Using only the ONE TOOL of your choice and ONE material you will produce a STOOL.
The stool must be fully functional: approx. 40cm high, safely supports the weight of an adult.
I’m immediately thinking of making something out of acrylic rods. I actually have an idea for a stool/side table already formed which I was going to work on at some point… but on my way home I realise that it’s not applicable: I had been planning on heating rods in an oven and bending them out, and then setting them within a seat/tabletop of bitumen that would bond them together – so that’s two tools and two materials.
I was pleasantly surprised by the look and strength of the flame-welded acrylic joint from the last exercise, so I can attempt something here easily. With welding alone I could feasibly make a stool as required, but a problem was the one tool limitation means I can’t cut the rods to specific sizes – I would have to use them in their unadulterated offcut form. Vertically it could be arranged so that there are three or four relatively similar length legs and the rest would make a thick, uneven seat. But once I mocked it up in fusion it looked exactly like the kind of interior design crap that I hate. Placed horizontally it is much more interesting, looking less like a stool than a block of waste, which it is. I think it is more honest and more convincing.
I started to explore the idea of bending metal rather than welding plastic to make my stool. Initially I thought about using aluminium but decided against it after my aluminum welding induction, where I learned about aluminium being a terrific heat sink. I knew this already, but somehow didn’t compute that bending aluminium in the way I wanted to wouldn’t be a great idea. I explored the idea of welding aluminium with the blowtorch but was told that I’d need a flux to get through the oxide – one material too many. So I checked out the materials shop and decided on steel instead – it bends a lot easier, and would make for a sturdier stool. Thinking about what was possible to bend with my hands, the floor and a blowtorch, I tried to imagine what types of joints would be possible.
Spent saturday in the garden with the kids, they were digging holes while I made my stool out of steel bar using my blowtorch. I wish I had taken some more photos of the process but it was difficult heating and bending 2 x 3 metre bars of metal and stopping the kids from burning themselves.
I really like the stool. It fits in with the rough outsider art that I like, even if it could do with a lot of improvement. I burned my hand in the last 5 minutes of working on it, now I have nice big blisters.
