Offspring

I'm still working on the "Quartered Chair" - am now on no. 2. No. 1 was a little too big for Benny and I couldn't find 4'X4' 3/8" Baltic Birch plywood anywhere. This new chair is smaller and allows me to build 4 chairs out of 1, 5'X5' sheet!! That saves money and makes more sense in terms of the minimization of waste. The wood for each chair costs $11 and the bolts are in the $10 range; so $21/Chair - not bad. I am trying to have this ready for the Idaho Chair Affair in mid-April, we'll see - I have so much else to do that I don't get many opportunities to work on it.

In other news, i've been playing pick-up basketball games at the gym every night and on wednesdays I play intramural basketball and ultimate frisbee with the architecture student group. I played ultimate frisbee for the first time last wednesday and had all kinds of fun. I have never been able to get into running or biking as a means of workout - I have to play a sport of some sort to stay in shape.

Quartered Chair

These are pictures of a scale model of the "Quartered Chair". It is a 'low back' kid's chair for Benny and Topher. The chair itself is constructed in a game like fashion with the following rules:
1. Must be able to be cut out of a flat sheet on the CNC machine
2. Must minimize waste on that flat sheet
3. Must minimize bolts used (no glue allowed)
4. Must be able to assemble in 15-20 minutes
The bottom picture shows how the design was dependent upon fitting all of the pieces into a flat sheet of baltic birch plywood. The cost per chair when it's all said and done is relatively low ($25 or so per chair). I am thinking of giving the 'chair game' mentioned above to my furniture students next fall for their first assignment.

Today I am developing an exam for my 'Architectural Programming' class - fun stuff. Maybe a movie tonight - I saw "There Will be Blood" a couple of weeks ago and loved it. Emilie and I are going through a Daniel Day Lewis NetFlix phase; we do that sort of thing.