Day 8: T group

Day 8 was a day full of hurdles. We are nearing the completion date of the project, and we have made great progress. However, this progress was not as easily come by as we would have hoped, but I guess we should have expected the trouble. The main goal today was to get all of the skins attached. We began by getting all of the sheets cut out at the sizes needed to cover the exposed innards of the chairs. This is where the first challenge came, as the chairs were not all uniform in size. They all had slight differences in their dimensions. Once a suitable size was found, the sheets were cut and Blake and I went to work on slicing them so they would be able to bend.

It is interesting that the chairs were the first to be completely finished were the chairs that we actually started later rather than the chairs we originally designed. I guess we were just caught up in these new chairs and were excited to see how they would turn out.

Once we finished the chairs with the new designed, it really felt like the project was coming together. But then we were faced with returning to the chairs with the original design. We found that in order to secure the top and bottom skin surfaces, we would need to glue them down while forcing the chairs to bend so that the skin rested evenly along all of the edges. This required all four of us, along with the help of Prof. Fobes, using all hands at once to get these attached. With 5 pairs of hands working on the chair, unfortunately none were left free to take a photo. Basically, we had to add the glue, hold down the surface until it dried, and then use clamps to bend the sides of the chair so that the edges remained underneath the top surface to allow it to set into a fixed shape.

The chairs are looking good and should all be ready well in time for the exhibit!

- Tyler Pierce