Birth of a long board

This is my first blog post since my graduation, but before I will talk about that there has been something that I wanted to post about for a long time. I already stated it earlier but now it is for sure, I finished my new long board. Las year I also tried to make a long board, but I didn’t invest too much time or money into it and it sucked. It bend through way too fast. Also I didn’t have any money for the wheels and grip tape, So I never used it.

This year I had more money and with the good weather the urge came to ‘flow’ over the concrete with the sun on my face. So I decided to first buy the wheels and grip tape, and then to work on a mold to make the board. So on a national holiday I decided to begin immediately. First I needed to cut all the wood for the mold.

 

I then made the mold so that the board would be curved in the length. This creates a very nice stiffness (or so the ‘internet’ says) but it also takes a lot of force to bend the wooden plates into this curve. To make it easier to bend the wood I bought 3 multiplex plates of 4mm thick that will make the board. The mold has two beams on the outside that push the plates up, and there is a beam in the middle that push the plates down. This will create the curve that we need.

 

I glued the plates together with Epoxy that I had left from the first long board. So first all the wooden plates got a layer of glue and then I put them together on the mold.

 

This is what it all looks like in the mold.

 

And this is a detail of the curve, but also a small sketch of how I wanted the finished product to look.

The collage here shows the process that came after. First I unscrewed the mold so that I would be able to take out the board. But no such luck, the epoxy also got between the mold and long board, so I needed to saw of the long board. Then I drew up the shape of the board, that I made in illustrator and then printed out, and later I sawed the shape out of the plank. Then I sanded and shaved the wood to get a nice finish and to get rid of the remains of the mold and epoxy.

 

For the graphics I took inspiration from this video:

Recycling skateboards from pedro vieira on Vimeo. 

I created a (sort of) random pattern and used paper tape to make the pattern and sprayed the colours on it. Then I used a lacquer to finish it of, but apparently I got a wrong lacquer that has a ‘cherry’ colour. But in the end it looks alright. Finally I applied the grip tape and added the trucks and wheels.

 And here is the final result :)

 

I really like it and I’ve ridden it a lot, but I still need to practice some more. :)

Next week I will talk about my graduation subject and everything.

Frank

Berlin trippin

Wow,... I didn't imagine that it would take me this long to update again.

I didn't continue my work on the watch, But I will continue on it later on. Up to now I've been busy working on my graduation and some other projects. My graduation is going really well, The research is finished and my mentor and chair are happy with it. Now I'm writing the research paper, which is taking longer than I expected, because Writing isn't going as fast as I planned it to. But it's coming so everything is good :).

In order to make more sense of everything I've done I'm going to do a post per subject. This post's subject is about my trips to Berlin, next post is going to be about a new longboard, which is now drying of it's paintjob :). And I guess the post after it will be about my graduation project.

Last time I posted it was before I was going to Berlin with some friends to visit Ridzert and Alexandra (Linky!) And it was really fun! and in the footsteps of a movie I made of going to Goettingen, I made 1600+ pictures and put them all together together with a nice soundtrack.
So,... exited??? :)



But of course that is about 3 months ago! so in the mean time new plans have been made, money has been gathered, cars stolen and minds set, we set out for a new trip! This was two weeks ago, and it was really nice to see Ridzert and Alexandra again :). So again:
Are you willing to see the second video? :)



The soundtrack stops a bit early, which is too bad but I like it in general.

I like this style of video making, And I definetly plan to do it more often. But my next trip, that I will make to Palermo will be different. In Palermo I'm going to meet with some friends from Lisboa and I will fly with Ryanair. And Ryanair kind of restricts me to travel a little bit more compact, so I'll bring my video camera!!!! it's smaller and has more memory, meaning more awesomeness. But it will be difficult to do this right, so it will be interesting.

Okay, so that is it for now. But come back soon.
I will :)

cheers!

Watch.... progress

Hi!

First I want to show you some awesome stuff that I found the last couple of days.


The first one is Transcendenz, I only saw the movie, but it is a really cool concept of how to let the user investigate philosophy and the world around him and her. I'm not sure if this product would be used for a very long time, but it seems like an interesting concept that might also work on a smartphone.


This video is also really cool. I like the conceptual or human touch to the data by which it completely transforms. ah well, it is cool :) not much to say :).


And here is an Awesome lamp!!! I like the contrast between the two materials and the form language.


Okay, and lastly this awesome project should come out soon (or at least I hope :) ). It's called Piccolo and is basically a very small CNC machine. Though I don't think that you can use it for tooling, but I guess it will be awesome to create processing sketches for it! I can't wait!

Right, now for my own project, the watch:


Lately I've been telling how I was cutting small pieces that would fit together to create the body of the watch. This takes a lot of time to create manually, I tried to do this in this way to kind of recreate the laser cutting look, which I somehow was going for. But after weeks of sometimes working on it I got tired of it.


So I did it another way which takes less time and gives a better result! Win/Win!!! So now I should plaster the whole thing to create a smooth finish and spray it white. Then I'll add the wooden sides and bottom. You'll see how it will be finished. Just wait :).

But it will have to wait a little because this weekend I'm going to Berlin to visit a friend.
:D

so see you next time!

hmm....

Okay, so again I didn't post anything for a while...
Somehow I've been quite busy with lots of stuff and I haven't really found any time to do much.

