silver soldering organization

Yesterday, I spent some time in the campus studio working on more organization. Our soldering bench has several shallow drawers and for the past year each drawer had a different item in it related to soldering. The drawer space was underutilized and honestly a mess. Plus students never put things back in the correct drawers. We used to get some nice pieces of multicolored HDPE donated by a company that makes kids playground equipment and so I used a piece of 3/4" HDPE and made a layout for all of our main silver soldering tools. I spent most of the afternoon tweaking the design while to piece was still on the router only to take the first piece off and discover that my containers of flux were not inset deep enough to close the drawer..ugh. Oh well, the torch tip recesses were over cut by the time I nailed down the outline, so I fixed the depth of cut and recut a new piece at the end of the day. I test fit this piece this morning and I am cutting a second one for our other soldering bench top drawer. Now we'll have more storage space in the rest of the drawers. I need to start my Metals studio improvements and tools website with file downloads for all of these things so people can have the files to modify and use for their studios. Someday...

Also, side-thought: these kinds of projects are super gratifying. Maybe it's because I feel like this piece should be around for a while and be used at least for as long as I am teaching here. It should also help with teaching and I'll feel better when I'm not hunting for a tool when I'm trying to demonstrate something. Over the years it feels like these kinds of jobs are the filler between personal projects. Regardless, it's good to do these things.

 

wey hall

As I mentioned in a previous post, the building I teach in has been renovated. There was a ribbon cutting ceremony several weeks ago and an article was published about it. There have been photographers in and out of the building for the last few weeks and so I've collected a few of the images from my classrooms that have been published. I'm loving my new teaching space and it makes me look forward to coming to work each day. I can't wait to have everything labeled and in it's place. I am reminded of how much time it takes to get a space set up for teaching and how important my comfort level in that space is for me to do my best job teaching. I've felt a little discombobulated this semester, so I'm hoping next semester will be a little easier.

 

metals studio

I've been working more on the studio at school this semester. The door got some new signage. I still need to add some other things but I'm happy with how things are coming together. In terms of the interior workings, I am also making steps toward making more space for work to happen. The space is cramped, but we're managing. I wish I had a larger budget for new equipment and I'm trying to figure out how to maximize the budget I have. I need to find a donor I guess...

app state metals studio

Right before Christmas I was working hard to make some modifications to the App State Metals studio. As noted earlier, I've been converting my office inside the Metals studio into a new DCRL. I ordered a a few butcher block tables for the DCRL and then in between cleaning and sorting supplies and tools, I started rearranging the main studio so that I could make room for a South Bend lathe and a new sandblaster. I am really limited in the amount of space I have to work with, but I think if I can get a little creative I should be able to carve out more space. I am used to having a dedicated demo bench area when I teach and the old studio set-up didn't really have a space that I could call "home". I rearranged things and started refinishing the tops of two of the tables. The small one will be the demo table and then the other larger table will be used as a flex space. We can use it for enameling prep, small scale machining, forming, or workspace for advanced students. Things are starting to take space. 

I worked on student tool kits yesterday and was able to purchase and add saw frames to their tool kits so those can be something that students have access to regardless of studio hours. I wish I could afford fancy jeweler's benches but it's just not in the cards, so I'll have to get creative. I'm working on a design for a CNC cut jeweler's bench. The demo bench here will eventually be replaced by the prototype CNC cut jeweler's bench and then if everything works out, I'm hoping to make an entire classroom of benches that will replace the existing tables and provide student storage for supplies and their tool kits. This last part will probably take me all summer, but I think it will help with the space issue and make things a little better. I built a bunch of benches for our advanced students at UWM when I was working there, but I'm hoping my new design is a bit easier to assemble in mass quantities. I want to share the design as well so other studios can use the design.

eiu metals studio