First I continued the middle body part, trying to solder the parts together that I made the week before. That was quite a challenge... As I wanted to have the two parts for the chest to be attached in a cross shape, I needed to find a way to keep them in that shape while soldering, with the bit to connect the two staying in place as well, and then get the solder flowing in the right place without everything shifting around again... I tried to secure everything with clay again, which worked ok, but of course the longer it takes the more the clay is going to burst and shift things around again. Also because it was hard to really line up the little bit that I used to join up the two parts and make it a tight fit. It was standing quite loose, causing the silver solder to easily flow around it without connecting with both sides. As it was so small and I needed the silver solder to flow all around it I couldn't really use anything to hold it. I just had to make many efforts before getting it right, and then when it finally was stuck together it had shifted around still and the parts were not crossing entirely in the middle... I'll leave it for another time for now...
Another challenge this week was drilling through tiny bits... I needed some one side ball joints, which meant that I would have to fill up the side where the screw went through with metal, enough to avoid it from bending out at the other side, but still not too thick to not being able to clamp the ball tightly... I cut off squares of 6 by 4 mm... and tried drilling a hole of 2mm in the centre... the main challenge was clamping it. I managed to clamp it between the wooden plates in the vice under the pillar drill, which made a deep dent into the wood, so only just about the spot that I had to drill through was still visible. It looked pretty ridiculous having this teeny tiny thing clamped tightly under this enormous machine...
Below some images of the rest of the work I got done this week. I used welding rod for the individual feathers for this design, of which I hammered most part flat. The flat part will have holes drilled through it for connecting them with a fanning mechanism and for connecting the wire that will extend the flexible part of the feathers. Or so is the plan at least... To be continued next week. The last week before a two week break in which I can't access the fabrication centre, so hopefully I can get enough done to have at least the wing and hopefully a little bit more to test animate over the break...
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten