Metal Shop

Picture from early last week. I worked in 1/3 scale before beefing it up to full scale.

Today was the first day in metal shop. Since I'm in group A, I'll be in shop from 7am to 2:30pm every day this week. Then next week, I'm in shop from 2:30 to 10pm. We spent the first few hours going over the tools and basics for working with steel: Cutting, bending, rolling machines. Metal lathes (which no one will be using). Metal files and rasps. Grinding and sanding.

And finally, MIG & TIG welding. MIG is soooo much easier, but doesn't look as good on 90 degree welds, of course. If I'm super lucky, I'll only be doing 2, maybe 3 straight welds. I'm hoping to get some help from Hee (That's our shop helper's name, pronounced like 'he.' I know, confusing.) on the four 90 degree welds I have. Maybe I'll do the two that aren't as visible. It would be nice to say that I built the chair completely on my own, but I would rather have a nicer looking chair.

I wasn't expecting to get into the metal shop and be some sort of welding prodigy (far from it). And I know that welding is a craft and it can be studied for years and never fully mastered. I'm just hoping that the professors aren't disappointed if I ask Hee to do a few of my welds.

Here's my first and only straight weld from today:



It has a few problems: I missed some spots, which created air pockets that would have to be filled in again (i.e. welded, grinded, and sanded again) Also, I sanded it down too far so that it bows in a little. You can't really tell in the picture, but in person, it's pretty obvious. I'm happy with how it turned out, though, as it is my first welding experience.

The whole process of welding is kind of scary. If you hold it wrong, you could electrocute yourself. If you don't have a working mask, you could temporarily blind yourself. Touch anything too early and you could burn yourself. There are just a whole mess of ways in which to hurt myself, and I'm not the most graceful of people. In fact, I consider myself fairly clumsy, so my goal is to not lose fingers, my eyesight, or any years off my life in this studio.

I'll just be glad when the whole thing is welded up and I can just say, "Alright, go and powder coat it!" We get to powder coat our chairs if we so choose (I so choose), in either black matte or glossy white. There is also a possibility of a color. If they have red, I'm almost certain I will do that. Possibly if they have green. Black is slimming, so I may have to go with that as I'm using the fat 25mm tube. But that's a whole 2 weeks away. I have to get past the rest of this first.

All in all, I have a newfound respect for metal workers and their craft. The dexterity, timing, and total lack of self-preservation needed to do what they do is amazing.

I also respect them for their ability to walk around permanently looking like this:



I washed my hands for a good 10 minutes (taking off some skin in the process) and my hands are still a dull shade of gray.

I'm still not certain whether I want to show pictures of my final plans on here before I show pictures of my final chair. I'll think about it.

Oh, and to answer Stacey's question about the students at DIS: There are 76 of us from 13 countries and 18 universities. About half of the students are from Pratt University. Only three of the students here are actually from Kansas State University. Several spots a year are held for us as we have a history with DIS.