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It’ll become something cool, trust me.
Pieces, pieces
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Tag Archives: Rolling Ball Sculpture
It’s a hit!!!
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THIS is what I was going for! Worth the effort!
Nephew’s Rolling Ball Sculpture
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Begun way, way, waaaay back in, uh, whatever month it was begun in – August? – I have *FINALLY* finished the sculpture that I constructed for my nephew. I generally try to stick with the “one” rule on “one-pic-a-day,” but the RBS stuff is always special, and I wanted to provide a couple of views of the finished piece so you could get a good idea of how it looks. Thusly, you get an extra pic today. Woot!
I had to tweak and futz with things, but it wasn’t all that bad, really. It was mostly making things sturdier, and then there was the creation of the extremely cool wood base that my dad made for it so that my nephew (who is five) wouldn’t accidentally damage it every time he picked it up to move it around. It turned out quite nicely considering the initial build time on it was only six hours! I’d like to do some others around this basic theme, and I think I may get Tina to throw down some of her awesome stained wood skills on future wood bases.
Yet another art project completed! Woohooo!
Woody wood wood, Part 3 – More than I hoped for
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Woah! Check ’em OUT! These humble pieces of timber started out as mere leftovers from dad’s scrap pile! Remember this? Don’t they look awesome now?!?!?!? Yes, they do! I was expecting just some straight cut stuff with rounded corners, and he’s gone and made stuff that, well, it looks really nice!
Man, now I have to get some decent rolling ball sculpture built to mount on them. Crap – dad’s making me look bad!
Woody wood wood, Part 2
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Dad is helping me out with some of the bases for a few rolling ball sculptures that I’ll be making. I really wasn’t expecting anything more than for him to cut them to a basic shape and then maybe run some sandpaper over the corners, but he’s already done more than that! He’s the king of woodworking, so naturally he can’t just give them a quick rubdown with 400 grit and call it done. No, these things will have routed edges! Nice, eh? He’s talking about staining them and everything now. They’re going to be pretty awesome!
Woody wood wood
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I was so exhausted Monday that I only took three pictures all day, and two of them were of this right here. I went up to mom and dad’s to say hello. Ended up hanging out with dad and we talked about some wood for some rolling ball sculpture projects I have going on (okay, they’ll be going on sometime kind of soon…I hope). So we went through his scraps and found some nice stuff. Should look when it’s done. For now, well, it’s just pieces of wood, I guess. I just couldn’t make anything else happen tonight, went home and almost immediately went to bed.
Smoothing Things Over
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And, following on yesterday’s post, here we have pop giving me a hand with the rolling ball sculpture project. I wanted to put a wood base underneath it so that it would be a little easier for the kids to pick up and move and possibly not quite so likely that they’d grab onto the frame itself and bend it. (I hope, anyway.) Plus, it eliminates the possibility of the bare wire scratching any tabletops.
I asked dad if he had any scrap, and my only desire was that it not be plywood, because the sandwiched nature of that wood looks unattractive when viewed from the edge, which this would show. Pop leads me over the the scrap box and says, “Well, here’s what I have – some pine…here’s some mahogany if that’ll work…” and he has real wood! I grabbed this kind of streaky-looking piece and said, “What’s this?”
“Oh, that’s some spalted maple a fella gave me. Most of it was too water damaged and I had to throw it out.”
It was awesome looking, but an extremely rough cut.
“Sure. I can plane it or maybe sand it.”
So here’s dad doing some sanding on the piece after we got it cut down to size. Turns out it’s going to need some planing, as it’s just too rough for the sander to do an adequate job, but it’s going to be awesome. Spalted maple has all these black lines in the grain where water got in and discolored it. It’s a very unique look. Can’t wait to show it to you guys when it’s finished!
Roll ’em
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Did I say I was finished with this? I think I did…the other day. Maybe? Silly me. I can never stop improving something. In this photo there’s one improvement that’s readily viewable, and that’s the little leg there at the lower right corner. You can even see I haven’t soldered it in place yet. I removed the simple spiraled curl that had previously been the terminus of the whole shebang, and I added a ramp to that last spiral and had it curve around to the lower right there. Nice, eh? Makes it a lot easier for little kids to get at the marbles and put them back up top for another trip.
Next up is to have dad help me make a nice wood base for it.
Another Senseless Machine – Sweet!
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I do so love these. Anyone who has been hanging around here for a while knows that I love these things. Rolling ball sculptures. They’re pointless. You put a marble at the top, and it rolls down to the bottom. It doesn’t accomplish anything useful, not in that “We have work to do! Money must be made! Mountains must be leveled! Paper must be shredded!” However, they’re just friggin’ fun as all get out.
I haven’t done a lot of work with these lately. Seems like RBS building and reading have taken a back seat recently. I afforded time for this one a few weeks ago, however, during the Masterpiece in a Day event, which, I just realized, I never did fully devote an entry to, so you’ve not seen this thing until now! My apologies. I’m sure you were all chomping at the bit.
Any rate, here it is! It looks a little different than it did on the day of the event. I spent the evening tweaking it. I recurved the legs so that they sweep in toward the base more. This makes it look a little more groovy, plus the base I’m going to make for it will be able to be cut smaller. I also fixed one major support issue. When I first built it the thing was very wobbly. After looking at it for a while and playing with it, I realized it would benefit from one support piece in a strategic place. I made one up and installed it. You can’t even really see it in this photo, but it reaches from the bottom of the first spiral down to the very beginning of the third spiral.
What really surprised me was just how much of a difference this made. I mean, I knew it would help, but had no idea how much! It stands about as solid as any frame of copper could possibly do, even better than I could have planned. I should have been an engineer, you know it? Friggin’ architect. Look at that thing!
Well, it’s base-makin’ time for this bad boy. Since I basically threw it together in six hours, and it’s missing a lot of the refinements of one of my usual pieces, this one is going straight to my 3-year-old nephew. He’ll think it’s cool, and I won’t lay awake at night wondering what someone will think of it.
What a Tool
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Doubtless you’ll be as breathless and excited over this one as I am. These three seemingly inoccuous blocks of aluminum have tremendous potential, at least they do for me. They’re tools to be used in the making of rolling ball sculpture. These were designed by the sculptor Matthew Gaulden, and constructed in conjunction with his machinist. These hold 1/8″ wire when building an RBS, and Matt says they cut down his construction time by 20%. Building these sorts of sculptures is very time-consuming, so any way to cut down some of that is welcome, particularly when it’s an annoying detail like getting track spacing consistent. Personally, I’d rather spend my time developing some new track element, like a lift that’s shaped like a ferris wheel or something. Track spacing? Not exactly my idea of ultimate creativity.
One side note here: They don’t make copper in 1/8″ diameter. These clamps are to be used with steel wire. This means they have to be welded isntead of soldered. Previously, everything I’ve done has been soldered copper. I have a crappy little welder with which I have cobbled together one or two things. This is effectively a move toward making some construction changes. I don’t know when you’re all going to see some results, but it occurred to me that sitting around thinking about how I didn’t know how to weld my sculptures was not getting me any closer to being able to weld. This, this is a step forward. Stay tuned here for details on how I manage to botch my welding in the future.