Next for the Orrery Project

Previous posts have focused on the rocket that is the center column for our orrery. The one pictured here doesn't have the bottom section with the fins, but our new one does. Now that the rocket has been carved and the holes bored into it to accept the drive tubes, it can be put aside for a bit and we move on to the next section - The arms.

You can see here that each planet has its own arm. The rocket is cut into little sections so that each arm will spin freely on a bearing between the rocket sections. So it's time to craft the arms. While the arms are being built, the planets can also be blown. If we have some good weather, we'll get going on that too.

Back to the arms. They need to be very strong - the piece is going into a college, where no doubt, there will be drunken college students attempting to take Jupiter home with them. A lot of thought and design has gone into this orrery to make it "Student-Proof", as best we can anyway... Since they're pretty thin, we've chosen to make the arms out of carbon fiber (what they make jet fighters out of, and the new SpaceShip One) It's extremely sturdy, and very lightweight. Lightweight matters because the planets themselves, being blown glass, are going to be on the heavy side and we want to make sure all that weight off of one side of the rocket doesn't screw up its ability to spin freely, so wherever we can make something lighter, it's a good thing.

But how do we make an arm from this mystical "Carbon Fiber"? We can get CF in various forms from online stores that sell to homemade airplane makers, or car hobbiests. It comes in rod, tube, tape or a fabric. Hmmm.... Fabric.... I used to work professionally as a costume designer for theatres, and have worked with fabric all my life. I could use my fabric knowledge with this new technique! How hard could it be?

You can see here, the feather spars I built for our mobile projects. The longest is about 16 feet long! The largest is about 4 inches wide by 3/4 inch thick at the tube. Only about an 1/8 inch thick on the feather.



Now here is a closeup of those feather spars before I did the final trim work on them. You can see that it is a cross weave fabric. It's a very thick fabric, and the weave is loose so it tends to wiggle all over the place. It is also highly toxic, so gloves, goggles and a mask are required. I first make a long pattern of what the full piece needs to be and then carefully cut the CF to match.

The feather shape is laid out on plastic in a specially designed mold that will hold it in its "feather" shape until it's set. It is wrapped around a central tube, which gives it stability and also a way for us to pass the wiring needed for each planet, and then soaked with a two part epoxy glue. The plastic is then rolled over the top, sealing the piece inside. I then squeegee out the excess glue and smooth it under the plastic so that there aren't any bubbles or dry spots. I add weights to hold it in the tight curve shape. Then it's just a matter of waiting for the epoxy to set up. I check on it often during the next 12 hours to make sure nothing is coming loose or slipping.I will use this same technique for the orrery arms, but on a smaller scale. The longest arm is only 3 feet long, with a gentle curve to it, and fairly thin - it will be under 3/8 inch thick. I plan on squeezing the pieces towards the inner part of the curve to that when I trim and clean it up, it won't be as visible as it would be on the outside where people are seeing it more.

That's the plan. We'll see how it goes! How hard could it be?

Peace,
Joy

Continuing the Rocket for the Orrery

It's finally stopped storming, so I can continue to work on building my rocketship today. Why does it matter if it's storming? Some of my equipment (lathe, drillpress among other stuff) is out on a covered deck. The covers keep them protected when it rains, but I'm not too good with my hands when it's cold and wet. I have very low blood pressure, so if my hands get cold, they don't work very well, and that's not something you want happening when you're working with a high speed drill press, or have a large gouge aiming at a huge piece of rapidly spinning wood on a lathe.

So when my hands start giving me trouble, I choose warmer, indoor work, which I certainly have enough of.

But I WANT to get this rocket done! And today is warm(er) and dry, so I'm going to take advantage of it!

You can see in the picture the carved rocket body next to a spare turning block in case I screwed up the first one (and it still isn't too late to do just that....). These pieces are 20 inches long and 4 1/2 inches wide and weigh about 10 pounds each. Pretty massive, really. I drilled the holes for the arms and weights into the top pieces before I turned it (cause once I turn it, I don't have a flat surface to go perpendicular to anymore). I also routed out the channels for the fins before I turned it. You can see the channels at the base of the rocket. There will be 4 fins that I am going to start carving today. Oh, and I'll also sand the top of the rocket to a nice cone.

The rocket and the fins are carved from solid Cherry, a hard and beautiful wood. One of my favorites to work. Once I get the fins carved and fit and make sure that the rocket stands like it's supposed to, I'll start doing more tooling to the rocket body itself, but that's for another post. One thing at a time!

Peace,
Joy

A Rocket is Born!

I got the rocket carved for the Orrery that we're making!!!! Yay!!! It was cold though, but not raining. You can see me all bundled up. I actually have three shirts on and two pairs of sweatpants, and gloves. I'm coated with sawdust, as is everything else. It gets in my hair, up my nose and under my contacts, but it's actually a lot of fun to get so messy and see something come out of nothing.

The section I'm working on is the top of the rocket. The wide section to my right is the part where the fins will come out. I haven't carved them yet. The dark lines that I'm cutting in the photo is the separations of the sections. I carved the smooth shape of the rocket first and then put in the marking of where the rocket will be cut into 10 pieces.

Why cut it? There's the base piece - the fatter part that the fins will attach to, and then the very top cap which holds the rod to the Sun globe. The other eight pieces are for each of the planets. Each piece will have a rod coming out of it that goes out to hold the planet. You can see that in the website picture.

So after the rocket is carved and sanded, then it is cut into the pieces that can rotate on their own. I'll then take each one of the pieces and drill a hole in the center to hold the tube that goes down to the gearing. Complicated huh? Yes, it makes my brain tired if I think of too many sections of it at a time. I'll most likely start carving the fins tomorrow and figuring out the gearing system (yikes!).

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Peace,
Joy

Is this cool or WHAT?

Our Orrery Tabletop !

This is the table top for the orrery that we're building. An orrery is one of those old fashioned models of the solar system with all the planets on arms above a table. You've probably seen one in an old museum or library. No one in the world seems to make them anymore, except us!!!

So this is the table top for ours. Each piece is about 3 feet long by about 18 inches wide on the outside. They're about 1/2 inch thick, and I MADE each and every one! Isn't that cool??? We looked into purchasing a 6 foot glass table and having it cut into 12 pieces, but the price was outrageous!! And the glass in those tables is flat and greenish and just well... plain ugly. So after a few days of stewing over what to do, I said, well, why don't I just cast them and make them however we want? YAYYYY!! And they've come out gorgeous!

Why 12 pieces? Easier to handle than one 6 foot round tabletop, I can get them into my sandblasting cabinet, and it allows for a decorative edging between the pieces.

But why 12? An orrery shows the paths of the planets through constellations, which are symbols in the zodiac, of which there are 12! So each glass panel will have a gorgeous zodiac image and a little information etched into the underside, where you see just blank glass, not the blue stuff toward the center.

What is the blue stuff? It's blue glass cast into the glass plates. Actually, there's also red and yellow. That section of the table will be installed over a dark aluminum baseplate, so it will be darker than the outside. The swirly colors are meant to depict nebula, stars and such.

Peace,
Joy