ART PROJECT

I came up with this idea for depicting the idea of how the EXPLOSIVE mindset from social unrest in the world is SHREDDING the world apart. Depending on your passions, there could be other interpretations of this art sculpture. Political divisiveness, decline of Christian beliefs and morals, misuse of ecology on the planet, to name a few.

I started out by making segments for making a bowl. I chose cedar because I knew I would have to do a lot of finish sanding to shape it, and the cedar is easy to sand. I made plenty of extra segments, so that I could throw out any pieces that had knots in them.

This was one of the main reasons I made my drum sander, so that I could sand my segment rings perfectly flat. This is critical for making a good looking segment bowl without any gaps in the finished product.

When gluing the rings together, don’t try to glue more than two sections together at a time. You’ll regret it if you try. But if you’re like me, you’ll probably try it anyway. Then you will eventually realize that it’s not worth it.

Because of the limited lathe tools that I have, I had to first make half of the globe separate.

After I got the inside of the first half shaped and sanded, I made the second part of the globe.

To cut the mounting block off the second part, I screwed a straight board onto the round base, in order to run the piece through the bandsaw. DO NOT attempt to do this by holding a round object when pushing it into a bandsaw blade. More than likely the blade will grab the round wood and rip it out of your hands. This will very likely bend your bandsaw blade. I speak from experience. (two times)

Then I glued the two parts together, and did a little turning on the inside to match them up.

The next step was to add a thin coat of epoxy on the inside to fill any voids. I sanded it down once while spinning it on the lathe. I found that there were still ridges in the cedar due to the hard and soft grain lines of the wood. So I had to reapply the epoxy again. This time I sanded it in a circular motion, without spinning the lathe. By sanding in a circular motion, I was sanding against the grain and not just with the grain. This way I wasn’t removing the epoxy in the ridges. This is all to give the surface a glass smooth finish, for applying spray paint to it later.

Now I could finish turning the entire outside and sand it all, on the lathe. I made a form to check my progress as I shaped it, to make sure I was making the outside perfectly round.

Then I cut the mounting block off and finished sanding the back end of the globe, still using the form, to check my progress.

Now I went through the process of applying epoxy and sanding the outside to achieve the glass smooth finish that I was looking for. I definitely didn’t want it to look like wood that had just been painted over.

The scariest stage was cutting the jagged edges with the bandsaw. I used the finest tooth blade that I had, which was a 1/8” blade with 15 teeth per inch.

I used some 220 grit sandpaper to meticulously smooth every edge.

I used “Rust-oleum Bright Coat Metallic Finish” for the inside of the globe. I went ahead and coated the outside with the same paint, since it did a very good job of self-leveling, which would cover up any wood grain lines that were still visible.

Then I picked a morning when there was a slight breeze to my back, to spray the outside of the globe. I figured this way any of the paint overspray would be swept away from settling on the inside gold. I used “Rust-oleum Ultra Cover paint and primer, semi-gloss”. Some other Rust-oleum paints have a much longer drying time. Be careful not to get these, because then you will end up with dust particle sticking to the paint as it dries.

I used a Dremel type tool to carve the shape of Africa etc. on the back side of the globe. I first traced the continent shape, lightly, with a crayon marker. The semi-gloss paint turned out to be a good choice for this, because I was able to easily wipe off any of the crayon marker afterwards.

To keep the tool guide from scratching the paint, I added some felt door bumpers on the rim of the tool.

For the base I thought a pyramid shape would look nice using some hard figured maple that I had. Cutting the shape on the bandsaw was easy. However I had no idea how hard it would be to keep that perfect shape when sanding the sides with a sanding belt. Let’s just say the finished pyramid ended up a lot smaller than when I first cut it.

For the globe support I used my Jasper circle cutting jig on my router, because the arch had to be perfectly round to match the globe. When the two would be so close together, even a 1/16” variance would be noticeable.

In making the globe support, I wanted to be able to remove the globe, for when I wanted to transport it. To accomplish this, I installed a spring, out of a ball point pen, into the hole for the top 3/16” dowel. Then with some needle nose pliers, I could move the 3/16” pin in and out.

The axis tilt of earth is 23 ½ °. I made sure my model matched that.