Tim Kent: Spring Quarter Post 2. Advanced Digital Sculpture 450

Picking up from post 1, after the wood was laminated together, I sent them to the laser cutter to have the slices cut.

I sliced it vertically, with the plane going from front to back. This allowed me to have a larger surface areas of slices to ultimately utilize the grain and geometric quality of the laminated wood.

Here is a picture of all the pieces cut, and taped up ready to be stained. The tape is to protect the wood from the stain and poly urethane, because wood glue only bonds raw wood surfaces to other raw wood.

Here is a picture of the aluminum strips I created to wrap around the edges of the wood. I marked out the width of the wood, and cut the strips on a stomp sheer.

The next step was to attach the aluminum sides. I did this by two applications. First I used Loctitie professional super glue to adhere the aluminum to the wood, and then they were secured in plain with stainless steel screws.

Using nail clippers, I cut the edges off, and tension from the screws was enough to hold them down.

Lastly, here are two pictures of the layers being glued together, after a few coats of natural finish stain by Minwax, and a few Polycrylic urethane coats:

As you can see from the photos, a core system was set up to insure all slices line up, but the holes were left off of the front and back layer so they would not be visible.

For more work and info on my artwork, check out my artist website: www.timkentart.com

Tim Kent

Tim Kent: Spring Quarter Post 1. Advanced Digital Sculpture 450

I am picking up this quarter where I left off last. In Sculpture 250 I really enjoyed learning about 3D Scanning, and serial slicing. This quarter, I started by refining a form I utilized last quarter. Here is the picture of the 3D foam Maquette from laster quarter(left), compared to the maquette I carved this quarter(right):

The intention was to refine the form, and make it more organic, asymmetrical and dynamic. 

The next part of the process was 3D scanning, then setting up the file to get laser cut.

During this time, I played around with layering different exotic and domestic woods together. I was a little dusty on planing, and glueing up wood, so I wanted to do some tests before I started on the pieces I would be creating to laser cut. Here is an example of a test piece:

The 4 layers of wood shown are Oak, Poplar, Poplar, then Redheart.

I was initially wanting to create the whole sculpture out of solid exotic woods, but upon researching the workability and toxicity of each species available, I found that to not be the best idea. I problem solved a lot until I found the best way to incorporate accents of exotic wood that would be easy/friendly to work with.

Here I have laminated Pine with Redheart:

Lastly, here is two final layers of laminated, planed, wood that were ready to be laser cut! The woods used are poplar, redheart, and pine.

For more work, including painting, sculptures, and mixed media, check out my artist website : www.timkentart.com

Tim Kent