Making it look hand made

There is a certain magic about hand made objects that is very special. They just look better than what a machine can do. That being said, it is a fact that machines make my job so much easier and faster. But I don't want to compromise my style. The solution is to use the high tech machines to help and then add in the hand made look as we finish things off.

The current balloon project is a good example. The gondola was all hand made. There was no other practical way. But the new four axis Multicam CNC router carved the balloon in a fraction of the time than I could have ever dreamed doing it by hand. The resulting balloon was perfect. I needed to fix that. I used the machine one last time to carve the nose cones for the balloon. I glued on the pieces and it was ready for sculpting.

Then I spent a couple of hours laying on the sculpting epoxy by hand. I carefully added the details needed. No matter how careful and precise I was the result looked hand made. In doing so a certain charm and magic resulted. No machine could do that.

The last step was to hand paint (with a small brush) the thick heavy bodied primer. It added a subtle texture over the smooth machined parts, making it hard to tell the mechanical and hand made parts apart. Hand painting and glazing will complete the illusion.

The balloon is starting to look pretty cool at this point. It will only get better as we start in on the color in the next week. Stay tuned...

-grampa dan

Floating away in a hot air balloon

With the set up and testing of the new CNC MultiCam router out of the way it was time to chuck up the first real project and give the machine a whirl. The project was the hot air balloon for the display piece in my office. I showed the design about a week ago. The block of Precision Board was massive and heavy, measuring 14 inches by 14 inches by 20 inches. I designed the complex file for the router and then we carefully checked everything twice over. This was all new to everyone present. Then I pressed the button to set everything in motion. It was pure magic as the lathe spun and the machine started to carve. First it carved the corners off the block to make a cylinder and then in four passes a quilted balloon was revealed in the center.

Once the machine had done it's thing, it was time to start in on the hand built portions once more. I squared up the ends and drilled a hole to mount the cockpit that would hang below.

In the next days I'll fashion a nose and tail cone and a few more details before beginning the paint job to finish everything off.  Stay tuned...

 -grampa dan

WHAT IF?

Today was a day of WHAT IFS! Shawn Kirsch and Craig Sior had worked out all the hickups and kinks on the MultiCam fourth axis machine and it was time to start figuring out the things that were now possible. We started with a basic barrel shape. A raised and bevelled letter A was added for good measure.

While this file was proved on the machine someone asked for a bent branch with textured bark. It took some figuring out how to make it happen but by using a mesh created in EnRoute and then merging it to the relief and then adding healthy texture from the TEXTURE MAGIC collection we were able to achieve it - OR NOT. Each time a successful file was sent to the router everyone would rush from my office to see the MAGIC happen the first time on the machine. As the file was slowly revealed by the router a high five would be the celebration and a new idea, even wilder and more complex than the last, was immediately brought forward to raise the bar once more.

Then Mark Hurt asked the question whether we could fabricate a column with Rapid Texture wrapped around it... matching perfectly on the join line and on each end so they could be stacked. It took a little head scratching but within a short time the file was ready to test on the MultiCam. Huge grins and high fives were again the order of the day as this test was successful.

With the setting up and numerous tests now complete our minds race to the future. Each step fuels wonderful ideas of the next step and the step after that. A whole new world of possibilities suddenly opens up.

What is possible?

Anything we can imagine!

-grampa dan