While my injury from constructing the saw put me behind schedule a little bit things went fairly smoothly last week. I was able to observe the use of a neat, groove making tool we had in the shop. Part of the sculpture is a piece of the back of the chair that fit into grooves on other sections of the chair's body. I wanted to incorporate this design choice with the construction of my piece. Unfortunately, we had to cut a groove all along the side of the circle rather than just where the piece would fit into it, but this will be hidden by the drawing that will enclose the top.
It fit very nicely after some slight sanding was completed on it, and the chair legs after being modified in size were used as the other two columns, as seen below.
Placement of the legs proved more difficult. Two of the legs are constructed from the hind leg/backrest section and had to be modified to fit flush with the bottom of the sculpture. For added support a beam was added to attach the legs to. Below is the incorrect way to add this beam!
After the first two legs were screwed on, the third and final leg had to be constructed from a 1x8 and placed on the sculpture in such a way that it would hold itself up. Finding balance was difficult as the entire top section likes to lean forward due to more weight in that area from the legs. Thankfully it will stand, but is not the safest, let children run around it and stuff, sort of construction.
Tonight I stained the pieces of plywood to try to match them to the rest of the sculpture. The stain came out pretty well, but as I was using some left over stain from the sculpture I ran out of the color I wanted to us before all areas could be covered. As it is due tomorrow these areas will most likely stay unstained until a later date, but are for the most part not visible unless one feels the need to investigate every angle of the sculpture (you know, liek the bottom).
All that is left for me to complete before class tomorrow is attaching the drawing and hoping the damn thing doesn't decide to fall over if someone sneezes during critique.