Burningman 2012:

Cargo Cult

Work begins

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Catenary Plans | Work Begins | Finishing the Arch

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Making a table to build on.

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An interesting act at the S.F,Decompression. The only photos I took at the cramped venue

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Hanging a chain to make the 1:3 scale model of the arch

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Beginning to cut the tapered strips of 1/8" plywood. I'm making the 2 curved catenary shapes by laminating 5 layers of the plywood all glued together.

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Miter box and the wood I'll need to make the curved form to bend the glued wood around.

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Drilling holes in the 1x2s to make the 'L' brackets

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Another jig-this time to make the 'L's nice 90 degree angles.

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'L's screwed to the table, I'm adding a strip of plywood to complete the from.

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form glued to the frames and clamped while it dries.

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Covering the plywood form with vaseline to keep the gluey strips of wood from sticking to it.

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First 5 layer laminate. Glue applied, not need to clamp the stack in place before the glue sets. Gwen lending a hand to hold the wood in place.

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Cutting more strips of 1/8th" wood. With 1/8" plywood, cutting with a stanley knife is easier than using a saw.

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Gluing the lams to make the next arch. 3 Inner and 3 outer arch laminates are needed.

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Setting up the form for the outer arch after the 3 inner arches have been glued together.

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Cutting off the un-needed tops of the 'L' frames.

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Adding braces to connect 2 of the completed inner and outer arch shapes to each other using the forms to hold them at the proper distances.

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Cutting the faces for the cross connected arches. (Working between 2 buildings, I only get 3 hours of sunlight to work on my all over tan pre playa. Important so I don't burn when I hit the desert.)

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Cleaning up the edges of the glued arch laminates.

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With the 1:3 scale model nearly done, it's time to build a bigger work table to build the full sized version. This time it will be about 18' long with a 'J' shaped hook at one end.

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Hanging much longer chains on the back wall of my 4-plex to establish the catenary shape for the full sized version.

To make the full sized version, I'm using 5 lams of 1/4" plywood. The outer arch is 18' 7.5" so it takes 3-4 strips of wood. Since I didn't want all the seams to be at he same place, I needed to cut 16 different shaped pieces of work for the outer arch and 15 different shapes for the inner arch. Each shape needs 3 duplicates.

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This image (You need to look at the 'huge' version to see the details) is of an illustrator drawing I made to establish the 30+ shapes needed to make the arches. Also in the drawing is how the shapes fit onto sheets of plywood.

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I screwed 3 sheets of plywood together to cut all the duplicates at the same time.

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In between arch tasks, I'm working on my version of the Red Sparrows airplane. These are the first version of the wings. (I decided to make stroger versions later because I want to show it at several event before hitting the playa.)