Tag: steel

bookmark_borderLarge Bodai

Posted on by Elliott Evans

I’ve made several sets of small warping pegs, called bodai in Japanese, in the past, and even made this full-size pair some time ago. The only problem with those round bases is that they are too light. Subsequently, I made this new pair of bases for those bodai. Each base is weighted with 6 5-pound blocks of steel.

The benefit of these is that they can be placed an arbitrary distance apart, even if no tables or other clamping surfaces are available. If you need a 12-foot warp, just place these 12 feet apart and warp away. they can also be used as fixed points for kute-uchi loop-braiding if that’s more to your liking.

The new bases are made of pine. The bases are 7.75″ square and 6″ tall. Given the 0.75″ thickness of the lumber, that leaves a nice size void inside for the steel blocks, which are 3″x6″x1″ each. The boxes are held together with screws, which is not very attractive, but I wanted to be able to retrieve the blocks later if I need them for something else.

bookmark_borderLantern Hooks

Posted on by Elliott Evans

I made these back in the fall of 2023, but was not able to finish painting them until Spring, and wasn’t able to try them out until Pennsic (and get photos), so here we are. These are metal hooks meant to hang the lanterns I made a four years ago from the camp walls I made six or so years ago. The problem is that the canvas roofs of the pavilions hang down over the walls for a fair distance. The past couple of years, I have tied twine to the ring at the top of each lantern, then hung the twine from the metal frame of the pavilion. The meant that the lanterns were hanging against the walls, which I found to be less that optimal. The hooks clip onto the tops of the walls, hang down to below the bottom edge of the canvas, and then extend far enough so that the lanterns hang straight.

The basic shape of the lantern hook
Clipped to the wall and hung with a lantern
Pull down the canvas to complete installation

I made these by buying 1/2″x1/8″ welding steel bars from the hardware store, then bending each bar to shape using metal bending jaws in my bench vise. because of the length of the material, I had to bend the bars off center so that they would not hit the beam of the vise. This caused racking in the vise, so I tried to bend two bars at once to balance things out. This bent the beam on my light duty vise so that it is now useless, It’s OK, that was a good excuse to buy a heavy duty vise to replace it.

I also tried using aluminum bar to make it easier to bend, but the aluminum does not stand up to sharp bends as well and sometimes just breaks. I painted the steel bars black to protect them from rusting (I hope).

These stayed up for 2 weeks at Pennsic without incident, and the lanterns didn’t fall off even in the severe rain storms that we had. Success! They joined the lanterns in the 6 lantern storage box that I built 4 years ago.

bookmark_borderRichard Serra’s “Carnegie”

Posted on by Elliott Evans

Last week, I read in the news of the death of Richard Serra, the sculptor who created the steel slab artwork “Carnegie” that is out in front of the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh’s Oakland neighborhood. I’ve been contemplating this sculpture for decades now, so I cannot deny that it and its creator have had some influence on my life.

Photo courtesy of carnegieart.org

Personally, I think Serra’s work in general is brimming with impact. It not only invites interaction, but often demands your involvement. Whether as a pillar, wall, or passage; his art intrudes physically into your life, and can be circumnavigated, entered, and traversed.

From the outside, “Carnegie” appears to support the sky, treelike. It invites you to enter and collaborate with it from the inside. You can gaze upward at the now distant sky, clap to experience its echoing hollowness, and sing to attempt to discover its resonances.

Farewell, Richard Serra.