Tag: cogbots

Pouring the Crescents

IMG_3371We fell in love with Kokomo Opalescent Glass (KOG) quite a while ago.  With our passion for Steampunk, it is a perfect match- Art glass still made the Victorian Way.  Achoo, Christmas and Dinner Time all had KOG inserts in some of the gears. Nan has custom cut circles that get switched in and out of googles, and we used it as inserts for our Steampunk Christmas Ornaments.  When designing this piece, there was no doubt in either of our minds that KOG glass would look just as cool in Stainless Steel gears as it did in Wooden ones. We wanted to do something a bit different than just filling the “spoke holes” with glass, so Dave designed cutouts in two of the biggest gears- at the top and the bottom.  This meant custom designing the molds as well, but finally the time arrived to pour the crescents.

First they have to warm up the pouring table:

Then, the pour itself:

KOG has also done a nice write up with photos that include the crescent after it cooled, where you can see the turquoise blue color.

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Welding the base

We are lucky to be working with a Stainless Steel welding expert at StephensMachine to get the base welded.The stability of the base is critical to the statue, and they have equipment beyond our basic welding equipment that gives us the desired result in both function and appearance.  Before the final weld, the piece is placed and spot welded to position it well.

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Stainless Steel is particularly prone to warp when welded, so after welding, the entire base needed to be heated and then straightened to ensure that it was not warped. 

The end result looks great and we will be getting our hands on it soon, so we can continue the finishing process along with all the other gears already underway.

 

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The Path to Shiny

Almost everyone has a mental image of Stainless Steel as smooth and almost reflectively shiny. However, it does not start life that way. There are many potential paths to shiny, and this week was dedicated to mapping it out for When The Earth Moves. To get the finishes we want, (they will be different for the gears and the fixtures ), and there will be a variety of steps from acid treatments, disc grinding, die grinding and orbital sanders. The sanding will range from 80 grit to 120.

Why so much work? Besides the fact that the steel comes in fairly “crusty”, the water jet leaves marks as it cuts as well.   This is a gear tooth as it comes from the cutter.  Note all of the horizontal gauging and scratches in the steel from the cuts. This is not at all the look and feel of the gear that we want, so the surface has to be finished to get the right effect.

You can see the difference when you look at another tooth on the same gear, after acid, disc grinding and lots of sanding at various grits- this is the shiny smooth finish that is the goal. At about 20 minutes ( for the edges, not the faces) per tooth, and 94 teeth in the statue, plus faces, spokes and cutouts, you can understand why we often say that Art is a Labor of Love.

 

 

 

 

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Prepping the glass molds

It is time for the project to take on parallel paths.

While Stephen’s Machine shop starts to weld the base, we get to start working with Kokomo Opalescent Glass to get the glass inserts poured.  We had the molds cut in the extra space of the steel plates to save time and money, but this meant that Dave had to attach some sort of lift handle on them so that the glass folks can handle them.

For now, welding for us means a trip up to Dave’s folks’ farm and using his dad’s shop. We picked up the parts and supplies we needed to be working with Stainless Steel ( not the normal welding material on a farm),and headed north.
For Dave, working in his dad’s shop is like tapping directly back into a long family history.

This is  the shop he has welded in for decades, and there are metal clamps he works with when welding here that are older than he is.

The goal for the day was to makeshift lift hooks that KOG would be able to use  to move the one inch thick stainless molds around. There are two molds- the bat for the bottom gear and the crescent moon shape that is in the top gear.  Dave ended up bending  some stainless screw hooks and welding them onto the tops of the molds to make a lift system that can easily have a rod inserted through.

Getting the alignment perfect so that a metal rod can be inserted means careful measurements and lots of clamps to hold things in place until they get tacked down by the first welds.

Watching him work this weekend reminded me that it is true- you really never can have too many clamps in the shop.
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Site Survey….

SiteMeasurementsToday became the start of  a huge adventure for the Cogbots crew. We have been granted the commission to make the new fountain statue for City Hall in the City of Kokomo, and it was time for a site survey.  A bit of measuring, and lots of hands and eyeballs on the site where a new stack of steel gears will be installed.

As you can see, the site has a slight gradient, so part of today’s mission was to  measure the grade and come up with a plan for the best way to ensure that the statue will end up level despite the slight drop. If we did not properly level the base, the statue would end up leaning 4 inches out of kilter at the top of it’s 8 ft height.

We were also looking at the arrangement of the base to the building and to prospective light, since we want to get the stained glass effect from the Kokomo Opalescent Glass Inserts as much as possible.
An interesting lesson we learned with the Infernal Device installation is that any public art is just that– very public.
First Site VisitorToday, even though all we did was step across the construction blockade, take some measurements and some pictures, we had our first visitor. Happily, he was excited about the project and is looking forward to coming back as we progress. We look forward to having him and anyone else local stopping by and chatting when you see us on site.

How to Maintain a Tradition and still Innovate Art.

This hexagonal structure is a furnace that gets rebuilt every couple of years.

It is the furnace where they melt the ingredients for Kokomo Opalescent Glass.  We are incredibly lucky, here in the City of Firsts to have the oldest remaining factory in the US who still makes old fashioned Stained Glass sheet glass.  They have been making art glass on this site since 1888.  The glass comes in a multitude of colors/color mixes and textures that are “printed” into the glass when it is rolled into a sheet.

This glass, that starts its life as what looks like a pile of sand, and gets carried by running men in giant metal ladles to go into the rollers, has ended up in many cathedrals around the world.

The results of combining up to 5 colors of glass at a time and a multitude of textures is a series of rooms of gorgeous sheet glass- each one slightly unique in all the world.

In addition to being shipped globally to repair old stained glass ( a series of batches went out to Japan this summer to assist with repair stained glass in cathedrals damaged in their recent catastrophes), this glass also ends up in new art, like that made locally by Little Town Glass and OgreWorkshop. Look Carefully at glass in the top cog- what do you see that was created by the mixing of the glass?

The KOG factory does tours all week. The day we were there, there were stained glass lovers from three different states and some local folks as well. It made a great Geek Family Outing for three generations of our family that day. You can see more pictures, including shots of the glass blowing section of the factory, in this album:

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