Reflection

Overall, I am satisfied with my chosen object relating to architecture and my interdisciplinary skin. This two projects’ processes are tough and enjoyable, especially for the second project, we meet the problem on metal shaping and solve it and experiment together. This process shows the importance of the communication for project, everybody improved through the conversation and learn something from others. After that, you take your time to absorb the ideas and experience from other people and develop your own working system.

It was my first time to shape aluminium skin on my life, the experience is wonderful. I want to say this is not a process to make a project, but actually a period to understand one material. The metal, the aluminium is a really strange material, it will shrink, stretch, deform, and crinkle. Sometimes you need to hit hard to get the shape, but sometimes you have to tap gently to refine and smooth the skin. 

My grandpa taught me wood carving few years ago, I quite familiar with wood, especially the box wood. Compare wood carving and metal shaping, in my opinion, wood is more like human body, it is solid, strong , like mountain and earth; aluminium is like cloth and silk, more light and dynamic, sometimes unstable. But for any material, like timber, metal, glass, ceramic, clay, they have their own characteristics and we need long time to understand them. 

As an architect, materiality is the key element to our architecture. Without material, architecture will no more exist. You may say the space can be empty, but actually air also is the material, just invisible, but still give different feelings, warm or cold. On Peter Zumthor’s  <atmosphere>, he said materiality will change the atmosphere, in same space, timber will warm you and steel would make you feel chilled.  Although different materials have different quality, but for us , we can treat them gently, explore their potential, use them differently to refine our architecture detail and space quality. 

Now , ETH  erects sandstone vault at Venice Biennale, it is a large vault, same like our project, it has template as a base and use stone and cement as the skin, it is quite interesting to see different materials on one process, this can be a case to study. 

                                           the work comprises 399 individually cut stones, unreinforced and without mortar image © ETH zürich

                                           the work comprises 399 individually cut stones, unreinforced and without mortar image © ETH zürich

Shovel Tutorial

This shovel is different from my first object the glue bottle, but still can be found some similarity between them. Both of them have evident symmetry and beautiful curved line shape. However, the shovel has more curved surface and more complex. Especially the central curve at the end of the shovel blade, it has a slight gradient and the bottom will be narrower than top curve. In this tutorial, some basic techniques and special method will help you to make the shovel skin and solve some of your questions. Also some tips are written on the tutorial, this tips and reflections are drawn from my mistakes and experience that I want to share with you.

 

Tutorial has 3 parts and each parts has few steps and tips to show you how to make the skin.

Part1: Measurement and Cutting

Step 01:

Prepare a 1.6 mm metal sheet*, and then marked the major elements and points on the metal*, you can use my drawing as a reference, or you can just reference to your plywood model. 

Tip 1: All metal sheet can be purchased on the Dalsteel Metals shop. We can get UNSW student discount from that shop. 1.6 mm 5005 aluminium sheets are recommended on this project. You can drive to their shop to buy metal with your mate together to save the delivery fee. 

Tip 2: Pencil or marker are both fine to draw the reference line, I prefer to use black marker pen to draw the line which is easily recognised and is good for accurate cut.

Step 02:

On this project, only large cutting machine (guillotine) will be used. It is primarily designed to cut sheet metals with fine and straight finish. Put your metal on the guillotine, slide your work under the guard and line up your reference line with the bottom blade*. When you have your work in the correct position you need to press down on it so it cannot move then push down on the foot pedal to complete the cut.

Tip 3: Guillotine is very easy and safe machine to use. Before you cut the metal, make sure the reference line is exactly line up with the bottom blade, you can slowly adjust your work with patience. 

Tip 4: You can get your toes or your friends crushed under the foot pedal. So you must be aware of those around you and before you make your cut make sure that nobody have their foot in the area where the pedal crashes into the floor.

Part2: Bending and shaping

Step 03:

Use the Pan Brake machine to bend the metal. Pan brake is a machine that will bend or fold your metal surface to different angles. In our project, we have three vertical line need to be bend to different angle. The angle is defined by your plywood template, for my template, one angle is 150 and another is 160, which means I need to use Pan Brake to bend 30 and 20 degree for each angle.

Tips 5: Before u bend your metal, make sure the Brake is set for the correct material thickness. The material thickness setting influences the quality of the bend and can affect the final dimension of the piece you are working on. Firstly you need to loosen the apron clamping bolts and then adjust the Brake. Make sure you have set the material thick at both ends of the pan brake, do not forget to tighten both apron clamping bolts.

Tips 6: There are many different sizes of the Clamping Fingers behind the machine, you can pick different Clamping Fingers to fit your work.

Step 04:

After bend the two angles, we can start to work on the connecting junction between the wood and the shovel head, the red marked area*. From this step, we are going to use small tools, including wood hammer, plastic mallet, metal hammer, sandbag, wooden block, semi-cylinder and a vice.

Pick a wooden hammer, use the sharp side to hit the middle part of the area slightly and lightly, try not to hit the two sides. Keep hitting on that area, the unfinished curve shape will gradually appears. 

Tips 7: Another tools can be used to roughly shape the curve, like arched steel mould. Put the skin on the vice and use arched steel mould to hit the area marked, this can get the rough curve more easily, but sometimes would break the skin without cautions. 

Step 05:

Then we can start to define our curve edge on both sides. Find something have a straight line, like a block of timber, or a timber panel. Line up the curve’s reference line with the edge of the timber panel, use the wooden hammer hit the edge to get a straight line and deep curve. Do the same things to the other reference line*.

Once you finished that, reverse your skin and put the edge of the timber block besides the curve and use flat plastic hammer to hit the block to refine the straight line*. Do the same thing to another side.

Step 06:

Put your curve on the rounded steel mould which has the similar radius to your curve and then use the flat side of the metal hammer to hit the curve surface. This step would make the semi-cylinder more fit to the template and would make it as straight as possible. After this step, we now an even radius all the way around the semi-circle.


 

Step 07:

Returning to Pan Brake, use the machine to bend previously marked lines upwards, reflecting the shape of the shovel. The bending angles here are defined by your template, try to bend it close to the template angle.

Tip 8: When you bend 4 lines on both sides, you will find there are some bending marks left on the skin where supposed to be flat. Do not worry about that, we can fix it later by using flat steel hammer and timber block.

Part 3: Smooth and refine

Step 08

After the major shape are defined, the problem left is the bending line on flat plane and some planes need to be flatten. The best solution for this step is to place the skin on the steel rectangular stand and use small Planishing hammer to slightly hit the area need to be flat. The large hammer will leave dimple on the skin surface which used to remove unsatisfied marks left in the skin*. This is the most difficult step to do and will take long time to finish it. However, after you finish it, you will find this step actually helps you understand metal making more deeply.

Tip 9:When you use Planishing hammer to refine your work, try to tap the skin lightly with enough patience, make sure the skin is not deformed on the process. When tapping the skin, try to let the middle part to touch the surface, let the hammer perpendicular to the skin, otherwise there will be some ugly mark left on the skin.

You can use English wheel to smooth and stretch your skin if it is necessary, sometimes it will give your skin glossy, shining finish.