Spherical . org Blogs

It's Great! There are few who could be more critical and discerning. Their observations mean a lot because, in one way or another, they've been there.

Just had the sincere pleasure of reading a colleague's blog post over at Under Nevada Skies, the blog of artist Julie Rodriguez Jones. The post is about our most recent and our very next large blown glass commissions and how she has watched us online over the months making the former—a glass table base that weighs 200+ lbs. composed of 560 separate orbs and spirals of colored blown glass supporting a 6 foot 10 inch diameter 3/4" thick glass top weighing 370 lbs. OOF!

Next, we'll move into the process of creating the blown glass planets and Sun. The planets are supported by curved, hollow carbon fiber arms; the longest being 3 feet (1m), so the orbs must be very light. Just as in the Celestial Winds Blown Glass and Carbon Fiber Mobiles that we make, that have arms as long as 20 feet (6m), saving every ounce of mass that is way out on the end is very important. You're probably asking why we choose to pay that mass penalty when plastic could be used instead. Answer is simple:

I made my own gear yesterday!!  I'm so proud of it I could just burst.

A little background - I'm building on orrery (model of the solar system) for the astronomy department of a college in San Mateo, CA.  We've built similar things, but of course, every new project requires new skills and stuff that we've never done before. For this piece, called Celestial Gears, it is going to be motorized with a computer driving the planets with correctly timed orbits. The whole piece is 6 feet in diameter.

While we were at the National Space Symposium, a next door exhibitor asked if we could put together some small awards for students. The catch was he didn't have much time. I came back to the studio and looked around for something that I had already in stock that would do well as awards, but I only had two or three of each appropriate thingie, and he needed 5 - 4 regular sized and one a bit larger.

I wanted to experiment with my sandblasting and deep carving on glass. My cast glass pieces are usually in the 3/8-1/2 inch thick range, with the colors swirling through the entire depth of the piece. This would make for some great carving, as some of the colors would be opened up, while others would remain untouched.

Since I was getting ready for a space conference, I decided to go with a spacey design. I had a section of glass that for all the world looks like boiling fire, so chose to carve a rocket ship taking off into the front of it. This would be just a display piece, as an example of the type of work we can do on counter tops, sinks, doors, etc.

Previous posts have focused on the rocket that is the center column for our orrery. The one pictured here doesn't have the bottom section with the fins, but our new one does. Now that the rocket has been carved and the holes bored into it to accept the drive tubes, it can be put aside for a bit and we move on to the next section - The arms.

The fins are finished! They were cut from solid cherry boards with my radial arm saw and trimmed up with my bandsaw. The blade on that could use some replacing.... Cherry is so hard that mostly the bandsaw blade just burns it while it's trying to cut. Funny, burned cherry wood smells exactly like popcorn. Now I'm hungry!

Anyways, the fins were roughed out with the saws, but then mostly hand carved to shape on a flat belt sander. I often use the end of the sander to do curves and ripples, so used that to get the curve on the underside of each fin to match each other.

It's finally stopped storming, so I can continue to work on building my rocket ship today. Why does it matter if it's storming? Some of my equipment (lathe, drill press among other stuff) is out on a covered deck. The covers keep them protected when it rains, but I'm not too good with my hands when it's cold and wet. I have very low blood pressure, so if my hands get cold, they don't work very well, and that's not something you want happening when you're working with a high speed drill press, or have a large gouge aiming at a huge piece of rapidly spinning wood on a lathe.

I can't tell you how well received they have been. They certainly are beautiful, if I do say so myself. One sold to a friend and client just this afternoon. It's the purple cone shaped one in the top row, center of the January 26th post. We'll wrap him up and package him carefully and send him off to his new home first of the week.

I got the rocket carved for the Orrery that we're making!!!! Yay!!! It was cold though, but not raining. You can see me all bundled up. I actually have three shirts on and two pairs of sweatpants, and gloves. I'm coated with sawdust, as is everything else. It gets in my hair, up my nose and under my contacts, but it's actually a lot of fun to get so messy and see something come out of nothing.