Evaluation

It seems so fast that the three years have blown by and this will be the last evaluation i will be doing. With that on the side lets get started.

For this project i continued on with my initial idea of building up two tables. I had already one made up so it was a case of building the second.

From the start of this project i jumped straight into making, it was the last project so i had no time for messing around with endless sampling. I had a good idea in my head how i wanted them to look and that was the idea i was taking forward.

The tables came together in no time at all. If i am being true to myself i know i could have made a third table as well as the sculptural pieces i moved onto next. I feel that i got a little caught up in this idea of building something outside my comfort zone. 

I really wanted to show just how the squish comes together and how it is formed so i wanted to make some sculptures to get a good view at it. I tried a lot of different things.

This is the first i came up with. I loved building it and when it was together it was everything i wanted it to be. It was the best starting point i could have had. But a starting point is what it was, i needed to make the pieces interact some how. Really get them telling the story of two pieces of metal being pressed together.

I did a few samples like this. I got one piece of steel hot and slammed the cold piece into it like a top tool. Then i would get the second piece got and compress it in the mark it had made. The results were differing. Some worked really well and some didnt work so good.

I knew that this was the way though. I needed to work at it and make it work because the two pieces stacked without nothing happening in between just was not working with what i wanted to say about pressure.

I did more sampling. I mean a lot more. Like 3 days of trying out different stuff before i really got it down. Once i had it in hand it was just a case of making up three i liked.

These are about the tenth different sets i had. I wanted to show off just as it was starting to push in, mid way through the process and then finally really pushing into each other.

I was happy with the making but needed a solid finish to put on them to make them really pop because as you see below they do nothing for each other when the steel is all black.

 

That just wouldnt do for these pieces. I need a finish that set them far apart from one another. Me and Ambrose toyed around with idea of dare i say it a Hammerite finish. With its shitty paint quality it breaks a lot so you can make it look like old paint. A more machine feel to the little pieces.

Personally though i love rust. Nothing screams old machine to me more than a big orange rust bucket.

With a little help from the sand blaster and mother nature i got a great orange coat all the way round. It was certainly a different choice to leave the screws there zinc colour rather than black them up but i like it. It makes them a feature rather a frame for the pieces.

Overall i was happy with what came out of this project all though i do think that a little more drive could have maybe finished me up with more pieces. 

Artist Statement

I was asked as part of the course to write an artist statement.

Here is what i came up with, i think it might be changed and tuned up a little.

As an artist what really drives me is the movement and flow of steel. Steel is by far the craziest, most unpredictable material there is. I find myself obsessively trying to move the material in a crazier and faster way, some of which is successful and others are less so. My obsession as i call it has lead me straight to power hammers and i fell in love. With a power hammer i can move steel larger than myself faster than i ever thought possible. Most aspects of my work involve the power hammer. How the pure brutal force of a power hammer shifts a solid bar like it is water is what i strive to get across with my work. Coming from a much more traditional blacksmithing background I feel almost obliged to use these interesting pieces in a more functional fashion than using them as pure decorative. It is much more appealing to me if they end up as a leg of table or a door knocker than a paper weight.     

22nd of May

Hey guys figured i would get a post up about how things are going.

The tables are almost built, i am just doing the fiddly bits which need to be done outside the forge. I am going to hopefully have both tables finish and made up by the weekend.

The website is well in hand. Got my old blog back up and running for my website. Pretty proud of it because it has over 3 years of my journey of blacksmithing on there.

My portfolio is kinda my lowest bit. I still need to buy a folder and start getting photos together. I have a few that are ready to go in but i need to sort out in least six more.

As for the sculptures they are going well. Had a great breakthrough yesterday.

These little samples worked so well i wanted to do something with them. I am thinking maybe i squish stuff on this level because these were a lot more moveable under the hammer.

I will try and check in over the weekend tell you guys how things are coming together.

14th of May

Hey guys. I have made a few big leaps and bounds this last week towards the sculpture piece i will be making to go alongside my tables. By the way on the table front, every piece is made just needs assembling and finished. All in hand and very much on a side burner cooking nicely.

But back to the sculpture, I am a man for very much doing stuff rather than thinking. So come Friday i figured i would just build a sample and see what it looks like. This what i came up with. 

This is the piece that i came up with. I think its a pretty nice piece showing off exactly what i wanted it too, it has some pressure. Some tension and some really nice fucking squishes. It needs a little refinement and some playing but all that is some sketchbook work. I am thinking a little time playing with ideas i can nail this one.

