Craftsmen Work (Week of 2/9)
- vvaldezmelgar
- Feb 12
- 3 min read
Hello everyone! This week was very productive for the Sickles, I was able to (almost) finish them. There's some compilations with me finishing them up within the show but I'll get into that more later. Everything was pretty straight forward this week, so let's dive in!
Starting off on Monday, I decided to use the smaller PVC pipes due to the test blade being able to slide over easier on it than the larger ones. I also figured that it would be easier to just use string to connect the two PVCs as the 3d printer was busy and I really wanted to get these done before the end of the week as we had break all next week. I drilled two small holes into the sides of the pipes so I could try to connect them without the little hook I modeled in CAD. Trying to loop the string through the two holes was a whole mess on it's own as just getting the string into one hole took around 10 minutes and twisters. I could barely get one piece of the string through the second hole. So I just did one hole on each pipe and hot glued the rest of the string inside of the pipe to the inside walls so it wouldn't move nor fall out. After the handles were settled, I outline the blades onto the foam I planned on using for it. The cardboard was just too thin for the connectors between the blades and handles and I thought that these foam pieces would be fine. I got the foam shaped into squares so Tuesday I could cut out the sickles without having to fight the entire box of foam.
Speaking of Tuesday, that's exactly what I did on Tuesday. Cutting out the blades took a good amount of time due to the curve and the fact that the foam doesn't get along with the box cutter doing those curved movements. Mr.L suggested that I do a pizza-cutting method to get the basic shape of the sickles, which was a very helpful suggestion. After two periods, I was able to get the shape of the blades out. I gave it the inside of the blades it's more curved shape with an xacto knife but the outside of the blades I used the belt-sander to get a much more smooth shape. The 3d printer was also being used a bunched that day and I just used to resin printer to print out the PVC connectors has it was the only was to start making them without waiting a day longer. The next day, I was able to 3d print the bars that give the sickles their spin and test the resin printed connectors. This is were I ran into an issue with the foam, it was much thin then my model, so the connectors didn't work. This was fortunately, an easy fix as the 3d printer was mostly un-used that entire day so I was able to model and print out new connectors and bars the same day. I also sketched and model the design more my graduation cap, as I couldn't stay in shop for long due to me leaving around 7th period.
Thursday, I worked on getting the sickle blades to turn, which was mostly just me cutting off the end of the foam until it slipped through. Unfortunately, I cut too much off of one blade and it wouldn't stay still when I was just holding it. I just added more to the end of the foam with hot glue and I can paint over everything to make it look pretty. I also used the Belt-Sander again to give the blades a nice edge and curve to the top of the blades. I can't paint the blades in shop, as I did some testing with some spare foam and the spray-paint we have melts the foam, giving it tiny holes everywhere and just ruining the foam. I'm sure I have some foam safe paint at my house, so I'm just going to paint the blades there. All I have left to do for this is to just make the PVC pipes look nice and like wooden handles. The school is closed next week for our February break, so I hope everyone has a great week and see you all in two weeks!
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