Wednesday, 14 December 2011

Construction

Next stage is to put the two pieces together. For this stage i faced a problem. i had one curved surface and i was connecting it to one flat surface. Well this is where sanding comes into its own again. As the top half of the product curves over 2 planes (like a ball) i would have to try and replicate this same indentation on the top face of the handle so allowing a larger contact area and hopefully a smaller gap when finished. 30 minutes of sanding later it was time to join the two. I decided to use a dowel joint, this would give me the stability without being an over complicated joint. This did however mean some drilling, precise measurements, luck and pure guess work.
After finding the centre of the handle and marking two points that were not too close to the edge, two holes were drilled. The holes were drilled at an angle down the handle as the handle curves and i didn't want to drill through the handle and out the side. Screws were placed in the holes and then the handle pressed against the pre drawn alignment on the top piece. This left slight impressions for the corresponding holes on the other piece. Again the holes had to be drilled at the same angle as the holes in the handle so the dowel rods that would be inserted would allow the two surfaces to meet. (this was the guesswork bit) Once drilled 6mm dowel was glued in the handle and checked against the top piece. Unfortunately there was a rather large gap (because of the guess work  ) between the two pieces. To solve this i re drilled one hole at a slightly steeper angle, this solved the problem. glue was then placed on the other holes, the two pieces mated and finaly pressed together in a vice. Modelling foam was used to minimise damage to the wood model.

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