That's all folks
 

6th of May

Hey guys. It has been a while since i posted here because i have been between vacations and sketchbook work. Thought to myself that i might as well get a good post up here about where im going with the last 5 weeks of my university life.

I want to finish off the last 4 legs for the second table which should only take up this week maybe run over a little into next week. I will have 2 weeks left to really bang out something i want to make.

I thought about it over the holiday and i want to do a sculpture. I have never really done sculptures because i am more of a function guy than form but for this last one i really want to break the mold and go right outside my zone so to speak. I want to look at what i really love inside these squishes not just make them into a table or candle holder. 

I have done a few sketches and there all looking kinda different but they all have a theme. Squished under a power hammer to some description and stacked. I love squishing things as everyone has been told a hundred times over. I also love stacking things up, there is a little order to it there is a little pressure. What's not to like about it?

Over the rest of the day i am going to put up a few off my ideas and talk about them. Got two weeks to get it sorted before forge mad weeks. CAN'T WAIT

30th of March

Hey guys it has been a really long time since i put up a post. I have been doing a lot of my thinking inside my sketchbook these days because i think its where i have my best thoughts. I do like a blog post but never really have a moment of genius like sketchbook i does.

This term i intended to make up a table. I have done a lot of research and really latched onto a single form i am a big fan of it. I called it the biscuit squish and i wanted to get it into the table.

I tried stacking the squishes similar to Micheal Grab. I liked them in theory but when i built one up it looked like shit. It wasn't showing off compression it was stacking a lot more. So i went back to basics and looked at the last table and it really worked in my mind.

Between the table and squishes was a long length that showed off compression more so that is what i am going to do. Needs a little work but that is what we are doing.

I need to find my camera to bang up some pictures here to show off better the journey. 

Evaluation

I have really loved this project. Since i started at the university by no fault of its own they really channel you into a path they would like you to make in. This project felt like the first real stab at life outside this place where i could write and make whatever i want to make.

I became very process oriented to start and i think this might have lead me to have a severe lack of photos of things in the real world i like. It seems i latched on to this one process and i stuck with it through out the entire project, as much as i do love it and it has given me several different avenues to go down i didn't explore much else. 

The photos below show that i wasn't lazy with my experimenting and tried a number of different ways at looking at squishing the steel but that is all i did. If it wasn't going under a power hammer this project i wasn't doing it.

From the get go with squishing things i had a lot of people telling me that it had been done a hundred times over and i had to agree. It is nothing to put a piece of metal under the hammer and upsetting it down so i had to fine a unique way i went about it. I tried cutting it with the grinder, punching top tools into it even working more than one side with the hammer but all weren't really going with what i wanted to do with them. I had this idea of a really nice table in my head and i was shoehorning the squishes to suit so to speak. 

The turning point for me is when i started making up the legs, two different sizes of squishes side by side was so sexy.

The photo above is the first finished sample that i got down. This is a little crude but with some refining i knew that i could get it to be what i wanted. So with more sampling on the legs going in and more with the feet i had a finished product in mind.

My finished piece was done a lot faster than other people which was a little confidence boost but then seeing the scope of some peoples work i soon had a reality check. Four legs is nothing to a full gate so maybe i was playing it a little safe this term and could have strived for another finished table. 

I would have liked to have seen mine fully finished but the massive mess about which sorting a table top out here was too much. Every carpenter i rang was acting like i was the idiot for asking them to work in wood and drill some holes. First guy i phone in Yorkshire admittedly a friend of mine says fine i can do that easy so il get it done up north. 

There is no finish on the steel yet either because i am uncertain on what kind of wood i will be using. Hoping for oak but it might be something a different color so don't want to rush a finish on that doesn't match. I had imagined some gun bolt blue on the legs to go with the earthy color of the tabletop but now i am thinking maybe a good beeswax finish.

Overall i am happy how the legs looked when finished. I did worry they would be too spindly but i think it suits just right for what i was after. On the much thicker table top it will feel really like the top is crushing the legs making this compression on the steel.

If there is one thing i was super happy about during this project was the squished wing nuts. They are such a cool little feature that i hope to use on a lot of different projects. As i bolt on the end of some threaded bar they are so much nicer than the alternative.

I think they are the biggest thing i will take out of this project into my career. A real stroke of genius in the eleventh hour so to speak. 

I think i lacked a few things in this project but all and all i enjoyed it and made some nice stuff so isnt that what really matters on the grand scale. I am taking all this research and design choices straight into my next project where i am going bigger than i did this time. I am thinking either giant mirror or giant table either way its going to be giant.