Five of the same thing

This week's assignment was about creating FIVE of the same thing. They have to be exactly the same, and done using the machines in the shop (no laser cutting / 3D printing / automating this somehow).

I went through a lot of prototyping and iterations as I had different ideas but sketching them or just thinking about them I couldn't really tell if they would work. I started to quickly prototype with cardboard. What I realized was that I kept thinking about hollow things where in reality I would have a solid block of wood so some of my ideas didn't actually make sense. But I guess I had to physically build it and see it (hopefully as I continue doing this I'll start to get better intuition for these things).

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I just wanted something that'll be interesting to work with, considering my aesthetic theme of using elastic chords to connect wood parts, and create a playful thing that one could construct in different ways. But I couldn't really come up with a shape that was both intricate enough and that made sense to replicate (in terms of what I feel I'm able to achieve, or willing to try). I ended up going with a more flat, card-like, design of an amorphous shape.

Is started with a block of wood, drew the outline of the shape I was going for, and using the band saw to cut it into something close to that, and then used the sander to get the desired shape. Some crevices were too small for the big sander so I had to use the smaller one with rolls on it, which was harder to use in an "even" way.

I then used the band saw to cut slits in the the block of wood, and then sliced it into thin slices.

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I finished with sanding each slice individually as the band saw cuts were a bit rough.

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To conclude, this whole thing did not go as I had planned AT ALL. But I started to get a better feeling of the band saw, and I think I'm beginning to be able to plan ahead better now as I have a better understanding of the different steps I have to take in order to make what I have in mind.