sneak peek - wheel barrow

It's almost finished, except for a few more images and a short video to edit and upload.

sneak peek - chopping board

I've been a bit quiet of late and soon you will see why as the latest project is almost finished and ready for launch.  No prizes for guessing its a chopping board, but there's a bit more too it than that.

watch - sneak peek

So as I may have mentioned, here is the first sneak peek at a series of watches I am currently working on.  I'm a great believer in balancing details when designing a product, so if one area is complicated, another should be clean etc.  With this watch, as the body is very plain, I thought the strap should be interesting.  As a quick concept model it's ok.  I'm a great collector of stuff for model making, so the watch strap is made from the packaging you get when you buy a supermarket chicken (in the Uk) for the Sunday roast - it looks quite good on the wrist and the chook was delicious!

model making - how to make round things without a lathe

This weekend I was making the model wheels to my car.  The problem is how to make round things when you don't own a lathe.  Fortunately I have a dremel drill.  The rig I made isn't pretty, but it did the trick.  The wheels were first cut out on a bandsaw with a hole drilled in the centre, then fitted into this rig so that I could mill out the middle and shape the sides.  This one has been painted black, just to see how much finishing will be required (a lot!).  Rather than adjust the height of the cutter, I lifted the wheel up to the Dremel bit and turned the wheel by hand, which allows for much more fine tuning.  A lot of filler later and things are looking ok.

car design - sneak peek 02

Comparing this image to an earlier post, it looks as though very little progress has been made, save a lot of grey primer, however, the whole car is 5cm wider as due to some measurement errors, I was forced to saw it in half and widen it, much of the interior is also blocked in.  It's been a challenge, but the end is in sight.

design ideas - Pepper fox

I'm working on a series of designs that use animal iconography.  The pepper fox model above was a very quick exploration of form using a cheap bit of pine.  It needs a lot of refinement, but I've designed a nice grinding mechanism driven by squeezing the tail to the body that allows it to be used one handed and the ears allow you to unscrew a lid for re-filling. I'm also working on a rabbit jug and swan decanter.

model making - sneak peek

Amongst other things, I'm currently designing and building a car, but it's going to be a long time before it's completed.  I only get to work on it on the weekends as it's too cold in the evenings.  I'm just glad I decided to make a scale model as at one point it was going to be full size.  When I was younger and keener, I used to be out in my shed in freezing temperatures working away late into the evening.  Now a little older, I must admit that after a long days work, the motivation is lacking.  Am I becomming an armchair designer?  I might have to start designing one of those as well!