eoin campbell digital making

After having formed our trays independently, my work partner Logan and I put the trays together for comparison. The similarities and craftsmanship of trays are simply astounding to say the least. Such precision..

To begin making the tray, the form was cut and a 10mm edge was scribed. The material was then placed between two wooden blocks in a vice and the 10mm edges were hammered up. The corners were left until last. The small puckers/ folds that began to form during the process of shrinking the corners became difficult to smooth out as the dug into the wooden block template. To overcome this I placed a scrap piece of aluminium between the tray and wooden block, this made forming the corners of the tray much easier and neater. An uneven edge was the result of stretching and shrinking parts of the material. To ameliorate this, I scribed a line around the edge of the tray, cut the material back and sanded to finish. Looks pretty neat, right?

 To even out, stretch and smooth the inner section of the reverse curve, I decided to see how an English wheel would affect the material. I swapped out the bottom wheel for another with a higher crown, the highest crown available as this is a small piece of metal so I wanted a minimal contact patch.  After only a few light passes through the English wheel, the central arc was widened, smoothed and slightly more aligned. I began to work on stretching and forming the metal using various metal anvil-like objects that were scattered around the workshop. Got up to this stage when I was informed that there was staff CNC training so I had to leave. Will hammer out the final parts another day.

 ready, steady, shrink!  ^check out the sneaky puckers forming an undulating edge to shrink and curl^ After having stretched the edges out, I wanted to get them to 'curl' back in. To do this, I needed to get some cheeky little puckers to form along the edges which would cause them to shrink, contract & curl in.

I thought the edges of the reverse curve could do with a bit of a stretch so I used the classic lump of wood in a vice approach. Due to the malleability of the metal, only a gentle tap was needed to get the stretch to form.

Starting my first reverse curve. bent aluminium sheet over stump to set in place then shrunk edges to trap metal in the centre. eventually worked shrunken centre out to the top and bottom edges.

This is the bowl after further stretching. I had used the English wheel again too, this time working radially which seemed to greatly increase the arc and overall smoothness of the bowl. Sanding the edges of the bowl down to an even edge Areas that required more stretching at this point were beaten into a sandbag with a wide mallet.