To do show you something I made this:

I used one of my old photo's and made this small animation on it. :) again it is in the style of Dmitry Maximov. I hope you like it :)

Then I continued further with my watch!, I got nothing to show yet, which is also a reason for not posting yet, but hopefully I can make some pictures soon.
In the meantime I found this site:
M E M E N T O

It has an awesome look, And I'm seriously considering to apply something like this to my watch :)

Graduation is also coming along, I hope to bring out a questionnaire soon. Which I will also post here, Just in case :).

Too much things and not enough time.

Hello!!

I guess it has been 2 months now since I posted anything over here. I guess it has been good, but then again it hasn't been very productive. The reason that I didn't post anything anymore is that I got kind of overwhelmed by all the things that I needed to do for me, my graduation project, and my social things. And because of this I was just running from place to place to get everything covered. But it wasn't really nice.

So now, with the new year I decided that I should slow things down a bit and don't do to much. So I stopped my sports, I do run occasionally (but not in the snow). And I started to work less at IKEA, which helped things a lot!

'But', you might ask 'Then, if you changed all this at the beginning of the year, why the hell haven't you posted anything yet?' (Ok, this doesn't make that much sense as it did in my head... but anyway :) ), Well I also needed to move from my old trusty home! So all in all I just recently started to do some cool things again, which I will now show you :)

First of all is something that I always wanted to have done in my life and that is to make an elastic band ball!



This takes painstaking hours of work and concentration (read the irony! :) but it did take hours!) to pull this together. The label of the elastic band package told me it were about 120 elastic bands, so that is what I'll tell you :). it is a 120 elastic bands elastic band ball!

I also once found that art of Dmitry Maximov, which is really cool. Especially his use of colours, photos with lots of depth of field and the contrast of the images. This made me think that it would be awesome to create something like this as an animation.
So this is what I did :)



Here you can see the result: a bit shaky. But I like my first try :). Also you can see my new room in it, although maybe you don't really see it.... but that is my new room.

So that was all!
till next week! :)
cheers!

The 'Thing' and my new RAM!

Hi,

So suddenly after seeing two videos I had some inspiration to create something with the pile of electronics that I had lying around.
I still had a breadboard full with awesome components lying around with which I would experiment to see how it would affect the behaviour of the solar engine. But nothing came of it, because some other things we always more important or interesting to do. So it wasn't really making any progress.
But then I saw this video:



In which someone creates really cool objects. And you see one of his prototypes which he makes with small wooden beams. And that was something I liked.
I also saw this film:

Zimoun «Sculpting Sound» : The Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, USA from ZIMOUN on Vimeo.

Again of Zimoun of which I really like the simplicity.

After seeing these two videos I decided to make something myself. This weekend I finally had some time to do it, So I went to the DIY shop and bought myself some small wooden beams, some wooden rods and a little saw :).

This is what came out (it is already really dark so it the pictures aren't that good.)





In the last one you can see a wheel which is driven by the DC motor. The wheel has a rod on it, which isn't centered, and it pushes a beam up. When it goes up it will hit an other wooden beam that will hit the bell, creating a nice soft 'Ting'.

Up until now it has only been misty but it already works a little bit. The wheel moves, pushing the beam up. But not with enough speed to make a ting. So now I need to wait until the sun will shine to hear it.

Aesthetically I'm not really pleased with it. The electronics were just an after thought and you can really see it. The wooden components look good, though not really straight, and work well. So next time I will need to take more time to get the electronics to be a part of the whole.


I also got my new RAM last week and I put it in my laptop today, so I haven't really tried it out yet, but until now it is still going smooth.


Also, on Thursday I will kick off my Graduation Project. It is a research project in which I will research how to implement metaphors in products in a successful way. This means that some products use a metaphor, some are quite successful and other aren't. This can have a couple of reasons. I will research which reasons it has and also how to do it better, or at least in a good way. So I will provide guidelines which should be able to tell you how to make great product with metaphors.
I will come back on this I guess. :)

untill soon!
frank

TEDxDelft, Wallet and a new watch

Okay,


I went to TEDxDelft yesterday and it was awesome! :) The first three blocks were a bit boring with some good talks in them but the last and fourth block of presentations was amazing! :). Most of the talks were really good and I really like this part. But I won't go into detail, because that is a bit boring.. :) it won't do the talks any justice. :)

I also finished the wallet! Last week I went to a shop to buy leather, of which I maybe bought about half a square meter! And the day after I started to sew. This is what happened:

This is the wallet when it is closed, the texture of the leather is really good and cool :).

If you flip it you can see that the press buttons and elastic form some sort of face :).

And this is the inside! One part is the cards side (Digital area) and on the other side is the real money part (analog area ;) ). The coins are kind of kept in the pocket by two push buttons, which are now obscured by the 10 Euro :).
I fairly happy with this wallet. Maybe, when I have time, I will buy a nicer looking felt and try to create a better design in terms of formgiving. I like how the wallet works, but some details can look nicer and better. So maybe some day I will do that :), but for now i'm happy.

And to jump to another project right away, I had an idea together with a friend of mine to create a watch that has a laser cut body. I would be made out of wood vineer that is cut by a laser printer. And we would just put a standard watch part in it.
I first wanted to prototype it. And I found an old watch I still had from an old company:

I learned from the neighbor of Aurora how to open it, so I tried that:

It worked! and I was really happy :) But then I wanted to get the time setter loose so I could take it out. So with two pliers I tried to unscrew it, which failed miserably, destroying the connection:

But hey I wanted to continue, so with my stupid head I wanted to get the fingers or arms loose so I would be able to remove the plate. But of course, it isn't really made for that. So I also destroyed this:

But anyway, I think I will still make the first prototype to see how it will look. So next I will cut some vineer in the right shape.

So come back next week! :)

cheers!
frank