✹ Disco project #4 - pewter
15th March 2021
For the competition, Pewter live 2020, under the idea of Roaring 20s, one of my design for this competition is the disco ball hanging sculpture. The other one is Pewter Fan, which is then that I developed in Fan project competition.
My idea is to fold the pewter sheet into a similar form as the mock-up below, and high polish the pewter for them to reflect with light when spin. Although, the quality of edge creation of these two materials is different, mirror cardboard and pewter sheet. Whereas the cardboard can be engraved by cutter and folded to create this sharp facet on its own. The pewter sheet behaves different, as it is a soft metal when folded it will bend and not remain flat facet.
Also, I tried to use graver to create a folding line so that when it’s folded, hopefully, it can arrear to be the shape as I desire. Turned out, the graving part was not as easy as I expected. The practice needs more skill and even forced to proceed. With limited time to make I need to think about another way to achieve this idea.
Later on, I dropped this design for the competition as the workshop on campus didn’t open during easter break. So I was unable to access the equipment. Although, I did submit the other one, metal fan to the competition which I will talk about later in another post. Here, I continue to explore the process I came up with, to cut it into smaller pieces and soldering them back together on the back. It sounds like a lot of work. But as plan A didn’t work out,
I used a guillotine in a metal workshop to cut the sheet follow the line that I create by a cutter. The problem with this is that because I cut it by hand, and the machine is bulky I can’t see the edge properly - each bit came inaccurate to the line. Although I can leave it like that in order to study the idea of soldering and see if it can give the reflection as I thought.
Again, this idea didn’t turn out to be practical. Maybe because of the equipment I have? I used a kitchen torch to solder the sheet, seem like it’s difficult to manipulate the temperature and because the sheet is so thin It melts, uncontrollably.
In this experiment, to be honest it was my first time working with pewter. I just know that this material is heavy, soft and has a low-temperature boiling point. Folding and soldering thin sheet of pewter might not be the easiest process to deal with. Maybe next time, in the case of working with new material, I might need to explore them first. I see the property of it and then use that property to its full potential.
In this case, Pewter can be a good source for some design that doesn’t require sharp edge bending nor soldering in multiple spots in one small bit. It may have been suiting for a design that requires hand bending or form shaping by hand if it’s a sheet. Or might have been better off using the casting one.I would like to continue making this design althought pewter might not be the best answer to this form. I consider using another material that is easier to manipulate, lighter and more reflective, maybe mirror acrylic? Let’s see how it goes.