on the horizontal saw site which is devoted to methods to make poorly made saws work well and to improve them.

This is rambling background coming to the point that both welders and machinists use band saws. However their approaches to modifying and improving their band saws could not be more different.

Welders are to the point; make something that works and be done with it. It may be because many of the welding site members are professional weldors, and in many cases, time is money.
Oddly enough, their solutions, usually involve welding!

You might think this unremarkable, however machinists rarely think of welding anything! If they have to put two things together they mill them so they fit within a few thousandths of an inch, drill precise holes and tap them so they can be screwed or bolted together. Machining is a hobby for almost all the site members and many are retired. Designing, machining, and assembling an elegant modification that takes hours or even days strikes them as the natural way to do things.

That is why I was struck by a welder's elegant, simple solution to the problem of holding pieces of metal that are too small for the band saw vise. The machinists have at least three different solutions to this problem but none of them of come close to the weldor's solution. (to be continued)

Tap Troubles

I am making another chandelier consisting of two pieces of fabricated steel that are joined together by four machine screws into blind holes . Since the screw holes had to line up I clamped the two fabbed pieces together, drilled the four holes through both the first piece of metal into the second piece of metal. Then I tapped the blind holes, drilled a slightly large hole in the first piece of metal, and screwed them together. All the holes were aligned just the way I had in mind.

Then I decided I was unhappy with the way the two pieces of metal were lined up. I've commented in an earlier post that one can get away with a lot in art, but less so with design. These pieces of steel were definitely design. Why did I notice the misalignment now and not before I did the fabrication? The truth is that I did notice but I was so focused on getting the piece done I just ignored the flaw thinking it was not that bad.

A half hour of cutting apart, grinding, and welding and I was again ready to join the two pieces. Two holes lined up, two did not. No problem, the welder was right at hand, so I welded the two holes shut, ground them flat, and remarked the new holes in their slightly different location.

In the back of my mind I remembered reading somewhere that weld material was a lot harder than mild steel. The first clue about this memory came when I drilled the new holes and noticed it took longer. The next clue was when I broke a tap in the first hole. Maybe the tap was worn somehow as it was part of a lot of old taps I had purchased at a closed machine shop? No, the final clue was when I broke a second tap in the second hole.

A definition of insanity I read once was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. I do this all the time on computers. Type something, it does not work. Maybe I miskeyed it, so I type it again. But I only do it twice. My typing is not that bad, and two taps in a row could not be bad either.

I am learning machining by experience. This was a pretty cheap lesson with a price of two taps and an hour or so of rework. Learning how to do it right the first time is a harder lesson to learn.

Sand casting emotions

I am trying to sort out my thoughts about this video on Youtube. First there is amazement because he is doing something in 1 minute and 12 seconds that takes me well over an hour. Take a look, he is filling a mold with green sand, preparing a part that will be cast in the foundry. There is an economy of motion that comes from doing the same thing a zillion times. There is a big stack of molds and when he finishes this one, he will do the next, and the next, and the next.

The filled mold he tosses around weighs 50 to 60 pounds yet he is really hustling. Maybe for the camera but more likely because he gets paid by the piece.

If you do not know any better it looks easy. However if the sand is not just right it falls out or compresses too much. If the sprue is not inserted just right then loose sand winds up in the wrong place and ruins the final piece. When he plonks the final mold down at the end the cavity does not collapse because he has done this so many times the acceptable force is embedded in his muscles.

Sixty times faster than I can do it, sixty times. True, he has a machine to compress the sand, and an air blower for the loose sand whereas I do everything manually. True, everything is set up for efficiency; sand in an overhead compartment so he does not have to shovel it into the mold and the riddle and spruing tool are at hand. This is part of the explanation - but still - the years of repetition and experience are the real difference.

I have done that kind of manual labor in my life but it was a long time ago and I was never as skilled at that job as he is at his. I look at him with admiration and envy although I know he would switch jobs with me in an instant. At the end he looks at the camera as if to say, 'You got that bud'? I have to reply, 'No, I don't think I do and I don't think I ever will.'

75% off

In the never ending project to clean up my shop I completed the cabinets I was building under my workbench. I got a bunch of magnetic catches from eBay. Now what to use for handles? They are pretty expensive and I did not want to take the time to make some.

Thenmy wife and I were in a hardware store and passed a bin filled with cabinet hardware. $2.00 each but 75% off! That is a perfect price for a shop.