Sometimes we try things that should work better in principal (or look better in principal) and realize that what we had figured out intuitively worked best. This has been my case over the last two days where I tried a great number of approaches to adapt the "lateral detail" I made last Friday in the shop.
Last week I took two steel angles which fit two tire rims and plug welded them together. I didn't worry about polishing them but was satisfied in how they worked. This weekend/ two days in the shop, I considered a number of recommendations to make the detail better-- including how one angle could meet a flat bar in order to reduce the whole detail to the same thickness of metal AND taking away the plug weld as well as an intricate folding of flat metal in L-form into the final piece.
My final verdict is that what I had initially is best-- just taken to a metal grinder. If I only had to make one and then a factory made all the rest I could continue on-- but I have to make many of them and return my focus back to the railing. So... I am determining that after 3 jigs, much consultation with Mark (metal shop consultant) and trips to Home Depot to get specialty rounded angle that the initial detail I had was best.
As such, I am returning to what I had and adjoining all the rims tonight and into tomorrow morning. I want to degrease the tires and then paint them black since I find the sculptural effect most powerful as a silouette (versus when my camera used the flash to capture the image) and I sanded down one of the red bike fork legs today which should draw attention back up.
In terms of railing- I acquired 1.5 diamter clear threaded tubing yesterday-- but I am beginning to see some promise if I can use foamy pipe insulation which also comes with V-pieces and would work well massaged over joints where rims meet. Any ideas?
No comments:
Post a Comment