I didn't take any photos of cutting out the ribs on the band saw, but this is just after I had done so. All of the similar ribs were screwed together and cut at the same time to a paper template that I used a glue stick to attach to the wood. |
The next step was to begin the arduous sanding process. These shots are taken at John's shop. |
Clamps are a necessity to make the sanding easier. One clamp to hold the wood, another to clamp the clamp to the table. |
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Back at home, I shot a few photos of the still attached ribs. It would make a pretty cool trophy just as is! |
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The larger 1st place ribs were printed on 2 tabloid sheets of paper. Here I'm using a light box to align and tape the pieces together. |
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The metal front and back plates will be attached to the stack of ribs with 2 bolts running through them. I needed to set up a jig to drill the bolt holes through all the ribs in the exact same position as the holes in the plates. |
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My new toy, an oscillation spindle sander, greatly helped to get the trophy ribs to the right shapes. |
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The spindle sander is even more helpful on the inner parts of the curl where my big fat fingers can't reach. |
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Beginning to stain some of the ribs. |
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I went to the TechShop to watch sCary TIG weld some of the 1st place spacers together in front of a videographer documenting some of the steps in trophy construction, and the only shot I thought to take myself was of this big piece of equipment, a water jet cutter that was making a huge amount of noise 20' feet from us. |
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Taking the mill scale off of the spacers that sCary had welded together. |
Before and after |
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Rusting the first batch of nice clean steel surfaces of the 1st place spacers is easy with some salt and hydrogen peroxide |
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Elapsed time less than an hour at this point, but I did submerge them all in salty water for a couple days. |
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Sarah,Dosa, Gwen, Luna and Sam hanging out on the couch with some monsters looking on. |
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Baking the rusty spacers to fix the rust. Left them in for a couple hours at 300-350 degrees. |
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Looks like more thn a few days of rust, doesn't it? |
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Next, I snug fitted some wood into the spacers. Holes will be drilled to match up with the holes in the steel plates and ribs to which they need to align. |
I made a branding Iron to burn the crossed surfboard logo used by the Titans organizers. This was the first test heating. |
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Added some copper sulfate to the hydrogen peroxide to see if I could get some greenish cast to the metal in spots. Nope! |
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To rust up the bolts and nuts that hold the trophies together, I needed to remove the plating that is made to cut down on rusting. I started by filing it off, but that took waaay too long. The next method was to soak them in strong acid, in this case some hydrochloric acid in a toilet bowl cleaning product. This stuff is potent stuff. (I dumped a container of it and reached in to the spilled mess to rescue the metal and my hands started burning right away-even after it had been chewing away at the steel for half an hour. Nasty!) |
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I didn't want to have writing/letters on the bolts to distract from the logos, so I filed them off. |
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Gwen and Luna on the beach in Santa Cruz. |
Cool ride on the SC streets. |
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Back at John's place to give the stained wood a nice lacquer coat. Took 2 days toa apply an under coat, sand it smooth and then a final coat. |
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John doing some sanding. |
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