Lately, my favorite source for material has been the MIT flea market which runs third Sundays through the late spring, summer and fall. It’s a great source for small parts, gears, antique tools and beautiful old electronic parts. I love the typography on these ancient capacitors and purchased a big pile.
I believe these will find their way into a piece + how can I go wrong with anything Cornell? Here’s some more stuff, excuse me now while I get to work!
I picked up these bunnies today along with some other goodies at a local shop in Waltham Massachusetts. What ever are they clutching in their little paws? Look forward to seeing them in some new pieces.
bunnies marked down
Here’s a photo of my most recent small work “King Oliver” it’s the finished configuration of the mechanism from the previous post. I love the way this one came out, everything interacts beautifully, a very solid little piece, worth the reworking I did on the wooden handle.
King Oliver
Finally, speaking of “little” my next challenge is tiny! I’m scaling this one down using .0625 piano wire for the crank. The watch base from a few posts back fits perfectly for this one along with the gears which have been retrofitted to the handle.
tiny
If I keep going like this, soon I’ll be able to carry everything to a show in a single suitcase.
For those of you in the Northeast, a bit of freakish warm weather had me setting out this weekend to parts north of Boston with trusty hound in tow looking for sun, surf and stuff. Here’s some lovely parts from a dollar bin in Newbury Port.
This Weeks Obtainium
As summer approaches, I’ll be spending more time at flea markets and yard sales so expect lots of interesting parts finding their way into work. BTW, started the piece below this morning. The blue wooden part is an old top from a bin of um.. old tops found in a salvage place up in New Hampshire.
tops
And, here’s a new piece all completed using lots of fitting from last weekends outing. It’s called “Block / Head”. I should have a video up soon!
d e v o
On trips to Home Depot, I often cruise the HVAC ( heating, venting & air conditioning ) section which is full of interesting, inexpensive galvanized metal shapes. Today, I needed a ratchet for my current piece and thought I’d try cutting one out of a HVAC reducing ring which I have in several sizes. The following photos illustrate the main steps in today’s process.
HVAC ratchet
centered on brass axle
In Place
Work on this piece is going very slow and has been a bit frustrating. Still I’m trusting that some of these new processes will facilitate more interesting movement in future pieces.
What excites me most about this project is developing some new methods for making parts. After a few failed attempts last Monday, I believe I’ve nailed an interesting and fun process for creating right angled gears. Here’s how it goes:
This is a simple template created in Adobe Illustrator marking out 16 equally spaced holes. I’ve cut a solid piece of wood and spray mounted the page down.
Drill Template
To set the gear in place I’ve encased the wire in a bit of tubing
The final step is flowing some solder into the mess-o-wire and meditating a bit while it cools ( the first time I was too anxious and pulled the gear out before cooling! )
Here’s the gear in place, I’ve created a second 1/3 drive gear to produce some intermittent motion.
A bit Scary looking?
I hope you’re finding these little experiments useful in your own work!
I’m spending the next week or so trying out some new techniques and expanding my range of mechanics and construction. Today, the subject is gears. Until now, I’ve shied away from using them and most of my kinetic work uses simple cams and levers. It’s not that I don’t like gears ( I love them! ), it’s more about discovering a process which feels right.
In the spirit of tacking things together as they develop, I was wondering could there be a way to create gears without having to be too exact and without fussing around with ratios? Enter the Gear Template Generator!
Screen Shot
The nice thing about this tool is it allows the user to try different configurations and ( bonus! ) the gears animate! Before trotting over to the studio I try a few combos and then print out templates.
Sample Gear
BTW, thanks to the woodgears website for putting this tool online!
I thought it would be fun to switch things up a bit and take a look at some older work. I have a terrible time remembering names and faces and have to come up with all sorts of tricks; ” Mary is the girl with curly hair / Mary had a little lamb/ Lambs have curly hair = Mary ” but I have a fabulous memory when it comes to remembering where stuff comes from in my sculpture work.
In the 90s I was creating table and hanging lamps, here’s one of my favorites, “Apache” . I took a look at it last night and mapped out all the spots where the bits and pieces are from. in this case all in my home state, Massachusetts.
Where Stuff Comes From
Here’s where various parts were found:
1. Todd Farm Flea Market In Rowley Mssachusetts, One of the last big flea markets in the Boston Area. This was from a bin of old glass.
2. Home Depot, Somerville MA, I still find a ton of useful items there, these vents were in the HVAC section.
3. Brimfield Antiques Market, Huge, huge mega antiques show, walked for a mile with this in my cart, a guy sold me trim from an old Chevy Apache for twenty five bucks! I used the cool side panels on a second lamp which I’ll post when I have a chance to dig out the photos.
59 Chevy Apache
4. Every fall I would drive out to “The Jonsies” a huge junk dealer in Brimfield Ma. They specialized in cleaning out old attics and basements, the stuff would end up in barns and outbuildings all over their property. I used to come with a pickup truck and drive home with enough material for the entire winter! Sadly, they closed several years ago 
I’ve been heading to the studio every afternoon this week after taking Frida, the Puerto Rican sled dog for a walk. Today we found this beautiful square of metal with a nice hole. As you can see by my mittens, it’s a bit cold.. ouch
A motley looking square
Work in the fairly warm studio started with some adjustments here and there while I decided what to tackle next. I’ve had this pigeon in a circle, cut from a can of “Pigeon” brand fruit ( jackfruit I believe ) and decided to build a spool shape which moves back and forth creating a bit of a distraction for the yellow bird.
doing the pigeon
Today was a bit difficult, it may simply have been the extra strong Vietnamese Coffee wearing off but I managed to knock together a ramp which will move up and down aided by a cam. Things became a bit tight between the crank and the ramp and I had to rip out and adjust things a few times before getting everything right. Interaction will only be a problem for people with big thumbs!
dizzy pigeon
I am asked “So where do you get your stuff?”. Sometimes I’m walking my dog Frida down the industrial access road by the side of my building and I find an old casting dropped off a truck. Between railroad tracks and the waste disposal plant nearby is a plentiful supply of hub cap retaining rings. Once, a date brought me an old gramaphone motor in lieu of flowers which I ended up using in the piece below; Chicken is the Life of You.
Today I went to visit an artist friend in Jamaica Plain who let me root through boxes of old tools and odds and ends. The worn handles and bits of paint and chips here and there, evidence of use and containers for memory. I’m looking forward to seeing what will end up where.
A box of stuff